iPad Air 2 WiFi Connectivity Issues: RESOLVED

In a previous post, I told the tale of how my brand new iPad Air 2 would not stay connected to WiFi (typically losing connection after a certain amount of idle time.) I would have to turn off WiFi and back on again to make a connection. In the same house, I had 2 iPhone 5's (not 5s), an iPad 3rd-gen and iPad 4th Gen all running iOS 8.1 with no connectivity issues. Only the iPad Air 2 would drop its connection.

I tried the following:

• Restarting WiFi router
• Turning off WiFi Networking support on the iPad
• Resetting network settings on the iPad
• Restoring the iPad (using backup)
• Restoring the iPad to factory settings (using backup and setting up as new iPad)

Nothing seemed to help. I went to an Apple store and a Genius replaced the unit for me. When I got home, I connected to my WiFi and set it up as a new iPad without restoring from backup and then I let it sit for an hour to see if it maintained a connection. IT LOST CONNECTION AGAIN.

Then I went into my router settings (Linksys Smart WiFi) and made the following changes under "Wireless Settings":

• Changed the 2.4 GHz Network Mode from "Mixed" to "802.11b/g Only"
• Changed the 5 GHz Network Mode from "Mixed" to "802.11a Only"

That seemed to do the trick. If it hadn't, my next step was to try to set an IP reservation (under DHCP) for the iPad which, after thinking about it, I had to do for my 2 Nest Thermostats a couple of years ago after they kept dropping their connections.

I hope others who are having this issue with their iPad Air 2's have similar success with this resolution.