Replacement iPad Will it Fix WiFi?

[austinguy23]

Like droves of others, I've had serious issues with with my iPad maintaining a wifi signal about 40-50 feet away from my wireless router. Even when it did manage to connect, the connection was extremely slow even though my iPhone 4 had a very fast wi-fi connection.

I tried all the troubleshooting procedures on Apple's Support page and even tried a restore at the request of their Customer Service rep. When that did not work, they asked that I send it in for them to replace it. I should have it by Friday but I'm curious if replacement units have fixed this problem for any of you or if it's simply a persistent design flaw inherent in the current generation of the iPad.

Has anyone had their iPad replaced due to the wi-fi problem? If so, did this resolve your problem??

 

[tibi08]

I found that replacing my router with an Airport Extreme solved my Wifi problems. I know that doesn't answer your question, but thought you might find it interesting.

 

[mstout]

I truly feel for those with iPad WIFI issues. I've had my iPad in maybe 20 different places and the WIFI connects seamlessly without fail every single time. Weird. I guess I'm lucky.

 

[bossxii]

I pre ordered my first iPad and didn't realize how bad the WiFi issue was outside the Youtube app. Since selling it and getting a new one I can say a very real difference it both general use on wifi and even Youtube loads as I would expect. I've been very happy with it's overall connectivity since.

 

[Diane B]

I truly feel for those with iPad WIFI issues. I've had my iPad in maybe 20 different places and the WIFI connects seamlessly without fail every single time. Weird. I guess I'm lucky.

Lucky here too. We have 2--a 32GB and 64GB wifi only and i can connect every place I go--lots of free wifi around. Here at home we can connect up at our pool which is probably 60-70 feet away from router. I have an old Linksys that doesn't give any problems. So far none of my friends that have ipads have had issues either.

 

[joudbren]

I'm suspecting that Apple has already done a "silent fix" for the wi-fi issues with the iPad. When the iPad first launched a friend of mine brought one into Canada from the U.S. before they were officially launched in Canada and it was clearly having issues staying connected to Wi-Fi and was reported as such in the media at the time. You could literally move the thing 10 inches in the right circumstances and the connection would just evaporate.

Fast forward to 3 weeks ago and my own brand new iPad has none of those issues that were so evident in that earlier model. Who knows, maybe it was fixed by a firmware upgrade along the way but I wouldn't be surprised if minor tweaks to the radio/antenna or mainboard were incorporated into the production run over the last few months.

In any event, I'm certainly not seeing any connection issues with my new iPad at this point. Cheers!

James

 

[LadyHoneyBabe]

I haven't had a problem with WiFi since the last iPad software upgrade.

 

[MrWillie]

I am not lucky, I am just part of the 99.999995% of the people that have no issues whatsoever with their iPad...

 

[Mac Rookie]

I got my ipad a week ago from target I'am having this wifi problem. I will be taking it back.

 

[austinguy23]

UPDATE:

Original Poster (OP) here. Apple sent back the iPad stating nothing is wrong with it despite the fact that it can't maintain a wi-fi signal 40 feet from the wireless router (yet my iPhone 4 can)!

My opinion of Apple has taken a serious hit. I always thought they did whatever it took to take care of their customers. I just want my iPad to work 40 feet away from my access point. Is that too much to ask for Christ's sake?!?

 

[marshallbedsaul]

maybe a software update will help this issue or try the apple airport extreme

 

[austinguy23]

maybe a software update will help this issue or try the apple airport extreme

Already running the latest iOS and router firmware to no avail

The Airport Extreme may be my only recourse. It disappoints me that I may have to spend $179 to fix their product though...

 

[railgunner]

...Don't know if this will give you some hope. I had a lot of issues here at work staying connected to the Wifi (5 Cisco AP's running WPA2-Ent), but at home with Dlink using WPA2-Personal it worked fine. Had a lot of issues where if it went to sleep, it would not reconnect when it woke up and i would have to force it to forget the network and rekey multiple times a day, even though it could see the network. I've been running the Beta codes (Boss has a developer account) and the current Beta3, I've seen a massive improvement in the Wifi. I stay connected at the office. I don't have to force it to forget and rekey. It's usually connected after wake up, by the time i key in my unlock code and no performance issues. 4.2 is scheduled for next month, maybe it will help your situation like it did mine. Just food for thought.......

 

[austinguy23]

...Don't know if this will give you some hope. I had a lot of issues here at work staying connected to the Wifi (5 Cisco AP's running WPA2-Ent), but at home with Dlink using WPA2-Personal it worked fine. Had a lot of issues where if it went to sleep, it would not reconnect when it woke up and i would have to force it to forget the network and rekey multiple times a day, even though it could see the network. I've been running the Beta codes (Boss has a developer account) and the current Beta3, I've seen a massive improvement in the Wifi. I stay connected at the office. I don't have to force it to forget and rekey. It's usually connected after wake up, by the time i key in my unlock code and no performance issues. 4.2 is scheduled for next month, maybe it will help your situation like it did mine. Just food for thought.......

I certainly hope so - thanks

 

[JulianL]

I haven't had a problem with WiFi since the last iPad software upgrade.

The last iPad software upgrade made a huge difference to my WiFi, it was virtually unusable before the upgrade (I needed to reconnect at least 15 times an hour with the initial release), but it's still not perfect by any means.

I never need to reconnect now but I frequently get stalls (a 20 second delay before a web page starts to load) or a network timeout where I get a "network error" message when trying to load a web page and have to hit refresh to then (usually) get it to load successfully the second time. I'd say that I get these bad pages about once every 90 seconds so it really does slow down my browsing.

I plan to install 4.2 when it's officially released to see if that fixes it and if not then I'll try and get the device exchanged under warranty.

I'm pretty convinced that my problems are not due to basic WiFi connectivity because I never, ever have an issue accessing my local NAS and even with the original iOS release my NAS access was still fine, it's just anything over the internet that has issues, so I'm wondering if it's some issue with DNS caching and/or communication with the DNS server. This is why I'm not particularly confident that a hardware swap will improve my situation.

- Julian