iPad continuously loses wI fi signals.

[abueloeddie]

iPad continuously loses wI fi signals. Will connect for 5-10 minutes at over 45Mbps then that disappears.

Tried... Factory reset, Router Power Cycle, Checking Broadband extender, on ground floor, gives good readings on iPhone but poor / intermittent / no connection to iPad

Router is BT no 6 (Ethernet cable connection iMac ( Very Good 57 - 58 Mpbs)

Ethernet cable to BT Broadband extender on first floor gives good connection down to ground floor, running Smart TV... All channels picked up ok. iPhone shows continuously good Hi Speed Connection but iPad is very intermittent Where is fault? Ground floor BT BB extender ? Or iPad in failing to hold on to a signal from Extender?

[NY]

The first thing I'd eliminate is the range-extender. How often does the problem happen when

- the range extender is turned off and the iPad is (obviously) connected to the base router

- the range extender is turned on but the iPad is connected to the base router

- the iPad is connected to the range extender

Some Apple devices seem to use a wifi chipset which is a lot more fussy and a lot more liable to disconnect. Many times my wife has complained that the wifi to her iPad keeps dropping out, but I can't reproduce the fault with my Android phone or Windows laptop in the same location and so with the same signal strength/quality. That's for a signal from a router, without a range extender. I'm not sure whether Apple have released any firmware upgrades which attempt to cure this.

[Tim+]

We recently had a problem with WiFi connectivity at my mother's flat. Moving the router away from the nearby wireless thermostat sorted things.

Tim

[abueloeddie]

Thanks for the reply, NY.

Tested in the past hour... on Ground floor ( Router and 1 Extender up stairs) iPad receiving 40+ Mbps...... walk away into from Range extender.... Signal fails completely

Smart TV displays 45 / 50 Mbps ( Hard connection to Extender Via Ethernet) iPad blank, iPhone 49-55 Mpbs Extender is hard to get at. need assistance, will have to wait till fit young person arrives to help

Appointment made at local Apple shop ...Genius Bar

Meanwhile, Wife's nearly new iPad works all the while without a hitch

[whisky-dave]

There was a problem a few month back where this happened had is myself think it was vers 11.4.1 that had problems with virgin meadia superhub 2 3s were OK and soem other ISP also had problems but after 11.4.2 came it everything worked again and has done for me ever since.

I was using an ipad air 2

[The Natural Philosopher]

They are not the only ones. My laptop negoteioates down from about

50Mbps to < 5Mbps whilst still saying there is a good level of signal.

My raspberry Pi-Z does similar.

Fucking broadcom drivers.

[Brian Gaff]

I pad. However, I assume it has the latest Operating system update? If its so old it cannot run that then I suspect you are stuffed.

There was a bug in some earlier versions of IOS that dropped connections. Also are you close to any other strong signals on the same band? I've seen some tablets strong le under packed bands. Not got one myself, but I've heard the woes from others. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Sounds like you answered your own question then. Brian

[Martin Brown]

The most likely problem is that the repeater uses a chipset or dodgy firmware that does not correctly implement all the Wifi protocols that the Apple depends on - notably multicastDNS. Here is what my tame wizard has to say on the topic of which chipsets work reliably with Apple kit:

Broadcom and Atheros, the latter now being a part of Qualcomm. Most new Apple devices now contain Broadcom Wifi 802.11ac chips.

iPads, like much of Apple kit, do their service discovery by means of multicastDNS, called variously zeroconf, Rendezvous or Bonjour. Sadly, whether your Wifi base unit and / or router supports this properly has more of impact on things like seamless UPnP and streaming than the chipset used. Many standard routers are inconsistent and essentially unreliable in their Bonjour / mDNS implementation.

A fault in your old iPad is just about possible but my money would be on a slightly ropey chipset in the repeater and better error recovery in the newer iPad masking the shortcomings of the repeater.

I have seen similar problems with iP*ds too many times...

[Tim+]

My wife and I have the same generation/model iPads and yet occasionally when we've been in hotels, mine has stubbornly refused to connect to the hotel WiFi whilst hers has had no problem.

Generally though it works fine in nearly all other places. It's just weird...

Tim