Apple offers possible solutions for iPad WiFi problems

If you are having issues with your iPad's Wi-Fi behavior Apple has a support document for that. While some of the solutions are a bit obvious, one is very strange.

<a href='http://meincmagazine.com/apple/news/2010/05/apple-offers-possible-solutions-for-ipad-wi-fi-problems.ars'>Read the whole story</a>

 

[dmccarty]

Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection

RF bleedover from the panel? It's pretty tricky to place an 802.11 part on the motherboard (WOMBO) and keep it from being interfered with by other components. At a consumer electronics company I once worked for a hardware engineer swore it couldn't be done on our then current board. After he was laid off his replacement redesigned the board and figured out a way to make it work.

It's more of an art than a science, IMO. The devil is in the details, and it's not till you spin a few prototypes and run your rate-and-reach test that you know whether or not you got it right.

 

[Rubel]

*chuckle*

 

[ducasi]

Maybe increasing the screen brightness will cause the WiFi drivers to increase their power output and/or sensitivity to make up for possible interference from the screen, and as a handy side-effect, makes the WiFi signal more reliable?

Just a thought...

 

[Pierre Marteau]

Please don't waste our time with simple foolishness and sarcasm:

"Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection, anything is worth a shot. If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

Apple has yet to give an exact date as to when the update will be issued, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if I was looking to cure my WiFi connection issues."

 

[ColinABQ]

Please don't waste our time with simple foolishness and sarcasm:

"Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection, anything is worth a shot. If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

Apple has yet to give an exact date as to when the update will be issued, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if I was looking to cure my WiFi connection issues."

On the contrary - don't stop. I enjoyed it.

 

[Gigaflop]

Please don't waste our time with simple foolishness and sarcasm:

"Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection, anything is worth a shot. If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

Apple has yet to give an exact date as to when the update will be issued, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if I was looking to cure my WiFi connection issues."

On the contrary - don't stop. I enjoyed it.

+1! It gave me a nice chuckle. What's with the negative nancy? It was pretty funny!

 

[JohnnyTheGeek]

From what I have read from people with this problems. The solutions Apple suggested were already tried.
I do think some third party routers just do not work with the iPad. I am more inclined to think its hardware defects then a firmware or software issue. Just because some have the issue and the majority do not.
This too me just spells defective.

 

[Redlazer]

I lolled as well.

I was thinking along the same lines - maybe there's more interference generated with the screen up high, so the drivers also increase power to compensate.

I would normally scoff at the thought of a manufacturer going to the trouble - but Apple does seem to me to be of the sort who would do such a thing.

Makes me wonder why it's an issue in the first place then - if they write software to compensate, then presumably they would have realised there's a signal strength issue.

And the DHCP lease thing is ridiculous. A couple people here have them, but we haven't had a problem. Still, it makes me wonder the circumstances that the DHCP stack was designed under - you mean to tell me they didn't just take it from OSX or some open source project?

It's about time Apple decided to get on with a solution.

 

[Redlazer]

Ah, and I also have WiFi connectivity issues with my Nexus One. I think there's a pretty consistent problem with accessing an AP with two SSID's and varied authentication.

 

[zonnked]

I'm an embedded systems engineer and I once worked on a product that had dimmable front panel LED's. We used pulse width modulation to control the intensity. This means that you turn on the LEDs to full brightness for a short amount of time, then turn them completely off for a short amount of time. You do this faster that your eyes can detect. The longer the "on" time is, the brighter the display appears to the be. Your eyes average out the on/off flicker and only see the display as a solid intensity. Since this is the best way to dim an LED display, from a battery usage stand point, I'm sure Apple is doing the same thing to control the display panel's backlight LEDs.

When the front panel was at a low brightness, the LEDs were pulsed for a very short amount of time, and the results were some pretty intense RF generation -- more than we had counted on. We ended up having a problem with bleed over into other parts of system. Our temporary solution, (until the hardware could be updated), was to issue a firmware update to limit how far the display could be dimmed.

So their solution of increasing the screen's brightness to limit RF interference, makes perfect sense to me.

 

[robvoodoo]

I applaud those writers skilled enough to make news about WiFi problems even vaguely amusing. And more so those that can do a group round up of fans or power supplies and make it even remotely readable.

 

[Deleted member 32907]

I'm an embedded systems engineer and I once worked on a product that had dimmable front panel LED's. We used pulse width modulation to control the intensity. This means that you turn on the LEDs to full brightness for a short amount of time, then turn them completely off for a short amount of time. You do this faster that your eyes can detect. The longer the "on" time is, the brighter the display appears to the be. Your eyes average out the on/off flicker and only see the display as a solid intensity. Since this is the best way to dim an LED display, from a battery usage stand point, I'm sure Apple is doing the same thing to control the display panel's backlight LEDs.

When the front panel was at a low brightness, the LEDs were pulsed for a very short amount of time, and the results were some pretty intense RF generation -- more than we had counted on. We ended up having a problem with bleed over into other parts of system. Our temporary solution, (until the hardware could be updated), was to issue a firmware update to limit how far the display could be dimmed.

So their solution of increasing the screen's brightness to limit RF interference, makes perfect sense to me.

Beat me to it. I was just about to post "Actually, it would make more sense that a dimmer display, using PWM modulation, would put out a LOT more RF than a display with the LEDs at 100% duty cycle."

That wouldn't affect the DHCP issues or other software-ish issues, but could help with interference.

Also, I lol'd at the suggestions about a glass of water and scaring it. Keep 'em up! If I want totally bland writing, I'll go read the Wall Street Journal.

 

[sgip]

Just fwiw, these problems with wifi on the iPad seem identical to those introduced on the Touch with OS 3.1 about a year ago. All of the proposed "solutions" for the iPad problems are the same as those that were/are proposed (along with a healthy dose of denial) for the Touch's issues. But to this day, my Touch has wildly swinging wifi connectivity even when within a few feet of the genuine Apple router that works just fine with all manner of other MacBooks, iMacs, etc. on my network.

OK, come to think of it, I never tried the screen brightness one....I'll get right on that.

Point is, it well may be a relatively long-standing OS problem that is rooted in how the iPhone/Touch/iPad OS treats wifi, and it's just now evident on the iPad.

 

[ColinABQ]

Another possibility, and this is quite a stretch: perhaps with the screen on full intensity, the device drops power to unused circuits, which might include the radio, at certain times. There's nothing like a power cycle for a truly clean, or "cold" start, as opposed to a "warm" or "logical" restart. Just like powering cycling your PC, as opposed to Ctrl+Alt+Delete - in any complex device, they are very rarely actually the same.

 

[SirOmega]

I don't get the joke... someone care to enlighten me?

 

[Darmat]

And all these years I lived under the impression that this kind of WiFi issues are only possible on Win-based notebooks. Fixing them, I tried (with variable success factors) all the methods recommended by "big A" on such machines - except the "panel brightness" - this one never crossed my mind.
And the DHCP problem is so common on Win platforms, so nice to hear other platforms face similar curses.
But the most reliable fix is "firmware update" - new WiFi drivers generally fix problems.
But as others already mentioned here, the display brightens adjustment really makes sense, have to try this one on the next notebook that exhibits WiFI connectivity problems.

 

[zonnked]

I don't get the joke... someone care to enlighten me?

If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

The joke is: Only Chuck Norris can scare an iPad.

 

[sjdude]

Among the possible solutions listed are updating your router’s firmware

I had been running my MBP (late 2008) using WPA on a Linksys AP running a 4 year old version of dd-wrt. It worked great until I upgraded to Snow Leopard recently. I then started having horrible connection failures that I couldn't ultimately solve until, that is, I upgraded the router firmware to the latest dd-wrt version for my router. It has been rock solid connecting ever since then.

If the iPad WiFi stack is derived from Snow Leopard's, updating AP firmware might just fix the connection problems for some folks.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[VideoGameTech]

If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

Great writing! Making humor with a tech article is an art.

I don't get the joke... someone care to enlighten me?

If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

The joke is: Only Chuck Norris can scare an iPad.

ROFL! The article was funny enough, but this was icing on the cake.

 

[atergo]

I laughed too...until I thought of some idiot suing Ars because they tried to give their iPad a glass of water.

You might need a disclaimer...

 

[Deleted member 12245]

Please don't waste our time with simple foolishness and sarcasm:

"Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection, anything is worth a shot. If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

Apple has yet to give an exact date as to when the update will be issued, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if I was looking to cure my WiFi connection issues."

I hope you read this post and it wastes some of your precious time. Just a little slice of your life that now belongs to me. Oh yes. All mine. :savor:

 

[trieu]

FYI - The WEP -> WPA2 workaround has so far worked to resolve my intermittent iPad wifi issues.

 

[EmeraldArcana]

Wow ars comments contain a lot of neat information.

 

[AdamM]

Please don't waste our time with simple foolishness and sarcasm:

"Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection, anything is worth a shot. If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

Apple has yet to give an exact date as to when the update will be issued, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if I was looking to cure my WiFi connection issues."

I bet you're just amazingly fun to be around.

 

[clee]

It's really not that crazy. Let's say you're trying to code a mobile operating system. One of the things you need to keep in mind at all times is power consumption, so you develop some rules - like, say, if the screen is off and the current application isn't streaming music over the network, it's probably safe to turn off wifi. Assume there's a bug in the display code such that the kernel thinks the screen is off when the brightness is set to the bare minimum, and it makes perfect sense.

 

[vmvm]

Since the day I activated my iPad I have never had any WiFi problems. I have a 3 year old Cisco Router. No problems. No bugs here. Maybe it is just in your mind?

 

[MizuInOz]

Please don't waste our time with simple foolishness and sarcasm:

"Though we aren't sure why adjusting screen brightness would have any effect on the iPad's WiFi connection, anything is worth a shot. If the brightness trick doesn’t work, however, try scaring your iPad, have it drink a glass of water as fast as possible, or have the tablet hold its breath and count to 10.

Apple has yet to give an exact date as to when the update will be issued, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if I was looking to cure my WiFi connection issues."

I bet you're just amazingly fun to be around.

You must have the mind reading app installed on your iPad because I was thinking the same thing.

As for WiFi issues with my iPad, I have none. I guess because I am in Australia, the waveform of the domahicky that constabulates the razzifingle make it all OK here. (That's tech speak for I have no idea why it is working so well but I am getting my neighbour's WiFi signal!)

Cheers from Downunder...

 

[cputeq]

I have to imagine, with all of Apple's supposed prowess in the quality arena and releasing (presumably) well-made products, that something as blatant of a problem as this would have been caught pretty early on in QA?

 

[mhungry]

Chuck Norris once leased a IP address via DHCP, and the server gave him one he didn't like. So he roundhouse kicked it into giving them all up. Forever.

Moral: If you want a DHCP address for your iPad, you must now lease it from Chuck Norris.

 

[DarkSyd]

People still use WEP?

 

[MesserWolf]

I'm an embedded systems engineer and I once worked on a product that had dimmable front panel LED's. We used pulse width modulation to control the intensity. This means that you turn on the LEDs to full brightness for a short amount of time, then turn them completely off for a short amount of time. You do this faster that your eyes can detect. The longer the "on" time is, the brighter the display appears to the be. Your eyes average out the on/off flicker and only see the display as a solid intensity. Since this is the best way to dim an LED display, from a battery usage stand point, I'm sure Apple is doing the same thing to control the display panel's backlight LEDs.

When the front panel was at a low brightness, the LEDs were pulsed for a very short amount of time, and the results were some pretty intense RF generation -- more than we had counted on. We ended up having a problem with bleed over into other parts of system. Our temporary solution, (until the hardware could be updated), was to issue a firmware update to limit how far the display could be dimmed.

So their solution of increasing the screen's brightness to limit RF interference, makes perfect sense to me.

Interesting !
I thought that devices with such low power consumption couldn't have this kind of problem ...

 

[jb510]

People still use WEP?

Sure, WEP is still useful if your only interest is keeping your nieghbors off your wifi and I often see ISP provided dsl/router combos that only offer WEP. So yes there are still lots of WEP networks out there sad as that is.

I've got to say ARS commenters can be utterly awesome (all the pulse width modulation talk)... So much nicer to read then the trolls flooding so many threads.

The brightness fix sounded like vodoo to me to. Reminds me of long ago at my old employeer when many new 17" monitors were having trouble (seemed they'd spontenoualy go into power saving mode and we'd have to reboot the computer to get them to wake up, powering the monitor and pulling the display cable had no effect). It was discovered however that replacing the power strip made the problem go away... nobody beloved it and for _years_ after we'd jokingly suggest a new power strip any time someone's computer crashed.

 

[ArmoredCow]

Please don't waste our time with simple foolishness and sarcasm:

--

I thought the simple foolishness was perfect. It wasn't over the top and added a light hearted feel to the information without being insulting.

 

[ShuggyCoUk]

++ on the whimsy.

Anyone know if the 3G enabled one (with different case) exhibits similar issues?

 

[Locoman]

I have to imagine, with all of Apple's supposed prowess in the quality arena and releasing (presumably) well-made products, that something as blatant of a problem as this would have been caught pretty early on in QA?

Well, Apple's desire for total secrecy keeps them from doing proper QA. Their testing is probably very limited because of that.

 

[DigitalGypsy]

I am also enjoying the well informed comments by the posters. I wanted to throw the following thread of an idea into the comment pile: I had read recently several major universities have banned iPads for this DHCP release problem. I would think this is also a motivator for Apple seeing how they are interested in this device being used in educational settings.
I am one of those folks who have had wifi drop outs on my iPod Touch, and now with the iPad. Before reading this article I had recently 'turned up' the brightness of my iPad's screen just to see things better. Now that I've read this article, I realize I haven't had any recent drop outs. Perhaps this is my imagination. You all made some valid points for this brightness issue to seem plausible.

 

[DigitalGypsy]

++ on the whimsy.

Anyone know if the 3G enabled one (with different case) exhibits similar issues?

I would like to know this as well since I've read other blog posts suggesting the full body case to be the issue.

 

[necrosis]

HAY APPLE! How about you just release a damned firmware update to fix the problem!

The DHCP issue being the most serious of them all!

 

[nightwing2000]

Maybe increasing the screen brightness will cause the WiFi drivers to increase their power output and/or sensitivity to make up for possible interference from the screen, and as a handy side-effect, makes the WiFi signal more reliable?

Just a thought...

Except my problem was... The iPad did not drop connections, unlike other complantants. It simply "forgot" my Linksys WRT54G WEP network was a "known" network and did not automatically rejoin it. Every time it went to sleep, afterwards I had to go to preferences and select it as if it were a brand new network; then it remembered the key (thankfully!).

Once I've taken it off *minimum* brightness, it hasn't forgotten since that my home network is a known network. (Moved brightness slider to about 20%)

Very odd; unless turning off/down the wifi is a collateral power-saving move with screen brightness that is not programmed correctly?