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How to Improve Your iPad’s Wi-Fi Performance

ByKate Beswick

One of the most common problems found with the iPad, just a few short months after its release, is that users are surfing happily along online, when their Wi-Fi connection either unexpectedly gets dropped, or they just can’t connect to it at all. This is no time to panic and as with every other Apple gizmo, there are a few ways you can improve your iPad’s Wi-Fi performance.

Start by using the first troubleshooting step for the iPhone and the iPod Touch – turn it off and then turn it back on again. Sometimes these devices just get stuck and need a little jolt to refresh them.

The problem could simply be with the way that you’re holding your iPad. Some users have reported that it’s when they’re holding the iPad in portrait mode, rather than in landscape mode that the problem starts to show. Try holding your iPad so that its width is longer than its length, and that might fix your problem. Of course, it’s not real practical for when there’s a something lengthy that you want to read or look at.

Sometimes, it’s the lease of your network on your iPad. What should usually happen is that the iPad wants to have an address on a DHCP lease but in order to do so, it must renew its address. When it doesn’t, the address will simply be assigned to another device, and there goes your Wi-Fi. But this too is a problem that is easily fixed. Start by tapping “Settings/General”, then find the blue arrow next to the network that you want to use and tap it. Then tap “Renew Lease.” Then, whenever you’re going to power down or lock your iPad, make sure that you turn the Wi-Fi off before you do.

Cranking up the brightness on your iPad is another way to possibly make your iPad’s Wi-Fi perform better. iPad, just like iPhones, know that when a user turns down their brightness settings, it’s possible that they’re doing so in order to conserve battery life. So, the device might automatically also turn down your Wi-Fi’s signal in order to do the same thing. Turn up the brightness to let your iPad know you want it to perform at its peak, and it just might do the trick.

Lastly, there are two different types of encryption protocols that you may encounter. The first is WEP and the second is QoS. Unfortunately, the iPad doesn’t support QoS so if that’s what you’re trying to use, disable it.

Hopefully some of these options work and that you’ll be on your way soon enough using your iPad the way it was meant to be used.

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