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Bear87

macrumors newbie
Oct 23, 2012
26
0
Strange situation here:

Wifi seems fine when I do the speedtest app. I get maximum speed there. However, I am hardly able to do webbrowsing on wifi. That is so slow that I just switch to mobile data to do some browsing...

That can't be a defective wifi chip, can it? Because in speedtest app everything is just fine with maximum speeds..
 

edk

macrumors regular
Apr 12, 2006
112
0
I may have solved my signal issues by changing channel-width from auto to 40mhz on my tp-link router.

It was very slow to connect, and then with a weak signal. After the change, much faster on both counts. Lets see if it stays that way......
 

Megalobyte

macrumors 6502a
Dec 30, 2007
690
119
Florida
I may have solved my signal issues by changing channel-width from auto to 40mhz on my tp-link router.

It was very slow to connect, and then with a weak signal. After the change, much faster on both counts. Lets see if it stays that way......

Apple recommends a channel width of 20 MHz for 2.4 ghz, and 20/40 for 5 ghz.

Some iPhone 5's have pretty erratic wifi behavior, upgrading my router made a huge difference, was long overdue anyway.

Before I hooked up my Asus RT-N66R dual band gigabit, if I wanted 3 bars of signal, I literally needed to be 5-10 feet, and unobstructed, from the linksys N router I had, now I have full bars anywhere in my fairly large house, it's like night and day. All routers are not created equal. :)

Also, most routers have a pretty low transmit power default setting. Mine came set to 80 m/w, I played around with it and found upping it to 150 made a noticeable difference in signal strength in marginal areas in my house furthest from the router.

I do believe the 5 has fairly weak wifi reception, so anything you can do to give it a stronger signal helps. Shouldn't have to, but hey, I'm guessing the 5s will solve it. :)
 
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sim667

macrumors 65816
Dec 7, 2010
1,390
2,915
My virgin media homehub gives me dire connections on the iphone 5...... but the stupid thing wont load up the login page for me to tinker either.
 

Jason B

macrumors 6502
May 21, 2010
355
31
I had thought my new router had solved the weak signal issues, and it sort of did, I now get a strong signal anywhere in my house whereas before I had to be fairly close to the router to get a strong one.

But now I'm left with still erratic wifi performance.

Much of the time it's fast, my plan is a 30 Mbps and I often get 33 or so, that's great. But here's what I'm noticing. It'll work well for a while, anywhere from 15 min to an hour, but at some point the wifi speeds get erratic and slow. And I am 100% sure it's the phone, since as soon as I turn wifi off, then back on the problem goes away, until it returns. I'd say it must be a software thing since simply toggling the wifi on and off fixes it. But one thing I'm sure of, 6.0.1 did NOT fix it for me.

There's another odd issue that's still present after the update, certain photos on certain websites download/render much more slowly than they should. Like a 500 kb photo, that should pop up nearly instantly with a 33 Mbps connection are taking maybe 10-15 seconds. The odd thing is, if I turn wifi off, and use my much slower hspa 3-5 Mbps cellular connection, it renders those photos way faster than my 33mbps wifi connection. Very strange. I wonder if its related to people saying they're getting slower streaming with more buffering than normal for good wifi connection.

Either way, if anything, I'd say my wifi is more erratic than before the 6.0.1 update. It's a bit aggravating for apple to not have gotten something as basic as wifi right, and still not right after the update. I use wifi at home all the time and therefore I really notice when it's acting funny, and it definitely is screwed up somehow. It just seems to lose its speed and consistency for no apparent reason, forcing me to turn wifi off then on to get it working well again. Not a very good solution.

Same issue here. I have a netgear wndr3700. After a while the wifi gets very slow and turning wifi on/off fixes it. What I have noticed is that the slow downs only start when I don't have 3 bars of wifi signal on the indicator at the too of the phone. Say if I have 2 bars, it's still fast but after a while it will get real slow. If I have 3 bars all the time it doesn't seem to ever slow down where I have to turn it on or off.

Does this fix everyone else's issue by turning wifi on and off? Any other updates? Would the issue be my router?
 

Megalobyte

macrumors 6502a
Dec 30, 2007
690
119
Florida
Same issue here. I have a netgear wndr3700. After a while the wifi gets very slow and turning wifi on/off fixes it. What I have noticed is that the slow downs only start when I don't have 3 bars of wifi signal on the indicator at the too of the phone. Say if I have 2 bars, it's still fast but after a while it will get real slow. If I have 3 bars all the time it doesn't seem to ever slow down where I have to turn it on or off.

Does this fix everyone else's issue by turning wifi on and off? Any other updates? Would the issue be my router?

My performance has somehow improved. It does still suffer from that odd thing where your normal speeds suddenly drop and get very erratic, and yes, it's still fixable by toggling wifi off/on, but it only happens now once or twice a day at most. Before it was maybe 20 times a day.

The only changes are 2 router firmware updates from Asus. But it does still happen sometimes. I can live with it. The Asus router definitely made a huge difference, even if it still occasionally needs to have wifi toggled. It's this fact that toggling fixes it that leads me to believe its something fixable with an update, assuming apple realizes there's still a problem.


To the guy above, here's the apple recommended router settings.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19850464#19850464
 
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ilove iOS

macrumors newbie
Jan 13, 2012
8
0
Renew the lease

Go into settings and select your WIFI network.
Press renew lease at the bottom of the page.

This works when mine is slow and normally does the trick for others. Hope that helps!!!! :)
 

Vantage Point

macrumors 65816
Mar 1, 2010
1,169
1
New Jersey
My first iPhone was so bad it had to be replaced. My second one was a bit finicky at first but has worked okay for the most part. I was less than impressed and spent plenty of time with AT&T and Apple support on the phone.
 

BigMcGuire

Cancelled
Jan 10, 2012
9,832
14,022
I don't get it... IT seems that as time goes on there are more and more WiFi problems among ALL the devices I use. Back 5 years ago WiFi was hardly ever an issue. But I noticed in the last 2 years regardless of what device I use, I had WiFi issues. Android, iPhone, etc... My iPhone 4s was lucky enough to have hardly ANY WiFi issues untill 6.0... Now that I have my iPhone 5, I can't keep internet going to save its life here at work with a new router as of last year.

WiFi problems with 4 and 4s were vocal but it seems with the 5, it's much worse.

Seems to me WiFi issues are getting worse and worse.
 

Jason B

macrumors 6502
May 21, 2010
355
31
I did some more tests. The issue it definitely with the iphone 5, and and not the router. I'm pretty certain.

How I tested this time. I booted up my old Iphone 3gs and was comparing it against my Iphone 5 on wifi. I found a website with high res pictures on it.
Now, for kicks, I got out my old Linksys WRT54g router, which is probably 8 years old. I would try to open the pics on the iphone 5, then on the 3gs. The 3gs loads the high res pics almost double the speed.

I then hooked up my netgear wndr3700, (much newer router with G and Dual N) with iphone connected to the N speed, and the iphone 3gs on the G speed, and the 3gs still loaded the high res pics faster. What I did notice was the 3gs even loaded them quicker since being on the new router, but the iphone 5 didn't get any quicker, even on dual N.

The strange thing is, when I do a speed test, iphone 5 gets 52mb down, and 3gs 20 mb down, since it's on G. One would think the iphone 5 should load those pics quicker, but it doesn't.

Lastly, I took the iphone 5 off wifi, so it's on the 4g network (Lte not avail here) and the pics load over double the speed! So this rules out my routers. What it does say is that the iphone 5 hardware isn't doing something right. So right now, on 4g, everything loads quicker. Sites like gizmodo, and engadget load quicker on 4g than on wifi.

For the guy at work and others with the slow wifi, try taking off wifi and see if things load faster on 4g, etc.

EDIT, if I try to return this at apple, wasn't there something to check if it had a different wifi chip? I thought i saw this mentioned somewhere.
 
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Megalobyte

macrumors 6502a
Dec 30, 2007
690
119
Florida
I did some more tests. The issue it definitely with the iphone 5, and and not the router. I'm pretty certain.

How I tested this time. I booted up my old Iphone 3gs and was comparing it against my Iphone 5 on wifi. I found a website with high res pictures on it.
Now, for kicks, I got out my old Linksys WRT54g router, which is probably 8 years old. I would try to open the pics on the iphone 5, then on the 3gs. The 3gs loads the high res pics almost double the speed.

I then hooked up my netgear wndr3700, (much newer router with G and Dual N) with iphone connected to the N speed, and the iphone 3gs on the G speed, and the 3gs still loaded the high res pics faster. What I did notice was the 3gs even loaded them quicker since being on the new router, but the iphone 5 didn't get any quicker, even on dual N.

The strange thing is, when I do a speed test, iphone 5 gets 52mb down, and 3gs 20 mb down, since it's on G. One would think the iphone 5 should load those pics quicker, but it doesn't.

Lastly, I took the iphone 5 off wifi, so it's on the 4g network (Lte not avail here) and the pics load over double the speed! So this rules out my routers. What it does say is that the iphone 5 hardware isn't doing something right. So right now, on 4g, everything loads quicker. Sites like gizmodo, and engadget load quicker on 4g than on wifi.

For the guy at work and others with the slow wifi, try taking off wifi and see if things load faster on 4g, etc.

EDIT, if I try to return this at apple, wasn't there something to check if it had a different wifi chip? I thought i saw this mentioned somewhere.

Yes, I've noticed this too. Great speedtest results, and light web pages with mostly text are super fast, but, once the 5 has to DL something with some size to it, it's not nearly as fast as it should be. Though oddly, I've had *some* large, hi res pics load very quick over wifi with the 5, and some slower than they should.

Want further proof?

Run browsermark tests, first do it over wifi, then use plain old 3/4g(not LTE), the much slower cellular connection gets far better scores. Another indication something is up with the wifi.

It's good enough for me until the 5s comes out, hopefully with a more reliable wifi chip/antenna. At least I now keep a connection and have decent range. The better router definitely made a huge difference for me.
 

stlz

macrumors newbie
Dec 15, 2012
1
0
this is driving me nuts... I don't want this to be a hardware issue... isn't there any chance they can fix this with an iOS update somehow... I just don't want to go trough all the replacement procedures... (especially in my country Bulgaria) Apple must come out with a statement on the issue!
 

arali

macrumors newbie
Dec 17, 2012
1
0
Sluggish browsing & download speeds on wifi (Fix)

Hi everyone ,

I'm here to inform you all that I've solved this problem after battling for hours , I red a lot of post on various forums and tried , changed/removed security/encryption standards , changed DNS , Tried different channels , toggled genius in privacy ... etc but none worked

I have a 5 year old netgear wifi router which worked just perfect with ipad , iPhone 4 & 4s but since I got i5 , I've faced serious wifi issues like , average browsing , ultra slow app store download speeds ... for a 10mb app it took more than 15 mins to complete , on 20 MBps broadband line ..

After trying every solution out there I tried my friends Belkin and Netgear N series router , and everything worked perfect @ blazing speeds on both belkin & N series, found the difference almost instantly(on all my old devices as well) . So I'll be upgrading my router with the N series which is relatively cheap around $20 .

I hope this helps you all !
 

edk

macrumors regular
Apr 12, 2006
112
0
Hi everyone ,

I'm here to inform you all that I've solved this problem after battling for hours , I red a lot of post on various forums and tried , changed/removed security/encryption standards , changed DNS , Tried different channels , toggled genius in privacy ... etc but none worked

I have a 5 year old netgear wifi router which worked just perfect with ipad , iPhone 4 & 4s but since I got i5 , I've faced serious wifi issues like , average browsing , ultra slow app store download speeds ... for a 10mb app it took more than 15 mins to complete , on 20 MBps broadband line ..

After trying every solution out there I tried my friends Belkin and Netgear N series router , and everything worked perfect @ blazing speeds on both belkin & N series, found the difference almost instantly(on all my old devices as well) . So I'll be upgrading my router with the N series which is relatively cheap around $20 .

I hope this helps you all !


NICE TRY Belkin and Netgear Sales Rep!!!!!! :p
 

TBONE72

macrumors regular
Sep 25, 2007
188
11
Just curious folks, 6.0.2 fix any of these issues for you?

At work, I'm seeing WAY faster speed test results. Also, pre 6.0.2 I seemed to having problems roaming the Wi-Fi network around the building. Not so much anymore. I'm looking forward to getting home to test there.
 

lookn4wifi

macrumors regular
Sep 18, 2012
236
31
Seems to be a better WiFi experience for me under 6.0.2. Just did a speed test and I'm getting almost the up to speed I'm paying for.

Just played several YT vids with no buffering or pausing. The download bar is staying way ahead of the playback indicator. So far so good!
 

gmanist1000

macrumors 68030
Sep 22, 2009
2,832
824
Seems to be a better WiFi experience for me under 6.0.2. Just did a speed test and I'm getting almost the up to speed I'm paying for.

Just played several YT vids with no buffering or pausing. The download bar is staying way ahead of the playback indicator. So far so good!

Great news!
 

elphias

macrumors newbie
Dec 18, 2012
2
0
Yes, I've noticed this too. Great speedtest results, and light web pages with mostly text are super fast, but, once the 5 has to DL something with some size to it, it's not nearly as fast as it should be. Though oddly, I've had *some* large, hi res pics load very quick over wifi with the 5, and some slower than they should.

Want further proof?

Run browsermark tests, first do it over wifi, then use plain old 3/4g(not LTE), the much slower cellular connection gets far better scores. Another indication something is up with the wifi.

It's good enough for me until the 5s comes out, hopefully with a more reliable wifi chip/antenna. At least I now keep a connection and have decent range. The better router definitely made a huge difference for me.

I got two new iPhone 5s last week and both had wifi issues. They would work fine for a while, but would randomly slow down to about 1Mbps, and wouldn’t pick up speed until I toggled wifi on/off. I got two replacements and both of them also have the same issue, but are capable of picking up speed by themselves after being slow for a while. Meanwhile, my iPhone 4 running iOS 5 has never had a wifi issue and is working perfectly.

Updating to 6.0.2 didn't help.

There’s also 180-page iPhone 5 wifi issues discussion thread ongoing since September here. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4322714?start=2730&tstart=0
 

BigMcGuire

Cancelled
Jan 10, 2012
9,832
14,022
Just to be clear, my problem was that I'd connect to WiFi but I couldn't use the internet at all - and if so, only for a few seconds then it would crap out. Resetting Network settings or renewing lease fixed the problem for a minute or two but then bam, no internet tho strong WiFi.

6.0.2 fixed all this for me. And ever since the update at 11am this morning, I've had internet via WiFi all day (it's 3:38pm now). Ever since I bought this 5 3 weeks ago I've not had internet via WiFi at my work. Now I do. I'm happy.
 

Applejuiced

macrumors Westmere
Apr 16, 2008
40,672
6,533
At the iPhone hacks section.
Just to be clear, my problem was that I'd connect to WiFi but I couldn't use the internet at all - and if so, only for a few seconds then it would crap out. Resetting Network settings or renewing lease fixed the problem for a minute or two but then bam, no internet tho strong WiFi.

6.0.2 fixed all this for me. And ever since the update at 11am this morning, I've had internet via WiFi all day (it's 3:38pm now). Ever since I bought this 5 3 weeks ago I've not had internet via WiFi at my work. Now I do. I'm happy.

Exact same issue with me before.
It would show that its connected but no data at all. Like you said for 10-20 seconds after it connected it would work and then it would stop getting any internet at all.
Was doing the same at many different routers/wifi networks both encrypted and open connections.
So far knock on wood with 6.0.2 not a single issue but its only been less than a day.
Im really hoping this fixed it for good.
By now I would have to restart the iphone each time I went to another wifi location to get it to pull data when connected to wifi.
 

BigMcGuire

Cancelled
Jan 10, 2012
9,832
14,022
Exact same issue with me before.
It would show that its connected but no data at all. Like you said for 10-20 seconds after it connected it would work and then it would stop getting any internet at all.
Was doing the same at many different routers/wifi networks both encrypted and open connections.
So far knock on wood with 6.0.2 not a single issue but its only been less than a day.
Im really hoping this fixed it for good.
By now I would have to restart the iphone each time I went to another wifi location to get it to pull data when connected to wifi.

Nice to see I'm not alone :) Still working for me too!
 
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