Internet Connection Speed on Differing Devices Using The Same Connection.

Factual Questions
1

With apologies to Munch :slight_smile:

As some of you may know, I am the proud possessor of an iPad 2 which, due to my technical ineptitude and general ignorance, has spawned about 500 GQ threads intended to help me navigate its various eccentricities and peccadilloes. Anyway, something’s been bothering me of late and so, googling having proven fruitless, I turn to the teeming millions in search of an answer.

One thing which bugs me about my iPad is that the internet connection is e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y slow. It can take ten minutes to load up a Wikipedia page, the connection frequently times out, and if you want to download a video from iTunes, well…let’s hope you don’t need it the same day you buy it. However, this is only true in my parent’s house. When I’m in my own home, the internet hums along at a very respectable clip indeed. I initially attributed this to the fact that my parents and I have different broadband providers. However, I’ve noticed that my parent’s laptop is generally very fast . I’ve tested this by sitting down with my iPad on my left and the laptop on my right and directing them both to the same website. The laptop always wins hands down, sometimes by several minutes.

Since, during these tests, the iPad and the laptop are sharing the same Wifi connection, I’m perplexed that the iPad is always so much slower. I know that having more than one device on a Wifi connection can tax the system a bit, but surely they should slow eachother down equally. Why is the laptop so fast while the iPad is so very, very slow?

Many thanks and much love in advance!

2

I don’t know if this helps, but i have notices that a device using wifi consuming bandwidth (such as a windows update or other large download), seems to get priority over new requests of other devices. The pattern I have noticed is ‘first come first served’. But usually when the DL is done the other requests are taken.

In your situation I would also look for interference issues, perhaps you can switch the channel of your parents router, or simply reboot it (unplug/replug it).

3

And the obvious question - are you absolutely sure your ipad is connected to your parents wifi? It sounds to me like you are using 3G (cellular internet) rather than broadband.

The other thing to check is that your ipad is getting a proper configuration from your parents router (dhcp, I assume). Check to see that the ipad has a broadly similar configuration to your parents laptop (the IP address should differ in the final octet). In particular, make sure that the DNS settings are the same.

Si

4

Actually, here is a simple test.

From your ipad and your parents laptop, go to whatismyip.com - if the two show the same ip address, then they are sharing the wifi/broadband, and you have a problem. If they are different, then you need to check the wifi configuration, because you are probably using mobile internet.

Si

5

I have several computers connected to the same home network. The newer laptop is slower than the older desktop (using Speednet). However, it is not that much slower.