Friday, May 27, 2011

Finally, something that doesn't work in iOS, wait nevermind.

I got an iPad back in October.  I've been really pleased with it.  It's constantly exceeded my expectations.  With the release of iPad 2 yesterday, Apple calling 2011 'the year of the iPad 2', and RIM's own tablet coming out soon, i'm excited to see how quickly we can get to a point where we don't need desktop systems in our homes. 
Anyway, about the thing that doesn't work.  I use the remote app to remote control my iTunes on my personal computer.  That way every time i want to change songs, i don't have to switch my kvm over to my home computer.  I can just reach over and click next on my ipad.  I've had problems with this before though.  My wifi at home is A/B/G/N.  The iPad supports B/G.  Sometimes when my iPad would time out and switch itself off and i'd manually turn it back on, it would report that the wifi was connected, when really it wasn't.  This was annoyingly obvious when trying to use the remote app (since the remote app requires ethernet connectivity).  I finally figured out that i could go and disable the wifi then reenable it and everything would work fine.  Then, this afternoon, my wife sat down to watch a netflix movie on her iPhone.  We got a startling email from AT&T stating that we'd gone over our 200MB limit for the month.  Turns out this problem applies to all iOS controlled wifi devices.  I disabled her wifi and reenabled it and lo and behold, web pages started to load much faster.
So, i had to conclude that the problem is not actually with iOS but with my router.  After a little research on the internet, i found that 802.11n is the culprit.  I went onto my router and disabled A/N wifi and without doing anything to either device, they both started functioning.  My wife got a bunch of emails that had been delayed since there was no connectivity.  And a youtube video i had paused on my ipad suddenly started working.
Go figure.  I guess you could technically call this a bug with the iOS and the corresponding hardware since the presence of an N network shouldn't hose up a G network.

No comments:

Post a Comment