I guess the honeymoon is over!

[pallentx]

Other wireless devices in your house could cause interference. Have you bought anything new? Relocated a cordless phone base, moved your router? I think microwave ovens can even be a problem with wifi.

 

[iVan]

I don't have a password lock on my wi-fi, but I live down in a dip so my range is very limited. Also, there's no light activity on the router when it's not doing something that I have initiated on the iPad. I have the latest OS 3.2.2.
I did a hard reset this morning but that didn't help. I think I'm going to try to borrow a router from a friend and see if that's any different...but then again I don't understand why something that worked well for 2 months is now not working so well.

Always set a password. It doesn't matter what you think the range is, you could easily have someone leeching you!

My first thought exactly.

Interesting about solar activity! Are you now experiencing the wide and quickly changing wi-fi strength issues like I am? And if it is solar activity induced, how long do those periods where it affects radio signals generally last?

How are your computers doing, are they slow too?

 

[Cannon Group]

Sorry for that!

 

[wrecklass]

Other wireless devices in your house could cause interference. Have you bought anything new? Relocated a cordless phone base, moved your router? I think microwave ovens can even be a problem with wifi.

Yep a lot of people don't realize that wireless routers share the same frequency as cell phones and many cordless phones. I used to see my wifi drop every time I got a call with my cordless phone. Now I have no landline service and wireless is perfect.

I'd also like to add to what others have have said about securing your wireless network. These days that is just announcing that you are the neighborhood hotspot. People will be using your bandwidth.

 

[jkhonea]

Something else to consider, wireless routers can actually start to fail after awhile. I had never realized this. I had mine die, picked up a new router and hsve better reception than I had ever had.

 

[dtpad]

Any other pc's on the network which you can do a speed test on or test the connection strength with? I had an issue once where speeds and network strength dropped on my laptop considerably for no good reason. It ended up being a wireless bridge which was connected to my xbox in the other room which was pulling the entire system down. Once i disconnected it my problems were solved. Also of course if you have not already done so then power cycle the router and see if that helps.
Best Regards,
DTpad

 

[col.bris]

It is not the iPad most likely the router spat the dummy or similar

 

[hightimes]

Easiest way to troubleshoot this is to check signal strength using other wireless laptops. If you don't have any, you could take your iPad down to your local coffee shop, Apple store, or other wifi hotspot and see if the problem persists. If your iPad works fine there then you likely have a problem at your residence. If it behaves the same then you may have a problem with your iPad.

 

[pallentx]

I'd also like to add to what others have have said about securing your wireless network. These days that is just announcing that you are the neighborhood hotspot. People will be using your bandwidth.

Or worse, they can get into your router and from there find your internal IP address, you mac addresses and do all kinds of damage, identity theft, ect.

If you bought and setup your own router should do 2 things. Not sure about the ATT boxes you get with your internet service - I think they are secured by default.
1. secure your wireless - require a code to connect to your wireless network
2. Change the default admin password in your router. That is the password you log in with when you go to http://192.168.1.1 (or whatever address you have for the router)

 

[OperatorX]

General security rules..
1) Hide your SSID, yes it can be snagged but why make it easy.
2) Set a password, WPA and AES encryption
3) Filter MAC address to only those machines you want to have access, again, why make it easy.

Also, any slower clients on your wireless network will force all clients to run at that speed. The ipad may run at "g" speeds, but if there is a "b" device on the wireless network, it will run at the slower "b" speed, unless you have a dual band router capable of running both independantly.

 

[bbmountain]

I guess the problem was with the router. I borrowed one from a friend and that one worked fine so yesterday I picked up the Belkin Play router at Costco. So far...so good! My previous router was several years old so maybe it was just going downhill like an earlier poster suggested. It's very nice to be back up to speed