Best bet for iPad Air 2 MIMO?

[boyscout]

Tim Higgins' fine articles about MIMO and XStream and the latest/greatest routers were very helpful, but they were written in June and August. One of them reported at the time that there were no MIMO clients.

Now thanks to Apple there are millions of one claimed-MIMO-capable client, the new iPad Air 2.

Which existing or imminent router will provide the best performance to these devices? Will that router co-exist well with ASUS RT68U devices already in the building?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[connorm]

tim was talking about MU-MIMO, multi user MIMO. MIMO has been a standard since 2x2 802.11N

all it really means is more than 1 antenna working together for a total aggregate throughput

all that it means that ipad air has MIMO is its 2X2. while its true its silly apple markets this as being so special.

pathetic they didnt upgrade the ipad mini 3 to AC, or else i might had had to get it

probably gonna end up getting an ipad mini 2 16gb cause at 299 with an a7 its a steal

edit: potentially apple could activate MU-MIMO in the ipad air 2 AC chipset however, wheras with all other ipads MU-MIMO is not a possibility through FW updates in the future

 

[RogerSC]

Yeah, I was really hoping to see some interesting iPad mini upgrades. Nothing. So I'm getting an iPad Air 2 to replace my iPad 3, which is getting slower and slower, oddly enough *smile*. Problem with the iPad 3 was that they threw more pixels at it (first "retina" iPad) without a corresponding speed upgrade. So while the screen looks great, it was never speedy, and gets less so with every iOS release.

By the way, just happened to look at my router GUI, and I see that my iPhone 6 was running about 433Mbps...not sure that's as fast as I goes, we'll see. One of the fastest clients I have at this point.

 

[connorm]

Yeah, I was really hoping to see some interesting iPad mini upgrades. Nothing. So I'm getting an iPad Air 2 to replace my iPad 3, which is getting slower and slower, oddly enough *smile*. Problem with the iPad 3 was that they threw more pixels at it (first "retina" iPad) without a corresponding speed upgrade. So while the screen looks great, it was never speedy, and gets less so with every iOS release.

By the way, just happened to look at my router GUI, and I see that my iPhone 6 was running about 433Mbps...not sure that's as fast as I goes, we'll see. One of the fastest clients I have at this point.

ya sadly apple only used a 1X1 chipset in the iphone 6 but it should be good enough

 

[boyscout]

connorm, thanks for the education.

RogerSC, iPad Air 2 arrived here today to replace my personal iPad 3. Its video performance is noticeably faster.

 

[sfx2000]

connorm, thanks for the education.

RogerSC, iPad Air 2 arrived here today to replace my personal iPad 3. Its video performance is noticeably faster.

nice... iPad3 is iPad2 with the high res display - not faster...

The iPad Air 2 - 2 stream A/B/G/N/AC with wide channel support in 5Ghz - so it's pretty quick there... at the moment, it's one of the best Tablets from a WiFi perspective... the WAN support for the iPad Air 2 w/Cellular LTe version is very good - and fast...

 

[azazel1024]

nice... iPad3 is iPad2 with the high res display - not faster...

The iPad Air 2 - 2 stream A/B/G/N/AC with wide channel support in 5Ghz - so it's pretty quick there... at the moment, it's one of the best Tablets from a WiFi perspective... the WAN support for the iPad Air 2 w/Cellular LTe version is very good - and fast...

Yeah I am hoping at a minimum that 1:1 11ac is the new minimum spec for phones and tablets in the very near future. That is one of the few knocks I have on my Asus T100, is that the wifi just isn't that fast. SDIO + 1:1 11n = not ideal. It is MASSIVELY faster than my old iPad 2 was (which would peak at about 30Mbps, the T100 I can hit 85Mbps with a tail wind)...but I also do a heck of a lot more "file flinging" with the T100 due to the nature of windows. Using the high speed interface instead of SDIO combined with a 433Mbps capable 5GHz connection would be real sweet (not a lot of point in dual stream, unless or until HSI is improved or Intel adds PCIe to tablet Atom chips, as HSI as it currently stands caps roughly in the 400Mbps range...which means the difference between a good 433Mbps connection and a good 867Mbps connection is probably less than 20%).

SDIO should die an ignonimous death, as should putting 11n in anything any longer.

 

[sfx2000]

Yeah I am hoping at a minimum that 1:1 11ac is the new minimum spec for phones and tablets in the very near future. That is one of the few knocks I have on my Asus T100, is that the wifi just isn't that fast. SDIO + 1:1 11n = not ideal. It is MASSIVELY faster than my old iPad 2 was (which would peak at about 30Mbps, the T100 I can hit 85Mbps with a tail wind)...but I also do a heck of a lot more "file flinging" with the T100 due to the nature of windows. Using the high speed interface instead of SDIO combined with a 433Mbps capable 5GHz connection would be real sweet (not a lot of point in dual stream, unless or until HSI is improved or Intel adds PCIe to tablet Atom chips, as HSI as it currently stands caps roughly in the 400Mbps range...which means the difference between a good 433Mbps connection and a good 867Mbps connection is probably less than 20%).

SDIO should die an ignonimous death, as should putting 11n in anything any longer.

I think it might be a while before we see 11n or SDIO go completely away....

PCIe is fast, but it's also fairly power hungry and puts more constraints on the circuit board traces (more traces, tighter noise constraints, etc).

SDIO is more than fast enough for most mid-tier Cortex-A9 level chipsets...

11n will be down on the lower end for quite some time I think, mostly because of cost - 11ac is a couple of bucks more perhaps, but that's big money on a 1M unit production run

 

[RogerSC]

Yes, just got the iPad Air 2 here as well, and am very happy with it. Turns out that not only is the CPU faster, it is a triple-core one (odd, but true *smile*). Much faster at most everything I do than the iPad 3. And the graphics is great. And my wife really likes the iPad 3, so we're all happy here.

Have had some WiFi oddities with both the iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2, but nothing that has been an on-going problem.

 

[sfx2000]

Have had some WiFi oddities with both the iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2, but nothing that has been an on-going problem.

Sounds like a win-win...

Feel free to share any 'oddities' you might have observed and how those were resolved...

sfx

 

[azazel1024]

Sounds like a win-win...

Feel free to share any 'oddities' you might have observed and how those were resolved...

sfx

Personal experience, this MAY be related to a brief AP issue, but I think it was an iOS8 issue for me.

Once I upgraded my phone (5) and my wife got the 6, both had some intermittent wifi problems until iOS8.1.

In both cases every once in awhile they'd refuse to connect to wifi. They would claim connected, but nothing over the WLAN or internet would work until wifi was turned off and back on again and in one case, the phone needed to be rebooted. Happened I think twice with my wifes phone and 4 times with mine over the course of the 3-4 weeks iOS8 has been out/she has had her phone. With iOS8.1, her phone hasn't done it since and my phone only did it on day 1 (requiring the only reboot either of them have needed). Been working great since.

8.1 also seems to have resolved the screen rotation issues (app would lock in an orientation and refuse to rotate until the device was rebooted, force closing app did nothing) both our phones had/developed with 8 and also seems to have resolved my touch screen issues (especially in iMessages occasionally part of the touch screen/a keyboard key would REFUSE to work without force closing iMessages and restarting).

On the whole iOS8 has been the most buggy iOS release I've experienced (granted I've only been using since iOS4 something). On the whole 8.1 seems stable, but 8.0 and 8.02 were a friggen mess.

With my iPhone 5, my wife's old iPhone 4s and her iPad2 (which is still on iOS7) we had wifi problems all of...never until iOS8, and then that spate all within just a few weeks till 8.1.

 

[sfx2000]

hear you there man... saw the same thing with iOS 8.0 - flaky wifi with all of my iOS devices - 8.0.2 has helped out quite a bit... but AirPlay and Bluetooth are not as stable as earlier releases...

I just wonder if Apple is spinning out too many major releases too fast - between iOS8 and Yosemite, it's been a bit of a challenge

At least my Airports are stable...

 

[RogerSC]

Yes, I'm not happy with iOS 8, either. Buggiest Apple release I've seen...and 8.0.1 was just sad. How they could release software that kills cellular on a smart phone, I have no idea. I understand being in a hurry, but there's a minimal amount of regression testing that you have to do before making a release to your customers.

At least if you want your customers to come back next time.

 

[jlake]

Yes, I'm not happy with iOS 8, either. Buggiest Apple release I've seen...and 8.0.1 was just sad. How they could release software that kills cellular on a smart phone, I have no idea. I understand being in a hurry, but there's a minimal amount of regression testing that you have to do before making a release to your customers.

At least if you want your customers to come back next time.

A little buggy yes. I would recommend "reset all settings". I have to do it unfortunately for the last several releases. It cures quite a bit....but not all.

I never used to have to do a "reset all settings", but in the last 18 months, it's almost mandatory........unfortunately......from my experience----on iphone/ipad.

Edit: I'm running 8.1 and there's only a couple minor bugs that I noticed after the "reset all settings".

 

[RogerSC]

I've had it happen a couple of times now where my new iPad will be connected to WiFi. and Safari on the iPad will be stalled out during the process of loading a page. I've tried running the speedtest when this happens, and it has run fine, but the Safari web page will still be stalled out, and will not finish loading. Resetting the iPad has taken of this (press home and power buttons until it starts to reset), but really not happy about that. Everything else I have including my iPhone 6, is running fine on the internet when this happens, so the router is just fine. And my iPad 3 is slower, but doesn't do this stalling, even with iOS 8. Happens very seldom, thank goodness.

Once I've reset the iPad, the stalled out page will then load really quickly. Otherwise, no major problems with WiFi at this point.

 

[azazel1024]

hear you there man... saw the same thing with iOS 8.0 - flaky wifi with all of my iOS devices - 8.0.2 has helped out quite a bit... but AirPlay and Bluetooth are not as stable as earlier releases...

I just wonder if Apple is spinning out too many major releases too fast - between iOS8 and Yosemite, it's been a bit of a challenge

At least my Airports are stable...

Still having an issue with my Apple TV where my remote app sometimes won't see it. Generally have to reboot phone or rarely reboot the Apple TV. Could be worse, but annoyingly if my phone won't show the Apple TV, my wife's phone usually DOES show it.

Pretty uncommon issue, but it does seem to be maybe every week-10 days one of our phones goes on the fritz with it. It wouldn't be such a big deal, but my kids LOVE to lose the ACTUAL AppleTV remote. Sigh.

 

[sfx2000]

Still having an issue with my Apple TV where my remote app sometimes won't see it. Generally have to reboot phone or rarely reboot the Apple TV. Could be worse, but annoyingly if my phone won't show the Apple TV, my wife's phone usually DOES show it.

Pretty uncommon issue, but it does seem to be maybe every week-10 days one of our phones goes on the fritz with it. It wouldn't be such a big deal, but my kids LOVE to lose the ACTUAL AppleTV remote. Sigh.

Remote App and Airplay issues with AppleTV 7.0 and later - I think they're closely related... I've got two of them - a 2nd Gen running ATV os6 (IOS7), and the ATV 3rd Gen on the latest build - that's the one that seems to be having all the issues, the older one is rock solid...

With the latest appleTV release, it's more than just a re-skin of the UI - there's quite a few changes under the hood - point to point AirPlay (for the most recent ATV3v2), Homekit frameworks, etc...

And like you mentioned, the issue isn't consistently repeatable - might not show up on the iPhone, but look at the iPad, and it's there...

From my Macs, it's a bit more consistent (e.g. both are always present, both in iTunes, and Apple AirPlay displays) - so perhaps it's more iOS on both the AppleTV and the iPhone/iPad.

Like I mentioned earlier - bluetooth and my handsfree kit have a lot of trouble pairing up in IOS8, not that it was awesome in iOS7 - iPhone 5 and AcuraLink...

 

[azazel1024]

Hmmm, not something I thought about. You may have put your finger on it, that it was actually the Apple TV update in this case causing the remote app instability, especially since in a couple of cases it has required rebooting the Apple TV (that and the remote app seems a lot more sluggish to respond if it was in current use. When I bring up the app it seems to take 2-5s before it reconnects. Previously it was .5-1s usually).

I wonder if/when there'll be a point update for the Apple TV?

Sigh. I know everyone has teething pains with updates EVENTUALLY, but I kind of feel spoiled as I had no real Apple problems for several years since I moved anywhere near their ecosystem. Now just in a couple of months, it is bugs galore. Oh well. I figure they'll likely iron them out eventually. Apple at least does seem to have excellent end user support, unlike some companies I don't care to name who never fix major persistent bugs.