I bought a new iPhone 3G S yesterday. These things are very nice, and I'm not an Apple fan boy by any stretch. One thing that was bugging me, however, was the slow speed I was getting from the wifi. I was getting faster speeds from the 3G network than my home wireless, and this is while I was sitting right next to the router, so it wasn't a signal problem.
I found the solution to this after reading through many, many forum posts. I saw others were having the same problem as me and were getting responses from people like "reboot the router" or "reset your network settings on the iPhone." This is all well and good and I'm sure those people meant well but there was a big problem with their responses.
First of all, everyone having this trouble said that the wireless worked fine on their computers but not on the iPhone. Secondly, there aren't many settings to "reset" inside the iPhone's network settings. There's just not anything in there that would cause this type of issue.
The solution to the problem ended up being an advanced setting on the router itself. From what I can tell of the issue and it's solution, the iPhone's wifi is just a bit more picky than a standard PC wifi device. Here are the settings I eventually had to change on my Netgear router.
The important items here are the fragmentation threshold and the CTS/RTS threshold. Each of these were set to their max value previously. After changing these two settings, my iPhone started working like a champ.
If you are experiencing the same problems with your iPhone or iPod Touch's wifi, change these settings on your router. Also note, these settings have slightly different names on some routers. Refer to your router's manual for more info.
Edit: I've gone much lower with these number with much success for my less powerful mobile devices. Going too low does seem to cause issues with more powerful computers on the wireless network. Test this out with lower settings and post your success or failures in the comments.
#1 by Tommi on October 18, 2010 - 11:46 pm
That worked like a charm. You’re a genius!!!
#2 by karan on November 3, 2010 - 6:48 am
where can i find advanced wireless settings on my windows 7
#3 by Karan on November 3, 2010 - 7:12 am
I cant find where are wireless settings
#4 by k17 on November 23, 2010 - 2:30 pm
IT WORKS ! thank you
#5 by Luis on December 19, 2010 - 8:05 am
HI Randy!
I tried your advices on my Linksys WRT54GX v1, and looking into the Router’s Client Table, I can see my iPhone 4G connected, but when looking into the IP in the iPhone, it has nothing to do with the one in my LAN!
What could it be going wrong?
Any ideas?
Thanks for your comments!
Luis
#6 by BradMacPro on December 21, 2010 - 4:43 pm
I tried the settings suggested on my D-link DIR-825 and my iPhone no longer saw the wireless network until I restored the Fragmentation threshold to max. I imagine some intermediate setting would work, but I wasn’t prepared to experiment. Also the RTS Threshold had to be an even number, so I used 2304.
#7 by BradMacPro on December 21, 2010 - 4:55 pm
I tried these settings and used Xtreme Labs’ Speedtest app to test the results. After changing I got 4774 Kbps average and 5096 Kbps max download speed. 719 Avg. and 725 Max. upload speed. When I restored the default max settings, I got 11783 Avg. and 11917 Max Download speed and 722/722 Avg./Max. upload speeds. Using iPhone 4 and iOS 4.2.1 with D-Link 825 with latest firmware update. Perhaps the 3GS has a more limited WiFi chip. While the 4G is rated for 802.11n, it’s limited to the 2.4 GHz band.
#8 by Vlad on December 31, 2010 - 6:13 pm
I love you, you saved my holydays!!!! ITS WORKS!
#9 by Roy on January 23, 2011 - 12:17 am
Wow! Your fix is an amazing find. After doing an iOS upgrade to 4.2.1 on the iPad, its wifi internet connection was so slow and unreliable as to be useless. After making your suggested changes to our home DLINK wireless router, the wifi connection was immediately faster and back to normal. I’m not sure what changes Apple did in their OS, but it clearly needs more testing.
#10 by Allen on February 6, 2011 - 1:00 pm
Are there ways to make these changes on an Apple router such as a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme?
#11 by pUs on March 7, 2011 - 3:00 pm
Many thanks – I had just the same problem when synching offline playlists in Spotify. Lowering the RTS and fragmentation values improved the speed a LOT!
#12 by a.j on March 12, 2011 - 11:47 pm
my i pad ip adress keep on changing from 192 to 169 my i pad under warranty my att service people want to sell me service to reset i am not that capable in comuter unless i get proper guidness
#13 by a.j on March 12, 2011 - 11:49 pm
pls guide me to set my ip adress from 169 to 192
#14 by Scott on April 4, 2011 - 11:29 am
I’ve only run it for a few minutes with the new settings, but it really seems to have made a difference! Thank you so much!
#15 by Shane on May 28, 2011 - 12:52 pm
Awesome! It worked.. I have a generic TPlink router and could not find the exact settings but i found “MTU size (in bytes)” Under “Basic settings”>”Network”>”WAN” and jus to experiment I changed it from the max of 1500 to 900. A video that I had been trying to load all morning (music video), loaded at least 12x times faster with absolutely no lag. I could actually watch the grey bar fill up whereas before I could only listen to the song in fragments.. This really worked for my iPad 2 running 4.3.1 and I might even got slightly lower, 500?, to see what effect it has. But as is it works perfect.
#16 by Shine on July 18, 2011 - 12:47 pm
super thanks for the post! got my ipad few weeks ago and taking time exploring this, i’m now at exploring youtube videos and noticed it’s very slow and found the solution by adjusting the settings as per your advice! super thanks! more power!
#17 by Nabeel on August 13, 2011 - 7:23 pm
thanks you actually rockx u r fantabulous my i phone 3g was only showing 15 kbps download but it had gone to 80 kb settngs work great even in Pakistan which i was not expecting
#18 by Neerav Kothari on October 23, 2011 - 8:13 am
Hi,
I have a belkin surf n300 router and the only option it seems to let me change is MTU size. its set to 1454. can u tell me whats the best to get proper youtube streaming on a macbook pro, iphone 4 and good download speeds in both?
#19 by Coupletea on September 22, 2012 - 1:05 am
It works, thanks
#20 by Sean on May 21, 2013 - 7:04 am
genius!