gfunkdave

I'm on VX55 now and my iPad has gotten very warm since I turned on wifi. The battery is dropping pretty fast, too. Is there someone about how Gogo's wifi access points work that would account for this? This is not how my iPad usually behaves.

IslesFan

I didn't have an issue last week on DL. You try doing a two finger "salute" to the iPad?

Paint Horse

No. An access point cannot control what the NIC or the NIC driver do. If you were able to do spatial multiplexing, MIMO, that would use more power as more radios in your device would be active. If your settings of the connection to the access point did not allow ATIM to shut down the NIC that could lower the battery life. None of this seems likely.

gfunkdave

Nonetheless, after just a couple hours of use I'm down to 49% battery. At home I'd be at about 75.

Paint Horse

Interesting.

Here is what GoGo says about their process:

"To get the Internet from your plane, the signal travels from your device to our cabin wireless access points, to our airborne server, through the satellite controller equipment to the antenna, then to the satellite and down to one of several ground stations around the world, and finally on to our data center. This is then done in reverse for data traveling to the plane."

Maybe some background app that normally is not active is now.

gfunkdave

I can't imagine what it would be...the fact that my iPad is very warm leads me to believe that the wifi chip is sucking down the juice, possibly because it is having to do something hard to hold onto the wifi signal.

I don't have anything running except the usual things.

Down to 38% now.

Paint Horse

Hum. Connection and reconnection would send more frames, but I would not think that many. There are three types of frames used on 802.11 networks, management, control, and data. On connection an access point says yes I see you, but are you authorized? You send the authorization info and it opens a port to pass the traffic onto the wired network. Even if someone or ones had an access point nearby or variations in signal strength was causing your NIC to jump from access point to access point I would not think it would generate that much more traffic.

Fire up a network analyzer, capture some frames, and we will look at them to see what we can see.

LIH Prem

did you look at settings/general/usage/battery usage?

docbert

Did you actually pay for GoGo, or just turn on Wifi and connect to it?

If you haven't paid it's likely an app that is repeatedly attempting to access the internet and getting confused due to getting the redirection to the Gogo login page. Even if you did pay, it may be an app that "broken" since before you did, or one that is blocked by GoGo.

As has already been suggested, check the battery usage and you'll probably find out which app it is.

gfunkdave

Interesting...yes, I paid the $15 for a flight pass on Gogo. I also killed all the apps besides Safari, thinking it might be an errant app.

I had been looking at battery usage but found it not very useful. It doesn't have much granularity - the last 24 hours was the best it could do. For what it's worth, it said Safari and a game I play, Flow Free, were using the most battery - but only about 20% each.

At the hotel now and connected to wifi, my iPad is cool to the touch and still at 100% after a good 20-30 mins, while 30 mins into my flight yesterday the iPad was warm and down to about 90%. I finished the flight with 8% or so, but started fully charged.

And Virgin's In-seat power wasn't working. Good thing I had my Anker battery pack!

JerMah

Placebo.

I have been in the IT field for decades and what Paint Horse said is true. A wifi AP won't affect the way your device connects. It's either connected or it's not. Maybe you're using the device more in the air as that's your only good IFE? Whereas at home you'd have TV, the wife, the kids, etc to "interrupt" your usage and therefore limit the wifi access requests?

Doc Savage

Dude, get rid of Safari and use Chrome with the Ghostery app. DRAMATICALLY speeds up surfing. Ghostery is a mild PITA on the iPad since you have to specify a proxy server for each Wifi connection, but definitely worth it. You miss having to download tons of crap ads, etc.

gfunkdave

I used chrome forever but switched back to Safari because the LastPass extension works with it now. I'll check out Ghostery.

Not a placebo at all. The iPad was warm to the touch on the plane, while it is quite cool using it for extended periods at home (or now, at the hotel). Also, after an hour of use on the ground the battery was still at 95% or so vs the 80ish on the plane.

Perhaps it wasn't the access point itself. Perhaps it was something else about the in-flight wifi.

nd2010

Did you leave your cellular service on? It could be trying to connect to the towers 7 miles below. Also, the wifi radio might be looking for wifi networks on the ground. I've actually seen wifi networks from the ground show up in flight, but obviously not able to connect to any.

gfunkdave

Hope, wifi only iPad. And I was connected to the in flight wifi the whole time, so no idea how/why it would be looking for other networks.