Ipad "unable to join network"
 

I travel a lot and primarily use my ipad to connect to the internet, finding a wifi network that works is always a challenge and frankly I don't know why. At least half of the time I try to join a network I get the "unable to join network" message which is strange because if I try to connect to the same network with my laptop or smartphone it works perfectly fine. I've had all the ipads since the first one and have always had a lot of trouble with wifi networks, my girlfriend has an iphone 5 and she also has a lot of trouble connecting to wifi networks. Is there something I can do to improve things or are Apple devices simply inferior as far as wifi connectivity goes?

I have this occasionally with my ipad 2. Never been ably to establish why, or why it works after the resolution.

The resolution is usually the traditional TIOAOA* and then it works :D


* Turn It Off And On Again

A network reset (which also reboots the iPad) usually does the trick: Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings

It's not that Apple devices have inferior wifi. It's that the wifi drivers for every device are different. Some drivers (in your case, the ones Apple uses in the iPad) have trouble with others (like the ones used in the particular wireless access point you were trying to connect to).

That said, if you suddenly find your iPad can't connect to ANY wifi networks, turning it off and on should definitely be your first step. Resetting network settings is step #2, but beware that it will delete all your saved wifi networks, VPN settings, 3/4G settings, etc.

Soft reboot make be better first option, press home button & slide power at same time.....

There are two ways to reboot that I know of. You seem to be saying to do a third: holding the power button to get the slider to appear, then sliding the slider while holding the home button? That will just turn the iPad off.

Turning the iPad off is one way - hold the power button until the slider appears, then slide the slider. No need to fiddle with the home button.

A hard reboot is also handy, especially if the device isn't responding: hold down the power and home buttons until the device reboots and you see the Apple logo. This isn't a graceful shutdown, however, so you may experience some data loss or corruption if something goes wrong. But, I've done this many times and never had a problem.

I thought this was a soft reboot...recommended by genius bar.
Mine is JB, so I respring using SBS Settings.

This is what happens when you put an antenna inside of an aluminum device casing but it still should work. There is actually an internal antenna and it may have detached from its connection point or was just a weak connection to begin with.

Any changes in connectivity using a WPA2 network or entering the SSID manually?

Network reset cleans out all wifi profiles. Easy way to get rid of the profile for the Hyatt that you stayed in 2 years ago and start from scratch.

Typo on my part: make should have said 'might' :)

The networks I use are almost always public access points (hotspots) in hotels, airports... so most of the time they are open networks, no password. I have tried to reset the network settings and it has worked for now, thanks guys!

It has nothing to do with router "drivers". If rebooting the iPad fixes the issue, then it's obviously not a router problem.

Apple has wifi bugs in iOS 6 (A quick google search shows 1.8 million hits for "iPad 6.1.3 wifi problems"). For whatever reason it seems to lockup on some SSIDs. Many have reported that iOS 5 worked better than iOS 6. I have witnessed this myself many times on my iPad 4. Sometimes toggling the wifi off/on fixes it, but usually it requires an iPad restart. Also, some saved SSID's won't connect even when they're in range (gogoinflight comes to mind). Then I have to go to settings, click on the SSID and connect.

Read what I said more closely.

Where do you think these "wifi bugs" are? They are in the iOS drivers for the wireless chips in the iDevices. The problem is either a standalone bug in the iOS wifi drivers or an incompatibility between iOS wifi drivers and the drivers running the wifi chips in certain access points.

By "driver" I mean a low level program that enables the wifi chip to talk to the OS. For iDevices, the OS is of course iOS. For routers, it's VXWorks or whatever Linksys/D-Link/Belkin/Asus are using these days.

I knew what you meant, but you're still wrong. The drivers (firmware) are only to control the radio on ONE device. The 802.11 medium access connection between devices has nothing to do with "drivers" between two or more devices, they're completely transparent to the device and AP. They don't communicate with "drivers", they communicate via the antennas using 802.11 MAC.

It's most likely a firmware problem with Apple's wifi radio handler. If I had the inclination, I'd packet sniff it and see where Apple's problem is, but I need to cut the grass. :)

Right, and if you accept that the wifi drivers in each wifi device may contain bugs, then the way that each device implements its particular flavor of 802.11 can be buggy - and cause interoperability issues.

What do you think the "wifi radio handler" you refer to above is also known as? :)

Also: while we're being nitpicky, a "wifi radio handler", or "driver" for short, would not have firmware. Firmware is software embedded in hardware devices. Drivers are particular pieces of software that live on the larger system and bridge communications between a hardware component and the OS.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png