In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Take your iPad and test it on another connection, ideally faster than your own domestic connection snd it should pinpoint whether it’s your iPad or broadband that’s at the limit / issue.

It may give him an indication but not a cast iron guarantee. So many variables with this OP

I'm getting an 80/20 connection next week so we will see if the UL speed improves.

Then your upload speed is 10. (Your download speed is 40.)

In reply to a post by hk11:

I'm on a 40/10 FTTP connection, so the 10 refers to the upload, not the download. Is the quoted 144 for downloads? If so what is the upload?

WiFi is complicated, and the speeds quoted are not the same as fixed line ethernet. Also WiFi and Ethernet are designed as symmetric (same speed each way) unlike broadband DSL technology. However radio waves are not as predictable as fixed line and all sorts of interference can slow you down either router to tablet, or from tablet to router.

If you have an iPad Air 1st generation from 2013, this supports what was written as 802.11n and recently renamed to WiFi 4 (for version 4). Then there are two radio frequencies that WiFi can work on, the Air supports both 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz frequencies. This technology was designed and first released in 2009.

Depending on the router you are using / provided by your ISP, the best you will see on a WiFi 4 network between two computers on the same network at home, is likely to be around 50 Mbps. As you are not the manufacturer of the iPad, you can't choose how many antennas it has or where they are physically. Depending how you hold the iPad you may be covering slightly one of the antennas, reducing throughput.

The router from your ISP may have one, two, three or four "streams" and the iPad Air gen1 supports what is called MIMO that means it can use two antenna at the same time to improve speeds. Each stream is on WiFi 4 is a maximum of 72 Mbps throughput, so with two streams you can get a theoretical 144 Mbps.

However a lot of that capacity is used for overheads, making the WiFi network work, so the amount you can actually get through from one device to another (e.g. two laptops in your home) is limited by these overheads. You can't test this stuff on an iPad as they are an appliance, fairly fixed function.

As long as the speed from router to iPad or laptop is faster than the speed from the router to the internet then the WiFi speeds are not restricting the connection. iPads are designed in the same way as iPhones and other Smartphones, to save battery. This makes them not the best tool to do speed tests with.

Air 1 technical specification
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP692?locale=en_GB

I am guessing you have an iPad that old, but if its even older then all bets are off. If you have an Air 2, or an entry level iPad that is newer than an Air 2 post back which one you have.

Newer WiFi standards such as WiFi 5 (AC) or WiFi 6 (AX) are designed to improve the total throughput for one or multiple devices. You may only have one device in use, but your neighbours are also using WiFi and causing interference...

Edited by jchamier (Wed 09-Aug-23 13:47:21)

A low upload could be caused by poor wifi - but if the download is much higher than the upload on the same device in the same location then it probably isn't the wifi. Do your other devices (wired or wireless) have a better upload speed?

It's actually 36/9 for some strange reason, but my question still stands: what is the max UL speed the ipads will do?

Thanks, so despite all the variables, in theory, 3mbps is very slow as the maximun *should be* 144Mbps?

Yes, I have an iPhone that generally gets better wifi upload, but I don't understand why downlad is much better than upload given wifi usually works the same in both directions. Or is that just a myth?

The theoretical maximum is 9 Mbs; in practice the maximum will be closer 6, or less.

That's the maximum to the router. The maximum upload speed to the Internet is almost always limited by the connection from the router to the Internet (absolute maximum 9Mbs in your case) rather than the connection from the device to the router.

The speed cannot exceed that of the slowest link in the chain from device to server.