Resolving PlayBook Wifi Issues

So I received my spanking new, beautiful PlayBook yesterday and after playing with it for a while, I noticed some really bad wi-fi drop-outs.
i.e., the wireless network would show as connected but nothing would work… the browser wouldn’t load, App World would complain and pings would fail. The only way you can get it to work again is to turn the wi-fi off and back on again.
The operating system I have had this issue on is the latest as of this post (1.0.7.2670).

At first I thought it was my wireless network but I had the same issues at my work place too.

After a bit of OS updating, security wiping, hard-resetting, etc, I found out a way to stop it from constantly dropping out. It involves setting up the wireless network manually and checking a few boxes but this only needs to be done every time you join a new network.

Follow the steps below and you should hopefully be fine 🙂

1. Delete all your saved wireless networks from the PlayBook
2. Tap on ‘Connect Manually’
3. Enter all the information relating to your wireless network
4. Check the following boxes (important!!!)
   • Automatically Obtain IP Address
   • Enable IPv6
   • Allow inter-access point handover
5. Now tap save and then connect to the network you just set-up

Hopefully now, you should not get any network drop-outs.

If you are using a custom firmware router like DD-WRT (like I am), you may also need to play around with the advanced wireless settings there… I had to disable the ‘No-Acknowledgement’ setting before mine would work.

Update 29/11/2011:
Some people have also reported wifi dropping out when they have wireless n enabled on their routers. If the above do not help fix the problem, I would suggest setting your router to b/g or g only mode to see if that helps.