IOS – iPad/iPhone on iOS 5 – images don’t always load in Safari, just on the network

iosipadiphonemobile-safariNetwork

This question is baffling to say the least, as I'm just not sure how to diagnose where the problem is happening.

Here's the problem: when I am connected to my network in the office (but not on other networks), the iPads or iPhones (all running latest iOS) sometimes don't show all of the images in Safari, and you have to reload the page (sometimes several times) to get all of the images to load. This was never an issue with prior iOS builds (prior to version 5).

This never happens on any other network – for example at the Apple Store, or cafe wifi networks.

Our office setup is as follows:

D-Link 4 Port Modem Router DSL-526B connected to ADSL2+ service
connected to:
D-Link NetDefend SOHO UTM Firewall DFL-160
connected to:
D-Link 16-Port WebSmart Gigabit Switch DGS-1210-16

Nothing has changed with the aforementioned setup between going from iOS 4 to 5. And we're seeing it with both iPad 2s and 3rd-generation iPads and with iPhone 4/4S

What could be happening for this to be a problem with our network? We don't have any issues with our Macs.

Best Answer

Tough one. Definitely need to see more troubleshooting. Some places to start:

  • Find an image that the iPads are having difficulty loading, then open just that image in a separate page in Safari. Any problem loading and reloading the image on a page by itself?

  • How many WiFi devices are being served by one base station? At some point it gets overloaded with sheer volume of requests, even if the data transfer is small.

  • Is the WiFi base station doing NAT, possibly leading to a double-NAT setup that will clog the local network with failed connections? You would still be able to browse the web, but overall network performance would suffer.

Related Question