When you say the connection drops, do you mean the wireless connection specifically? For a while, when I was using Clear for broadband, I'd get periodic disconnects from the Internet every evening. I thought my wireless was acting up, but when I plugged directly into the modem via Ethernet, the disconnects kept happening; it turned out it was the actual broadband service, not the wireless, that was flakey!
Assuming it is the wireless, a new wireless router might solve the problem, but different brands (and sometimes different models in the same brand) vary widely. My Netgear wireless router works really well, but when I bought an Asus wireless router, it dropped constantly--and a Google search showed this was a very common complaint for that model.
New AC routers aren't really beneficial if you don't have any computers or devices that can use 802.11ac.
I have a Netgear range extender in the writer's loft, since the router is on the other side of the house and the wireless doesn't reach. It works great!
An iPad might consume a lot of bandwidth for any of a number of reasons: if it's set to sync with a computer over WiFi, if it's downloading a software update, if it's running a program in the background that consumes mass quantities of bandwidth (I'm looking at you here, Facebook).
