Since Leopard, Mac keeps losing Airport connection

+Portugal11 wrote:+
+Hi, i had the same problem, but i'm cured!+
+what i did was turn my Airport extreme to G only and put multicast to 22Mbps and the switched off the "rember network" in the control Panel.+



+Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the solution is to re-configure my $179 5GHz Wireless-n (draft 2.0) router to work just like a $20 generic Wireless-G router, I'm thinkin' I might'a wasted about $159.00….+

But mine is just b/g, it is the old Extreme. Don't know about the new Wireless-n.

I had the exact same problem and appear to have solved it (up for more than 24 hours now).

I found an old message about zapping PRAM. Tried it, my computer has been connected since then.

Here's how: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Good luck!

Same Airport Extreme Card problems:

I have the same problems (doesn't auto-connect after sleep mode and intermittently loses the Internet connection while the wireless connection is still up) with both Actiontec (Verizon Fios) and Netgear wireless routers. I went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and had NO problems using their unencrypted network. Same for open network at Panera (Mall eatery). Went home and had NO problems when I turned off encryption (WPA). I am now running with NO problems using 40-bit WEP. Tomorrow I will try 128-bit WEP. I would much prefer to run WPA.

Before I went to the Apple store, I tried the posted fix for OS 10.4.8 to no avail and spent ~45 minutes talking to an AppleCare technician. He sent me to the Apple store.

My daughter's Powerbook (2003) with Tiger doesn't experience the same drop out problems. It has never auto-connected after sleep mode, but then it easily connects when the network is manually selected. My wife's Dell (Win XP) has no problems!

I'd like to upgrade to Leopard, but am reluctant now. Have been lobbying hard to buy my wife a new mac laptop, but if this issue isn't resolved soon we will go with a Windows machine. Very sad.

Try the following Work around: Turn off encryption or use WEP only encryption.

All of my problems start when I use the WPA or WPA2

I believe there is a bug in the way Airport Extreme handles Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). The laptop and Airport card perform flawlessly when the wireless network (several different tried) is unencrypted or in 40-bit or 128-bit WEP mode. When I switch to WPA = WEP + TKIP or WPA2 = AES + TKIP, I get the problems stated above. If the airport card and the router get out of sync with respect to the Temporal key then encryption won't work and the connection will be lost or it won't be able to be re-established.

Let me know if it works. Good luck.
Rich

FYI: I just sent this to Apple Feedback. Hopefully anyone with Leopard/internet problems has too:

I just sent this in to Apple Feedback. FYI:

Since I installed Leopard (10.5.1) I've had numerous headaches trying to find a solution to the loss of internet connectivity. I get disconnects several times a day, often after 10 minutes, and also after waking the computer from sleep mode. Another problem is that my neighbors' networks don't always show up in the Airport menu as they did in Tiger. I never had disconnects with Tiger. And have no problems with Leopard and Airport on my MacBook, just my Mac Pro.

Usually when I get a disconnect I can reconnect by going to the Airport menu, turning Airport off, and then on again. But not always. And in the following situation even that won't work.

I discovered a pattern that causes a disconnect every time. The pattern involves my new generation Airport Extreme, Mac Pro, AppleTV, and the aluminum wireless mouse and keyboard.

I can cut off the internet connect by doing this:

1. Open iTunes and wait for Apple TV to show up in the Devices list.
2. Start to sync Apple TV to transfer a movie or TV show.
3. Once the sync begins my wireless keyboard loses connection. The mouse usually stays connected but is extremely slow and jumpy.
4. I press the power switch on the keyboard. The green light comes on for a short time and the keyboard sometimes works for a few seconds and sometimes not at all.
5. I put the wireless keyboard and mouse back in the closet and attach my wired keyboard and mouse.
6. I restart the sync with Apple TV. The sync is completed. I can use my wired keyboard and mouse while the sync takes place.

Hopefully this can help you in your search for a solution to this widespread problem. I made the mistake of telling one of my Windows buddies about the internet disconnects just before the Apple commerical played on TV, the one about Vista still not working with peripherals. It was embarrassing. I shall never hear the end of that!

gpasq wrote:
I had the exact same problem and appear to have solved it (up for more than 24 hours now).

I found an old message about zapping PRAM. Tried it, my computer has been connected since then.

Here's how: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Good luck!

Unlikely that this will do anything unless you're running Classic (OS 9 or below). Per http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86194:

"Unlike prior versions of the Mac OS, Mac OS X does not store network settings in PRAM. If you experience a network issue, resetting PRAM will not help."

Five days ago my G4 could no longer connect to the internet via Airport. The airport symbol began endlessly cycling between grey, black and completely off, the cycles being generally as short as 2 or 3 seconds. The airport utility could no longer ever detect a base station. Apple support didn't seem to have encountered this problem before. They blamed the airport hub and we reset that to no effect, then blamed the modem. The problem with that was that my MacBook Pro was connecting perfectly through that DSL modem via airport all the while. Finally they suggested the problem might lie in my airport extreme card so, though I wasn't sure it would help, I bought a replacement card from a Mac1 store where they couldn't test my old card because they didn't have a machine old enough to take it. I installed the new card and it didn't change anything. A couple of hundred dollars down the toilet. Then I started on all the remedies suggested by other users. I deleted files from the preferences, restarted with the shift key down, zapped the PRAM, re-configured the base station. changed to WEP encryption etc etc. The problem remains. It may be caused by Leopard, but I installed 10.5 the day it was released and upgraded to 10.5.1 as soon as it was released and had no airport problems at all until long after those installs. If there's another explanation/solution I'd love to hear it since the absence of internet connection on my desktop machine is wildly inconvenient. I don't think there's any point in phoning Apple support since they ran out of ideas last time I spoke to them about the situation. Either they don't know what to do or they're pretending they've never heard about the problem before or perhaps a bit of both. Is there something else I can try?

Try disabling any wifi hotspot sniffing software you may have. The JiWire widget was the culprit for me - after months of looking for a solution to the constant signal dropping I happened to disable that widget and the problem has gone and not come back. I put the widget back in the problem immediately returns, so it is no fluke. I have since googled it and found it has been the source of this problem for others too.

If you are not using one, try temporarily disabling all your widgets, one of them might be doing something you are not aware of.

Message was edited by: MMulligan

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have no wifi-sniffing programmes and no widgets actually loaded.

Further to my post. Tech support asked me to look in the SYSTEM/PREFERENCES folder. I pointed out that there was no such folder. They said this folder was essential, and its absence would explain my problem. In the end they said I should archive and reinstall LEOPARD. I did this. There is still no SYSTEM/PREFERENCES folder. The airport failure remains exactly as it was. The interesting thing is that if I restart the computer from the install DVD my internet connection is perfect. What is this telling me? I have no idea. If anybody from Apple ever reads these posts perhaps they can offer an explanation, though I've never seen any evidence that they see it as their responsibility. The computer is unusable as things stand. What am I to do? HELP!

Have you tried the using Spotlight to find the Preferences folder? Type preferences into the Spotlight ( magnifying glass in upper right hand corner) Click on Sort by Kind. look in the section for Folders for Preferences. You may have to click on "xxx more..."to display all of the folders. Click on the Preference folder (there may be more than one.) if you want to find the path of the Preference folder you have selected click on the information icon ("i") and look at the Where line.
Good luck, hope it helps.

I would tend to agree with Rich314159's post above. All of my wireless problems with my Intel Macbook (Nov 07) + Leopard 10.5.1 seem to have been cured by altering my router's setting and changing my wireless to WPA2 AES Only. As soon as I enable AES+TKIP I seem to encounter frequent random and highly annoying disconnects.

My router is a Netgear WNR854T.

Jonas,
Glad to know my suggestion helped you. Unfortunately, my Actiontec router, doesn't have an WPA2 AES only mode available, so I still have to run WEP. I may take another look at my Netgear router and see if I it has an AES only mode. Because I need the Actiontec router for my Verizon Fios service I'll have to hang the Netgear router off the Actiontec router. I just hate to run two routers all the time for the increased security. It would be better if Apple fixed the problem.
Rich

For those who tried to help, thank you very much. The problem is now solved and the solution didn't involve WEP or WAP or preferences or any of the expected suspects. After several hours on the phone to Apple I was told that my only solution to the problem was a total re-install of Leopard, with my settings not preserved. The charming tech. who advised me to do this neglected to tell me that my next 3 days would be filled with delightful tasks - rediscovering all the license codes and passwords for about a hundred applications, copying all my data files from a back-up to the newly-minted HD etc etc etc. If I'd know then what I know now I would probably have dropped my Mac into the rubbish bin and gone fishing. So the problem was clearly a corrupted file somewhere. There's a dangerous bear on the loose, so we bulldoze the entire forest to get the bear. Hmmm. The mystery of the missing preferences folder was caused by a misunderstanding. The folder was there all the time, in my USERS folder, but I was told to look in the library folder of the HD, where there was no preference folder. Oh dear.

I too am having the same problem as all have described. Apple has been *conspicuously absent* from all the (many and specific) threads regarding the leopard update/AEBS/intermittent internet debacle for weeks now! It would be really thoughtful if they would at least acknowledge there is a significant issue here and let us know what is being done and when to expect some updates/info/solutions! I have been a MAC person for many years and love the OS but this is straining my loyalty.