Intermittent WIFI with Leopard on Macbook

You, me and lots of others are suffering this problem. Not a peep from Apple. I'm more angry at Apple not acknowledging us than the issue itself.

So what, you think Apple engineers are just sitting around doing nothing to spite you? Apple is notoriously close-mouthed but that doesn't mean nothing is happening. Compare Apple's "quiet until a solution is found" habit to a company that promises, "Oh, we have a fix in the works and will be posted this weekend" but this weekend slides to next Tuesday and then the end of the month... Sure, when your computer isn't working it is frustrating - that's why I have external drives with Tiger on all my desktops, home and work. But getting angry gets you no where.

When myself and others call Apple and get misinformation on this issue than yes I do have a right to get angry. Thanks for your most helpful post. Not!

I thought your post was helpful, dwb.

I'm simply pointing out the truth - it does no good to get angry about the problem. It will be solved when Apple's engineers figure it out and at that point everyone will know that the solution exists, you can download it, and get on with your life. And let's not forget that a) no one forced you to upgrade to Leopard, b) the Apple news-sphere was full of warnings about early adoption, and c) you have a simple and foolproof way of getting your WiFi back - return to Tiger. You did make a backup before you upgraded, right?

I was having intermittant drops for wireless with my Macbook, even on Tiger, and then on Leopard.

I changed the channel my router was transmitting on, and it solved the problem. My connection is now rock-solid.

You might want to get a utility of some kind to detect nearby routers and their channels, and then pick one nobody else is using. That's what worked for me. I use MacStumbler (www.macstumbler.com), and it's very helpful.

Hope this helps.

I don't think Macstumbler works with 10.5
It errors on mine.

Sorry. I am actually using iStumbler, which is a related product. It works fine for me in Leopard.

So, to be clear:
http://www.istumbler.net/ ,release 98 works on 10.5.1
and
http://www.macstumbler.com/ ,release 0.75b doesn't work on 10.5.1

Unless you're saying different?

But good tip, I'll give istumbler a go tonight!

MacStumbler 0.75b works fine for me on 10.5.1, albeit on a G4 desktop.

I will add my name to the list of those with this issue. I turn Airport off and back on and it works again, until...it doesn't. My MacBook is new, Leopard preinstalled. I am also new in the Mac culture.

I am having to do it again to post this message.

Add my name to the list of Apple customers who are experiencing rampant Wifi dropouts on their Macbook Pros. I even registered on this forum just so I could voice myself.

The connection will drop out or hang, which forces me to do one of two things:
1) Click on the airport button and watch the status go from "Airport:Scanning" to "Airport:On". Doing so will restore the connection about 60% of the time.

If that doesn't work I..

2) Turn off the Wireless and turn it right back on. This takes much longer but this works nearly all the time.

It doesn't appear to be a problem directly related with my router because I'll have these wireless problems even when connecting at school.

I was really hoping the 10.5.1 update was going to fix these issues but they have not gone away. I upgraded to Leopard upon release and had a noticeable increase of Wwireless dropouts and disconnects. This is incredibly aggravating as these issues don't seem to show up when I boot-up WinXP to play games. It's aggravating sitting here and waiting for Apple to respond. I'm using their top of the line notebook, it's meant to be mobile but the number of dropouts I get is notably unacceptable.

I know there are 4~5 variants of this same issue floating around the discussion forum -- it's the same issue stemming from the release of 10.4.10 all the way through 10.5.1.

I just got a Santa Rosa MacBook and am having signal strength issues that occasionally disconnects me.

Things I've noticed:

1) Changing locations definitely exacerbates the problem. Work and school are under DHCP, but my home network is static. I've had problems in all three places when I switch locations.

2) When I'm at home during these issues, I'm about 10 feet away from the router and I'm often at three bars. At school, I'm about 150 feet away, but I have direct line of sight to the access point. I fluctuate between all levels.

3) Plugging in definitely helps the strength level, but doesn't resolve it completely.

4) Turning Aiport On and Off doesn't help, but restarts do.

Other than that, I've had no issues with Leopard or the MacBook.

Again, another voice with this maddening problem. My new macbook still refuses to show 4 bars on the airport indicator (only 3) and had extremely slow speeds. I had to pay my bills online using my old powerbook this morning since the macbook couldn't hold a stable connection long enough for the app to work. Sigh!

I eventually sat down tonight to find a solution and played around with the various suggested solutions. I went to Airport > Advanced > TCP/IP > Configure IPv6 instead of automatically I switched this OFF and it seems to have done the trick.

Hope this lasts.

Well it didn't last 😟