MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

Hi friend

Here is how my situation looks like. Does it give any meening.?

Your signal is not extremely strong, but would be good enough if there were not so much competition.

Your Router is using only the 2.4GHz band. The 11 channels here were made for 802.11b at 11 Mbits/sec. When used for 802.11n, at 54Mbits/sec, there are only THREE clear channels here: 1, 6, and 11. Each wide channel spills out into two channels up and two channels down, so channel 6 uses: 4,5, 6, 7, and 8.

When you have more than TWO other networks visible from your Mac, it usually means your neighbors are already hogging all the clear channels, and you are trying to talk on the same channel as one or more of them.

The solution is to get a Router than can also use the 5GHz band, where there are about 24 more channels available.

Me too. It's happening constantly no matter where I am. If I turn the airport off and on I can connect for a short time but then I get "resolving host" problems again.

macbook pro 10.6.8 using chrome. It's becoming almost unusable for internet. Started happening about a week ago, a little more maybe. Do I need to go through all 129 pages of this?

Clearly not an ISP problem, and I've done all the DNS-related things mentioned in various other places. No proxies.

Are you showing a connection via channels 1 through 11?

Do you have more than 2 neighbors' networks visible?

--No, you have a different problem.

--Yes, your neighborhood is too crowded to run in 2.4GHz band only, you should get a Dual-Band Router.

We very seldom show any neighbors' network. Our router is only 6-9 months old and was the second best Linksys/Cisco Office Depot sold (I didn't get the "best," because we are not in to gaming....who has time?). I'm sitting 5 feet from the router so it's not a range problem. We have a dual-band router.

I asked the "channel" question of the the nice young man I spoke to on Sunday from Apple Care and he said computers and routers "figure it out," and it's not a consideration.

Anyway, have yet another appointment at the Apple Store. This time it involves a manager. They want one more crack at solving the issue before replacing this very new best-the-store-had MacBook Pro.

Oy, that's gonna be fun migrating everything again.....also running Parallels/Windows and a program that is the lifeblood of my business. Ugh.

Hi BobRz

I have read your recommandation of the usb adapter. My situation is, that I am on a campsite where I pay to access a connection. 15 meters away it is sending with 5 mbps and I can streame television with no problem on an Ipad and on my iphone, but not always on my MBP. The signal is strong but sometimes I am loosing the internet.

Would it be the right thing to buy the USB adapter to get a stabil connection?

Hi Prebenharder,

It seems like you should be able to get a strong enough connection with your internal Airport card, though it sounds like maybe there's something going on with the antenna. About the only thing I can tell you is that since that little adapter is only $10, it might be worth a try. I was pretty surprised with how strong the signal was while using it. If you do decide to try it, I'd suggest you turn off the Airport card while using the USB dongle.

Go to System Preferences>Network>Location. Edit Locations. Click on the minus sign until nothing is left but (Automatic). See Screen Capture.

This has worked for me for 3 weeks with no disconnects.

Did that long ago. Have also tried setting up a new location, turning off Bluetooth and making sure my network appears at the top of any list of available networks.

I ran Netcheck and it looked like a bunch of neighbours have added new wireless networks, many of them on "stupid" modem routers which just gank all on one channel. This had spoilt the reception to one of my extremes.

Just used a brute force fix and bought a new extreme to add nearer access point. Upside is I'm also getting uber fast time machine backups 🙂

If your network has been up along time, you might want to reboot it and see if it will find a better channel away from the other networks.

No problems anymore.

When those troubleshooting articles say "reboot your Router" it can feel like a fool's errand. But when the Router re-boots, it scans all the available channels and picks one that is not already busy.

Please, please, please. All this discussion about routers and channels is a smoke screen to the essential problem. It happens with the latest and best Apple Airport Extreme, and nothing but Apple products. It happens with other wifi device vendors. In any case, the wifi works just fine on iPhones, and iPads, and every other conceivable product from dozens of different vendors.

But the Macbook Pro has a problem. It might be something in the hardware, it might be something in the software but it is definitely something in the Macbook Pro. Period.

What do you have for Received Signal Strength Indicator RSSI?

I have to agree that it is a problem with the MacBook Pro. My computer still shows that the WIFI is connected after it has dropped.

Although I've tried numerous fixes, that simply can not be a channel problem, router problem or too many neighbors problem. THAT'S IN THE COMPUTER.

I've talked with and worked with some great people at Apple regarding this problem and they all have different solutions. However, there appears to not be any recognition on the part of Apple that there is an issue.

If these complaints were caused by ONE problem, even a really diabolical problem, they would have been solved by now.

What does your Option WiFi screen look like?