MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

I've been lurking on this thread for a while. I posted extensively on the original threads that started in November back when this problem started. It occurs on two macbook pro's, two macbooks, and a macmini (which has wireless n upgrade kit from a mac pro installed) when Leopard is installed (clean installs). If I go back to Tiger the macbooks and macmini are fine, the wireless performance of the MBP's are significantly increased, although sat next to a macbook the macbook outperforms it by far (connection strength/transfer speed).

There are a number of issues with airport extreme and leopard when DHCP is unreliable at best in certain situations.

I have never had real-player (not since Win98ish) and to be honest I don't know why anyone would want it.

Boot Camp windows works fine with the supplied drivers.

Despite the number of people who have found temporary fixes/workarounds. The same card under-performs in a MBP compared to any other intel macs, using this card in a MBP with leopard tends to be a bit of a disaster, (even new ones are still the same).

This means that the design of this machine doesn't help wireless reception, but it appears that there's something in the way leopard handles network connections and it flunk's more often and more severely.

If you look at the way the OS is built you will find less linux/unix related folder structures and more proprietary mac file names/folder structures (I discovered this when trying to set up ICS and trying to find out why it kept losing it's own IP address).

Having gone back to Tiger, and getting a new internet connection installed, and setting everything on the airport extreme to default (then ramping up the speed to 5GHz n only), I now enjoy relatively hassle free wireless. But if a machine has to be rebooted in the middle of surfing the web you can guarantee it's one of the MBP's.

Basically we're waiting for the part of the OS that handles this stuff to be re-written, which since it hasn't been done but it's better in Tiger to me means that they're not going to fix it because they probably can't. Hence the rushed Snow Leopard announcement saying "no visual improvements, under the bonnet changes only" (what leopard should have been)

I'm skipping 10.5. as 10.5.5 (no observable difference to wireless connection) is out now, Leopards got to be roughly halfway through it's life now already. by the time 10.6 is 6 months old (I'm never buying a new mac os again) it'll be time to buy a new machine (the MBP will be 3 years old by then)

It is a shame that leopard has such major performance issues, as it does look pretty, and has some useful features but not enough to make it worth it.

I have replicated and documented this all extensively and sent it all to apple (rather than just moaning) but have yet to have a response/see a fix.

Three months of this infuriating problem disappeared last night: I did exactly what Greg's post
(GLAF42) -- thanks Toronto, Canada! -- recommended:

Finally! All I had to do to solve the nasty wireless connection drop problem was to remove "RealPlayer Downloader" from my personal account login items. Since then, everything has worked flawlessly and I did not need to leave 802.11n and I did not have to remove all RealPlayer files.

For the less tech-savvy, like me, here is my stab at a step-by-step how to diagnose and resolve the problem:

(1) Under the Apple, select "System Preferences..."

(2) Within "System Preferences...", go to the fourth row, which has the heading, "Systems" and select the first icon from the left, which is labelled: "Accounts".

(3) Once inside "Accounts", click on "Login Items".

(4) If you have a item called "RealPlayer Downloader" (may not be precisely correct about title as I have vapourized mine), it may well be the source of your MBPs problems. (Diagnosis.)

The cure:

(5) Simply click one time on"RealPlayer Downloader" to cause it to be highlighted, then remove it from "login Items" by clicking once on the "-" (the minus sign) that sits just beneath the sentence that begins with: "To hide an application when you log in ...". Please note that "clocking on the hide checkbox will accomplish nothing for you. You must remove the item from Login Items, not just cause it to be hidden at startup.

(6) Restart your computer.

(7) start enjoying your MBP wirelessly again.

Thanks ThomasG and Seppfett.

Greg

I recently updated to 10.5.5. Prior to the update I continually was losing internet connectivity not router connectivity. My intermittent router connectivity was resolved with 10.5.4. I read somewhere on these Discussions that IPV6 is turned on by default and may be part of the problem. My router is the Linksys WRT54GC. It does not support IPV6. After updating my internet drop offs increased.
I decided to turn IPV6 off on my MBP as well as changing my router wireless security settings to WPA2.
This may not help everyone, but if you have a router that doesn't support IPV6, try turning it off on your respective machine. It has been 3 days and all is well. Including waking and connecting from sleep . I have had no problems at any other public or private access points either.
Hope this is helpful.

Roberto

Thank you Roberto, I have tried that, too. IPV6 has always been off here. WPA2 does not make things better here.

Hi All,

Mines a brand new MBP. Connecting to a draytek 2800VG. All my other devices connect ok.
I've tried various settings on the draytek (including disabling 802.11b). But I get the same symptoms here...

If I boot up, it connects to the wifi ok.. and things seem ok. If I suspend/wake the machine, it indicates its connected, but actually isnt, and cant ping the local router.

If I leave a ping running to the router, and click on the airport icon, pings start working for a few seconds as airport "finds" networks.

Also, I've bootcamped the PC. I also see bad wifi connectivity in Vista, along the same lines.

I called Apple Support, who walked me through trying to create a new "location". This made no difference, and the tech guy was out of ideas, and suggests I take the MBP and dryatek to a local store.

I doubt this will do much however.

So, I've tried rebuilding the mac (no big deal for me, not much installed), but still no difference.

I how Apple are watching these forums. The tech support guy had no idea of the problem I was talking about, despite me pointing him here...

I, like the majority of users, do not experience this problem.

The only time I did it was due to the Wireless encryption. My login items are:
MacfusionAgent, Airport Base Station Agent, and teleportd. I use network drives on a Mac Mini and a another NAS device running Linux, connected via ssh and Macfusion.
I currently use Airport Extreme 802.11n (Gigabit Ethernet) but I can also use my ISP's Box that uses a G network.

Cleaning the WIFI settings on the MBP as per the following may help.
1. Turn Airport Off
2. Run Keychain, and delete all items with a Network Name.
3. Select Network from System preferences
4. Highlight Airport (not connected), tick show Airport status, and select the 'Advanced' button
5. in the Preferred Networks under Airport tab, review and record your passwords before deleting all the networks (highlight and select - button). Also, deselect 'Remember any network'
6. OK button, Apply Button
7. Select 'Turn Airport On' button. (no connection) if you find an unprotected network, deny connection.
8. Select Advanced button, and wait until a list of available networks is displayed.
9. Select your network, enter password, OK button, Apply button.

This method should detect the correct WPA/WPA2 protocol for your network and stop the line from dropping.

What do you do if you are at someone else's house, or at school, or at work where you can not simply mess with the router... I have fixed the router issue for when I'm at home, but if I have a study group at a coffee house my MBP sucx

I was actually able to download the timemachine update, but it will not install because it says I need to be running OS 10.5.2 or higher, meanwhile I am running 10.5.5 If I still remember how to count I believe the update should install....?

Mine actually runs slower with the "hardwire" 😟

and that is a good point, what do you do when you Roam on other network routers?

Only option for that I know is rolling back to 10.5.2 where it works again. Like you said its not like you can go to Starbucks and tweak their router so it works with your Mac, your Mac should work with it, if N is not compatible or the same your Airport NIC should drop down to "Certified" G protocol or even B to make the connection not fail altogether.

I'm having an even slower connection with my LAN, not even using the antenna at all.

You can not just walk into a school or a coffee shop and ask them to try a new router for you...

Do you really expect us to walk into coffee shops and school librarys and ask establishments to change channels on their routers for us?

I just bought mine last month and have all of the updates and have a super slow connection either with airport, or my LAN, even sitting right next to my Office PC going through all the same gear, my MBP is more than 3 times slower than my eight year old desktop PC

Why would you have RealPlayer installed on a Mac in the first place?