Q: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

gregapp wrote:

 

Hmm, so I guess unchecking and checking again would not fix the problem on Snow Leopard.  It seems the box just has to be left unchecked in Snow Leopard.  It also could be an issue with older hardware that has nothing to do with the OS.

I have a 2011 MacBook Pro, so it's definitely not just for older hardware.

That's fine if you only plan to use wireless in your home. I don't agree with all of the Router configuring just to get the wireless to work when all other Non-Apple/iOS devices connect to all basic wireless principals. I did tweak my router out of frustration, but last time I went to Starbucks, a place with semi-open standards, I could not connect with my MBP! Embarrasing! This is a Apple problem. And they need to push a solution out to their existing customers. When you have over 50+ billion sitting off shore They can handle a slight software/hardware patch to their loyal customers.

i've tried so, so many different things over the last few weeks.

however, pinging an address from the terminal i frequently got 'request timeout for imcp_seq xxx' among some of the packets being returned. there was no discernable pattern amongst these but i am getting them a whole lot less since changing the channel on my router. I downloaded istumbler and found that most of the surrounding wifi channels were bunched around 6-11 and since switching to 1, the wifi hasn't dropped out and i'm getting far, far fewer of these request timeouts.

it's only been 1 day, but i'll report back with an updates. i know it won't work for everyone, but it might do for someone.

take care

I bought my macbook pro 14 days ago with OS X Lion 10.7.2 installed.  I had absolutely NO issues setting up and configuring the wifi in my home network and had been connected to the internet constantly, never dropping.  Yesterday I used the MBP for the first time at my office, connected to the wifi network there with absolutely no problems, but as soon as I returned home, I was unable to connect to my wifi network again.  I kept getting a connection timeout message.  I have read through thousands of post related to this problem and have tried every single work-around.  I have deleted connections, setup new ones, registered static IP addresses, etc.  Eventually I contacted our IT guy who had me plug in a network cable.  Checking the IP addresses we realised that the MBP was assigning 169. IP addresses and not 192. on ethernet and wifi for some reason.  Somehow there must be corrupt DNS files somewhere leading to IP conflicts?  Eventually this morning, after all the tweaking, when I started my computer again I had wifi connectivity, but as soon as I opened Safari it dropped and I haven't been able to connect since despite turning wifi connection on and off, rebooting, turning router on and off, etc.

I am so disappointed as I was very sceptical about changing to Mac, followed by elation when I realised what a fantastic OS it is.  I am anxious that I may be stuck with this problem and my work is internet-based meaning I now have a MBP which cost me a month's salary and I cannot use it.

Please, please, if anyone has any advice/fix, let me know.

adelefromwellington wrote:

 

the MBP was assigning 169. IP addresses and not 192. on ethernet and wifi for some reason.  Somehow there must be corrupt DNS files somewhere leading to IP conflicts?

The MBP tries first to obtain (lease) an IP number from the router. That would be the 192.x.x.x number, which is assigned by the router, not by the MBP. If it can't obtain the IP number from the router, then it self-assigns a more-or-less random IP in the 169.x.x.x range (the link-local range). This is part of zeroconf (Zero Configuration Networking). But I'm afraid this doesn't help you; anyway, it's not necessarily an indication of a corrupt DNS cache.

alonzofromrichmond wrote:

 

That's fine if you only plan to use wireless in your home. I don't agree with all of the Router configuring just to get the wireless to work when all other Non-Apple/iOS devices connect to all basic wireless principals. I did tweak my router out of frustration, but last time I went to Starbucks, a place with semi-open standards, I could not connect with my MBP! Embarrasing! This is a Apple problem. And they need to push a solution out to their existing customers. When you have over 50+ billion sitting off shore They can handle a slight software/hardware patch to their loyal customers.

Have you tried other Starbucks or at other times?

I've always had success connecting at Starbucks unless they're having a Wi-Fi issue, and believe me the people behind the counter don't know if they are or not.

I solved my issue by installing a program called "Little Snitch" http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html which works pretty much like Zone Alarm on the PC. It also sends small packets of data to keep your connection alive. I now am able to connect everywhere I go. That's why its a portable computer. No one wants to just be regulated to home wireless use!

That's an interesting suggestion alonzofromrichmond. I've had Little Snitch on my MBP for years, but this autumn I had to wipe the hard drive and do a clean install. I forgot to reinstall Little snitch and although my problems didn't start immediately after that it will be interesting to see if reinstalling LS will do the trick. However, I'd like to point out that since following Gregapp's suggestion I've had no issues at all but you're perfectly right that it's not the ideal solution. Also note that I'm only experiencing problems on one of the four Macs in use in my household. Weird.

I solved the same problem by changing the channel set in my router Wireless Settings from 1 to 11.

can anyone please tell is there really any soluation because i need to turn on my airport every 3minz later i need help badly

Keeping the connection "alive" is one way to maintain the connection. When I was fisrt trying to find a solution that worked for me I used to go throught the tedious task of resetting everything and finally get a connection. I then installed the "Caffeine" app and forced my computer to never sleep. In this way the connection was maintained, but every once in a while I had to go to work and as soon as I brought my computer outside of my home and lost the connection to my home network, the connection issue re-emerged. I guess the situation would/will be the same with Little Snitch?

The the person suggesting that changing the "Ask before connecting.." setting, for me it seemed that changeing any random setting in airport that needed you to "apply" the changes ususally (3 times out of 5) helped my connect to the router. This includes creating new locations and switching from DHCP to manual or other alternatives. Though once again, after a day at the office, the issue would re-emerge again.

Lylod -> once again highlighting that our vast number of conneciton issues seems to be caused by different problems

shadmanmosaddek -> No, there is no 1 single and simple solution. The question is, what is the root of your problem? If you reset (switch on and of) the airport, do you re-connect everytime? Just to find that you connection is lost minutes later?

yea when i turn on the airport it reconnected to the internet i have to do this everytime, I called apple care and they are telling me to take apple care protection plan or pay per incident phone support :\ what should i do :s

Don't waste your money, they won't be able to help you.

Solved my problem, which was similar. Your mileage may vary, but here's what I did.

THE PROBLEM:

My MacBook Pro (SL 10.6 and now Lion 10.7.2; hardware model ID 8,1 / early 2011) works fine with most routers, but not the Verizon Actiontec MI424-WR I have at home. The wireless connection drops every 30 seconds to 3 minutes, which is a serious hassle. All kinds of potential troubleshooting techniques failed: changing wireless channels, disabling security, changing the type of security, assigning a static IP, whatever. Packet capture on the interface shows that the router is not severing the connection (not sending a dissociation frame).

After the connection drops, the kernel message log says (you can view it in the Console app or with dmesg from Terminal):

wlEvent: en1 en1 Link DOWN
wl0: Beacon Loss Event
AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 4 (Disassociated due to inactivity).
en1: BSSID changed to 00:00:00:00:00:00

At this point, I concluded that the problem is with the AirPort driver. If it's too sensitive to inactivity, the solution is to ensure there's always traffic over the WiFi card.

THE SOLUTION:

I tried running internet radio in the background, which didn't work. Turns out it just doesn't result in continuous enough traffic. I imagine Little Snitch and similar will also not work. Luckily, there's a Unix-y solution: ping the router every tenth of a second. It produces enough traffic to fool the AirPort driver into keeping the connection open.

Open a Terminal window and issue

sudo -i

to get administrative privilege, and give your password to the prompt. Hit return. At the root prompt (a prompt ending in a # character), run

ping -i 0.1 192.168.1.1

where 192.168.1.1 is the local IP address of my router. If yours has a different IP, use that instead. Pinging less frequently than 10 times a second may work too; feel free to experiment.

Now just leave this running in the background, and go about your business. My connection hasn't dropped in 21,987 pings, which is more than half an hour. Hopefully this is helpful.

Okay guys...as helpful as this may be, does anybody realize that this is like absolute JIBBERISH to me and probably 80% of the users out here.  I mean this is like programming in Assembly language on an Atari 800 back in 1983.  This is CRAZY!