Q: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

I.R. Bill,
Download the freeware AP Grapher and track your actual connectivity. Unless you drew the short straw and got a "wonder machine", I suspect that you are connecting but getting 'drops' like most others. AP Grapher shows that I maintain a connection between 32%-48%. So, I connect and get a page but, as often happens, when I click to move to another page, I'll get something like, 'server can't be found' and then when I hit the 'refresh' button, it appears - which indicates that I was in a 'drop' the first time.

I got a new modem from Comcast and when that didn't solve the problem they said it was my router, so I bought the new AirPort Extreme "n" router. Of course, when I couldn't connect my MBP because it has a "g" Airport card, I had to change the settings on the APEBS to "g".

I have also installed the latest "fix". My MBP hasn't had any issues at home with a linksys router but was experiencing the issue with an RCA broadband router at another location. With the new fix I'm not seeing the issue any more. Using AP Grapher and not seeing dropouts. Watching streaming video's from CNN with no issues. Maybe it's fixed, don't know.

Ed

I have a one week old $3000 MBP and have this exact problem. I’ve been a Mac user since the 80’s and have never been disappointed with one of their products. I would have not purchased this MBP if I’d have known about this issue.
This is crazy. No reply or acknowledgment from Apple.
Do you think they even care or are looking into this?
This is a sad day.

sigh

I don't want to leave the wrong impression about my experience with the Macbook Pro wireless; it really has not been bad. I have only had my MBP and Airport Extreme N and two Airport Express Ns for about 5 weeks so I am only now getting a fuller picture of its performance. First of all, I have never been completely disconnected under MBP wireless (N only ghz mode). I often see the signal strength training up and down but it usually doesn't seem to affect my actual performance loading a webpage or downloading a large file. For example, last night I had a reading on AP Grapher of 14 mbps yet when I clicked on several websites (Apple, Washington Post, NY Times, CNN) there was no affect on the performance; they snapped into place quickly. Sometimes I will notice a slight hesitation before the page loads but not much. I also notice the same training up and down of the signal under the Windows XP Bootcamp partition but, again, it doesn't seem to affect performance - so far. I have also not had any other problems with my MBP (other than no tap-click for the trackpad under XP!).

m stan,
Looks like you drew the lucky straw and got one of the 'wonder machines' or your performance threshold is not very high. It just took more than 3 minutes for www.apple.com/support to load in my Safari browser. Not what I would call good performance from a 'professional' product. Since you have AP Grapher, go to preferences and check 'Enable menu extra'. This will cause the connection percentage to display in the menu bar to the left of the Airport Radar Icon (right now, mine is displaying 61% but in the course of this connection it has been down to 50%). Let us know what % you get when you say "it really has not been bad." Perhaps it is not bad or perhaps you are just not cognizant of how good it isn't.

In order to download a TV show from iTunes this evening, I had to connect the Ethernet hardwire to get a decent connection.

Here is a typical browser message:
Request Timeout
The server timed out while waiting for the browser's request.
Reference #2.3d44cfd8.1208402240.0

xisten,
I can only ditto your post. I also am a long time Apple user (bought my first Apple II in late 1979 - yes, I'm old) and I've owned most Apple/Mac's along the way and loved all of them. In fact, I had the PowerBook G4 and was very, very happy with it when I placed a pre-order for the 1st gen MBP. I loved the new MBP (there was a connectivity problem with Tiger 10.4 but Apple fixed it with 10.4.11). I went to Leopard 10.5 with great excitement. It appears that the 10.5.2 brought on the new connectivity problem. However, this time they have not so quick with a fix (now over three months and counting). So, they are either stymied by the problem or ....? What is clear is that they are not acknowledging it and that is sad.

More than a month ago, I said I was going to try reinstalling the original 10.5 and see if the problem went away. I just have avoided doing this extra work because I know it is going to consume a major part of a day and I have opted to just plug in the Ethernet hardwire. I have another European trip coming up at the end of next week and I will need my Wi-Fi connection so I'm either going to roll back the OS or just leave the MBP at home and rely on my BlackBerry for my email on the trip. Another sad statement.

SlippySlope,

I am getting a steady 65% reading - nevertheless, the apple home page loads in a few seconds. However, when I just downloaded the Safari update I got a little less than 2 mBs - not much better than wireless G. Right after that I downloaded a 137 mB music file from my upstairs desktop at almost 6 mBs - 3 times faster (reading still 65% on menu bar). So you are right, this is mediocre performance compared to the maximum possible for a wireless N connection. Since this is my first experience with a wireless N machine (and wireless N is still draft), is this typical of wireless N performance on windows laptops or is this just happening with the Macbook Pro?

m stan,

is this just happening with the Macbook Pro?<<</div>

Yes, this is just happening to the MBP. I have a PowerBookG4 and an iMac communicating via the same AirPort Extreme Base Station "g" they have great connectivity. It doesn't matter what brand of router you use, the MBP and Leopard 10.5.2 is where the issue is. Like I said, I have a 1st gen MBP but I bought my son a new 17" MBP with all of the bells and whistles ($4,000) and it does the same thing. Luckily, he doesn't use the Wi-Fi much (unlike me).

Run an Ethernet cable from your APEBSn to your MBP and see the difference. You can use speedtest.net to check the upload and download speeds to different points around the world. You'll be amazed. You can also run Window (XP or Vista) under BootCamp or VM Fusion and, even though it uses the same MBP onboard Airport and APEBSn, there is no connectivity issue. And, this seems to narrow it down to Leopard - BUT - only on MBP.

Again, a sad, sad commentary for premier professional portable computer when it can't make a proper Wi-Fi connection. And, even sadder when Apple maintains a total silence on the problem. Really disappointing to this long time Apple user.

+1 on my MBP. I have only had it for a week. My worked forced me to switch to Windows a few years back (pre OS X) and finally I was able to validly request an exemption so that I could switch back. But now I have this wireless connection issue. My router is a DI-624 which is b/g only. My setup uses hidden SSID, WPA/PSK with statically assigned IP addresses from the DHCP server. I can't say my Windows laptop connection is perfect, but it never just drops the connection.

I wanted to add my observation that it feels to me like it is something to do with the network layer on the MBP which is timing out the connection after some period of inactivity but then not reestablishing correctly on a new network request. It normally drops out for me if I am reading a large web-page and I take 'too long' to move to a new page. Long downloads seem to be OK. But I have noticed it drop-out during a download - it just seems to reconnect itself if there is lots of network activity, or maybe it doesn't get to 'fully' close the connection. I added the MenuMeters utility and use it to show a graph of the network activity. I can see the dropouts easily in that plot as the activity goes completely flat. I am considering adding a script that just pings my router at regular intervals to keep the connection alive. No doubt I am just imagining things, but I thought it might add to the discussion.

Generally, I can select 'AirPort Off' followed immediately by 'AirPort On' from the wireless status menu and it will reconnect just fine. Safari (3.1.1) will often reload the page for me as soon as the connection is reset. It is very annoying, though.

At least for me, I have seen the problem both with and without the power cord connected. My Airport card is a Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 with firmware 4.170.46.5.

I sent my MBP in to AC due to frequent wireless disconnections. It is one of the first generations with a 2.16 core duo. The wireless started disconnecting frequently when I installed Leopard. Basically they replaced the antenna and now it does not drop the signal anymore and the reception is as good as my macbook.

Try the antenna is my suggestion.

This is definetly NOT an antenna problem, if it was then you wouldn't have problems near the router... What they may have done to repair it is replace the Airport card.. Issues appear only on some specific airport models (present on macbooks, minimacs, mbp and intel imac, all having the same problem)...

replacing the airport seems to be a difficult and expensive definite solution

I have STOPPED RECOMMENDING APPLE TO MY FRIENDS

May I also add that it seems that EVERYONE with problems on OSX doesnt have ANY problems on WINDOWS

This is a software, not hardware

come on Apple, didn't you go to marketing school?

You're loosing new adopters.. pretty much every potential user we know...

Slippy,

I don't think the problem lies with just OSX. I am now on my WIN XP partition on the MBP and I am seeing the same issue - in the last 15 minutes I have seen the speed of the wireless N connection go from 270 Mbps to 54 Mbps and various speeds in between. I downloaded the same 137 Mb music file and the speed was up and down during the download. I wish the problem were only with the MAC OS as that would be an easy fix. But it looks to me as if the problem is with either the MBP hardware or maybe the firmware. Agree, not what I would expect from a $3000 pro machine.

Have people tried downloading or updating the latest MBP firmware? I installed it last week and ever since my connection has been awesome. No issues what so ever with dropped signals in the past week. Boy am I grateful as I am now able to use wireless again.

G