Q: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

it's been 24hrs and 20GB transferred since I made adjustments to my network settings without a single disconnect. what I see in this huge thread is that not every system will respond the same to changes made. all you can do is try peoples suggestions and hope for the best, my router is a DLink DGL-4500 and my MBP is i7 with S/W Version 10.6.5, Happy Holidays

Seems the last activity on this thread was 2008. Well two days shy of 2011, the problem still exists. I have a 2010 MBP model (Core i5), 8gb RAM, all the latest patches. I only recently noticed the problem after getting a divorce, and "lost" my 5ghz N router. Now, 2.4 ghz routers (n or g) are all I get, and even sitting 10 feet from the **** thing, I'm constantly losing my connection.

My solution?

1) Have resolved to never buy an Apple product again. They are the new Microsoft - huge, bloated, and unresponsive. I've begun this economic boycott by upgrading to an Android phone rather than an iPhone 4.

2) I run Ubuntu Desktop x64 now on the MBP. Sure, it is a little too "fiddly" for my tastes, but **** - it's FREE. And the WiFi stays connected. And it runs mostly the same apps I used on my MBP. Plus, under the hood, they are of course very similar.

Truth be told, Window 7 also has no issues with the MBP's wifi hardware either. And also, I do get better battery life with OS X, than either Windows or Ubuntu (mainly I suspect due to their inability to switch to lower-power graphics adapter as OSX does on this hardware).

Also, another thing that works: running Linux OR Windows in Parallels, plugging in a wifi adapter, and routing the USB to the guest OS. (You also get better battery life this way, ironically, compared to running the same guest OS natively.)

I still run OS X now and then. Mostly, to check if Apple has an update to fix the freakin' wifi. But also, when I need absolutely every Joule of battery (e.g. Ubuntu in Parallels on OS X), such as when I trave.

Really bad form, Apple. But hey - I don't get angry. I just buy something else next time.

Let me tell my story. I am using a 2006 MacBook Pro 2006 version model A1150 running 10.6.5

This network disconnect problem is weird. So 5 weeks ago I began to notice this problem. I would be surfing the internet and then the webpage would act like there was no internet connection but the airport icon at the top right of the screen showed a perfect connection. The only fix seemed to be turning the Airport off and then back on again.

So, I called apple care and they were super helpful. They had me change my DNS server to googles 8.8.8.8 which worked for a day or so.

Then about 30 hours later the problem persisted again. I called back and this time they told me to Repair the disk permissions which I did and it helped....for 2 days. Then the problem began to occur again.

I called a 3rd time and this time they told me to reinstall Snow Leopard. I did and didn't have any trouble for 2 days after that, but then the problem persisted once again.

I called a 4th time and they said I needed my Airport card replaced. So, I reluctantly had it replaced at a cost of $200 ($100 for the card and $100 for labor). The computer worked perfectly for 2 weeks after that. Then, this morning.....it started happening again. I have a model of the iMac from the same year with the same processor and RAM and it is not having this problem. I wish there were a fix. So far for me the only fix is to turn the airport off and on which *****!

I am an avid Mac consumer but this is poking holes in my mac commitment!

Airport card>nope, Power cord>nope, Battery>nope, Router>nope, Genius bar>nope, Router channel>nope, Router firmware>nope, Cable provider>nope, Reinstall OS>nope, OSX upgrade>nope, Permissions repair>nope, Disk repair>nope, smcFan>nope, grrr...

My problem seems to be related to a trio of battery status, heat and power cord. If my battery charge is too low, or my mac goes above 50C, or the power cord accidentally falls off, I brace myself for one of the following problems:

- Screen freezes <hard reboot required. This can go on 7-8 times until I give up.

- Auto shutdown with overheat message <If this happens when I first open my "cool" Macbook in the morning, I usually pack up my Macbook for the day, grind my teeth and restrain myself from throwing the darn thing out the window.

- Lose wifi signal but I can see all my neighbors' networks/No Airport card installed message <Restarts rarely work in this case, hard reboots sometimes work. I find that laying the laptop on dry ice packs (yes those blocks used in coolers) wrapped in dishcloths works best. Needless to say this last "solution" adds weight on my lap, and voids my macs' sexy factor.

What a shame Apple engineers.

Let me update my previous post.

I got a very helpful Apple rep and he spent 3 days on this issue. He gave me the apple number and his personal extension. I called him at my convenience and we tried a ton of options.

He suggested I go somewhere else with wifi and try my laptop on another wifi network. I did and at that location I had zero trouble. Multiple routers and I tried hard to make the connection fail and could not get it to fail.

I too thought it had to do with low battery issues and heat but I recreated the same environment at school and never lost the connection. The apple rep noticed that I had just purchases my wireless router and asked if the problem began occurring when I got that router, I said "shortly after." He decided to try a airport extreme replacement. It should come in on Thursday so I will get back to you guys and let you know if the new router helps.

I sure hate I spent $200 to have my airport card replaced and it could be a faulty airport extreme router!!!

After digging through the years of past comments...

Best we can tell, it's an issue related to the new Broadcom card in the newer Macbook Pros. My partners computer will drop periodically, while other clients on the network are unaffected. When restarting the network, her computer takes ~3x as long to reconnect (1:30 vs. 20s).

My assessment is that Apple is somewhat correct in claiming that "your wireless card needs replaced," although I believe what they actually mean is "with something other than another one of the line of cards we've been using in our new models."

Alright...After many hours on the phone with Apple they finally sent me a free new Airport Extreme for free. I installed the new router and so far my connection has not dropped once. I have only been using it for an hour and a half.

Before I unplugged the old router and installed the new router I turned on my laptop and let it warm up. I used it till the wifi failed. I then unplugged my 1 month old router and installed the new router. It has not failed yet. I will keep my fingers crossed!

Now I'm really confused... I've been battling with my MBP for about 5 months with what I can only describe as the randomly evaporating wireless connection to my network/outside world. My Win7 laptop sits next to it and has never had a connectivity problem. I've attempted numerous fixes - all firmware on the router is up to date, all software on my MBP is up to date. The laptop is stationary, so I've only connected to a limited number of wireless networks - all of which have been deleted - to no avail. This issue takes place at least 10 times a day (that I know of) and is unbelievably frustrating.

This morning it happened again, and I was looking in the system profiler where I noticed the AirPort status showed I had two wireless connections connected. The first one listed was not mine, but the second one was. But if I went into the networking preferences, the second mystery network was not listed - but was visible, and showed it was secured - but not connected. In my preferred networks list, I had my network alone - no others.

I turned AirPort off, dumped all of my wireless settings again - deleted all networks and shut the system down. Upon restart, I turned on AirPort - connected to my network - it shows connected and I'm online. System Profiler shows only one wireless network under the AirPort status. My question is - How can the system profiler show two wireless networks connected - but the airport status shows only one - and that I'm not (nor have I ever) connected to this mystery network?

As I was writing this - my network disappeared AGAIN, and after it came up and reconnected, I went back into system profiler and found this:

Interfaces:
en1:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8C)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.36.1)
Locale: FCC
Country Code: X0
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 136, 140, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165
Wake On Wireless: Supported
Status: Connected
Current Network Information:
GOOSENHEIMER:
PHY Mode: 802.11n
BSSID: 0:1c:f0:eb:43:c9
Channel: 1
Network Type: Infrastructure
Security: WPA2 Personal
Signal / Noise: -65 dBm / -88 dBm
Transmit Rate: 52
MCS Index: 11
Other Local Wireless Networks:
Cisco-BI:
PHY Mode: 802.11n
BSSID: 98:fc:11:50:32:6e
Channel: 6
Network Type: Infrastructure
Security: WPA2 Personal
Signal / Noise: -87 dBm / -90 dBm

Is this other network interfering and forcing my MBP offline, or am I loosing my network and the MBP picks it up. The funny thing is the network strength of this other network is very weak.

After having this issue for many weeks and trying various solutions to no avail on my MBP, buying a new TP-Link router to replace my old Belkin one, solved my problem entirely. Connection is now strong and stable.

I bought a MPB 13" for my wife, and now I'm plagued with this same issue. I have looked all over these forums for a solution and tried all of them with no consistent success. I thought I had it "solved" last night by reducing to 802.11G only which upset me that I paid $1700+ for a computer that couldn't support 802.11N. My wife reported this AM that it isn't working anymore.

This seems to occur when we have it in "docked" mode(i.e. closed). I've tried it on both sides of the external monitor and I've scoffed at the suggestions that the external monitor is causing the issue. I have several other laptops and computers that have to deal with external monitors "interference" and none of them have issues. AND by the way, all MBP's have an LCD LED Backlit monitor attached to them anyway. In any case, just in case, I've moved the laptop from one side to the other adjusted the distance and I've concluded it isn't related. I've tired the key chain fixes adjusted the channel settings for N and G modes.

I am guessing that this issue has to do with "closed mode" causing the antennas to turn off intermittently due to a software bug in the OS.

I can not believe that Apple would release a product that has such a basic issue. And that such an issue would have existed for so long without an official response from Apple on the topic. They seem to expect users to just live with stuff like this and not have it reflect on their brand. iPhone4 antenna issue is another example. I'm taking this into the store in the next couple of day and asking them to explain the problem and fix it or get my money back. What a shame...

I might as well confirm this problem.. I've been using my very first MacBook Pro for about a year now, I'm sitting on the MacBook Pro 17" with 1920x1200 screen, Intel Core i5 and have upgraded it with 2x 4GB Corsair DDR3 1066MHz RAM and Intel X25-M 80GB SSD Gen2 drive.

My problem is my connection dropping randomly every now and then, it's not like I need to restart the AirPort Utility or anything, it's not like I'm connected to the router but not getting Internet access, it's simply my MacBook Pro dropping the entire connection and for the next few seconds I'm not able to see any of the four wireless networks within range at all, then after like 1-2min it auto re-connects to my home network and I'm good to go again. It's not that critical as things happens so fast, the problem is when things like this start happening in the middle of some kind of uploading or important remote session of any kind, or even during TimeMachine backups and things like that resulting in things taking much longer time than it should, and worst case scenario being loss of important data while uploading..

It feels silly that notebooks in this price range and of this high quality are facing major issues with basic things like the stability of the wireless connection. I suspect it's the dreadful Broadcom wireless NIC that's to blame, the drivers and software is obviously not flawless and even though these issues don't occur when using Windows7 64bit through BootCamp there is really no doubt that Broadcom has record of bad software and drivers for both Mac, Linux and Windows so why Apple have decided to stick with Broadcom in the first place is hard to say.

But no matter whom's to blame the fact still remains that my MacBook Pro 17" 2010 model isn't able to keep an steady and stable wireless connection for extended periods of time and that's simply not good enough in todays market. We are talking like random drop outs at least once every two hours, that's worse than my girlfriends cheap Acer TimeLineX 4820TG with it's Atheros AR9285 wireless NIC.
And no it has nothing to do with your wireless router, this has been happening both at home and at work for me the past year and at home I've been using different routers this year, from D-Link DVG-5802S @ 802.11n 2.4GHz @ 40Hz, same issues on a Linksys WRT320N on both 802.11n 2.4GHz @ 40Hz and 802.11n 5.0GHz @ 40Hz not to mention I've tried with the Netgear WNDR3700 on both 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz band both utilizing 40Hz of course for optimal performance. Now I'm on a D-Link DAP-2553 Business Access Point and running 5.0GHz @ 40Hz only and I'm facing the same exact issues this time around. At work we've had both the D-Link DIR-655 on 2.4GHz @ 40Hz and now we're using the Asus RT-16N running 2.4GHz @ 40Hz and the same dropouts keep happening no matter what network and router I connect to.

It has nothing to do with wireless encryption either as I've tried running without encryption just for the sake of testing and it still keeps having random dropouts. And it has nothing to do with interference as there is no other 5.0GHz wireless network in range of my house and how could anyone explain how things are steady and stable through BootCamp and Windows7 64bit and not within Mac OSX 10.6.6? I did even try going 10.6.7 build 858 but no improvement on this issue to be seen.

Let's hope Apple comes to their senses and replace their Broadcom wireless NIC's with something more useful, going back to Atheros would be better and the best would be to make a deal with Intel and use their Centrino wireless NIC's like the 6200 and 6300 series that are way better than this.. At least go for the newest Broadcom 3x3 NIC's and lets hope they work better.

I had same problem with my macbook pro 2010 running on 10.6.6. I use airport express. Windows notebook was connecting without any problem but macbook pro was dropping connectivity with airport express several times in a day.

I changed channel settings from "Automatic" to "1" under Airport Utility & since then its working flawlessly.

I've had this same problem on my PB G4 ever since I started working from home (about 5 years ago). I finally decided to research this issue and came across this incredibly long thread. After reading a few of the posts, I've ended up with a solid connection now for more than 20 minutes (a record for me). Here are some details:
- router in basement
- when PB is in basement office, I have no problems with the connection... ever!
- I only have the problem when I bring the laptop to the first floor (one floor up and across the room from the router).
- I usually start out with a solid connection. Then, after 5 minutes or so the connection gets weak or drops out completely.
- if I reposition the laptop slightly (rotate 20 degrees or slide forward 5 inches) eventually (after at most 60 seconds) I can regain the connection.
- if I have a connection and my wife comes through the living room and stands in the kitchen I will probably lose the connection. If she comes into the living room and sits down on the nearby couch I will probably lose the connection.

OK, here are what I think are the (additional) key factors:
- since I work in a windowless basement office I set up a wireless (2.4 GHz) camera so that I can see what's going on outside. I'm willing to guess that this is about when the problems started. I haven't turned the camera off to check this (yet).
- the camera is within 20 ft of the router.
- tonight, I changed the router config to G-only and tried a few different channels. Channels 6, 9 and 10 all produce the same loss of signal problem.
- I'm now running on Channel 1 and do not see a problem. I've been connected for 30 minutes now. And, my wife just got home and is walking all over the first floor. I've repositioned the laptop a few times (20 deg rotates; 6 inches forward/back). I have a solid 4 bars of signal.

So, you might try these changes to your router:
- G-only
- Channel 1
- if that doesn't work: turn off any wireless phones, cameras, baby monitors, etc

Hey, no offense to the "keep your router set to G only" crowd, but I didn't pay a premium price for well packaged x86 commodity hardware so I could disable modern IEEE standard protocols to cover up incompetence. A $500 throw away laptop from competitor doesn't have any issues.

One other note in my case, my network issues start when I'm in closed lid mode only with an external monitor and BT keyboard and mice connected. Once the network connection is hosed, I can open the lid, reboot and reset get the network connection moving again and do not see the issue again until I go into docked mode.