MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Wireless Issues

Yes I have similar problems too. My new macbook pro Oct 08 connect to either my linksys router (11n) and drops out until you reboot the mac or reset the router. Tonight I tired remote disk on my macbook air to the new macbook pro it instantly dropped it out but was fine with my old (2nd gen mac books pro). I'm just completely exasperated with the ****** thing at the moment

go to a apple store and ask for change of the ariport (wifi interface of your mbp) I did it and it is working not 100% but 88% now, and 200% above before.

I'm sorry, but anything less than 100 percent connection in my home is not acceptable. The Router(s) are less than 15 feet away, and most of the time they are in direct line of site.

The Option + Airport menu was a neat tip, but how do you know what it should be?

Lee

The problem is I live about 4 hours drive from my nearest mac shop. Jeeze I change from PC to macs because if vista and now I'm lumbered with a $2,000 lump of metal!

I had the same problems (in true worst), the system was hanging (grey screen the uncle of win blue screen), than the apple genius make me bought an back-up unit and re-install my entire system, and said if the problem persist please return. I returned but I already know the problem the hard was convince them I posted previously the debug output of my airport card the so called crash-report. Go to your spotlight type console and look for Crash report or all-mesages and them look for airport.

And a lot of people are complaining about, with early and later MBP, the same broadcom device for both.
So believe me my MBP was bought in same period, so go an change.
There at least 8 other persons with the same problem.

I thought the same as you, go and change you too.

I'm in the process of figuring out exactly what the RSSI should be, because it varies between manufacturers (of course). But from what I observed last night it seems to point to an antenna issue and not necessarily just the AirPort card.

Lee Smith wrote:
I'm sorry, but anything less than 100 percent connection in my home is not acceptable. The Router(s) are less than 15 feet away, and most of the time they are in direct line of site.

Connections aren't just a function of signal strength, they also incorporate interference and noise figures.

So you can be next to your router, but if your neighbor is running a Wi-Fi router that is interfering with yours, your signal will be less than optimal anyway.

The dirty little secret of Wi-Fi is that in crowded areas you may simply not be able to use Wi-Fi at all due to too many routers fighting for too few frequencies.

I live in an ordinary neighborhood and my MBP can see no fewer than eight Wi-Fi networks from my neighbors, and those are only the routers broadcasting their SSIDs.

William Kucharski wrote:
Connections aren't just a function of signal strength, they also incorporate interference and noise figures.

So you can be next to your router, but if your neighbor is running a Wi-Fi router that is interfering with yours, your signal will be less than optimal anyway.

The dirty little secret of Wi-Fi is that in crowded areas you may simply not be able to use Wi-Fi at all due to too many routers fighting for too few frequencies.

I live in an ordinary neighborhood and my MBP can see no fewer than eight Wi-Fi networks from my neighbors, and those are only the routers broadcasting their SSIDs.

While this is very true, it doesn't explain why all my other wireless devices function perfectly fine, yet my MBP does not. I have no doubt that wireless interference is a big contributor to my case especially, since I can see on a good day at least a dozen other WAPs in my neighborhood via my MBP. I did see a difference after changing my router's channel, which indicates to me that there may have been some interference with the many other WAPs in the area.

What I've observed, though, seems to point to there being something specifically wrong with the MBP's AirPort/antenna configuration or build as I can distinctly attribute it to line-of-sight. I'm still in the process of testing out whether or not this has to do with certain modes (n/g/b, etc.) as there may be more interference with the one mode than the other. I'm not 100% sure how to force n/g/b on my router as there are no straightforward options, just download rate levels so I need to look into this more.

Well, it remains to be seen if it's "wrong" or just "not as sensitive."

For example, the metal shells have long meant that PowerBooks and MacBook Pros haven't had Wi-Fi reception as good as iBooks and MacBooks did.

All bets are off with the new unibody designs…

I had the exact same problem on my brand new MacBook Pro.

I spend 1 day fooling around with the issue before completely reinstalling the OS. That fixed the problem and haven't had a single issue since.

Maybe there is something with their factory install that is messed up.

I also have this problem and realized now when I read some of your posts that I have a firewire drive connected. I will try to disconnect my drive as someone said later when I come home and will post back with results.

I tried unplugging the Firewire drive but it didnt work. I will try using just ethernet today in school and then try the Airport at home again.

This is a long standing issue, maybe from early 2007, and I suspect one with many culprits. In my case is the MB the one that loses connection while the MBP is rock solid.

Maybe Apple should adress the issue after almost 2 years of widespread airport problems...

I'm experiencing the same trouble with my MBP Unibody : whenever I connect my 2.5" 250 GB external disk on the FW800 port, the Wifi connection becomes sluggish and even disconnect every now and then.

Finally I just found out that it may be due to a lack of power : it suffices to connect the power supply to the external HD and everything comes back to normal !
I'm afraid they didn't design well power management on the motherboard.