Upgrading to 10.5.5 breaks wifi?

So this is interesting, it's starting to happen in Vista as well. I've been monitoring the connection status and when they bytes recieved starts to get around 2.5 - 3 million, it becomes Local only (internet no longer works, but I'm still connected to the router). I'd think it might be my wireless card but I have my doubts because it used to work fine.

Holy crap, I don't want to jinkx this but I think I might have fixed it. I noticed my IP address was one number off from other computer's IP addresses connected to the same router (all of which are running Vista). Example, my IP: xxx.xxx.x.14, Vista PC IP: xxx.xxx.x.13, etc. So I went and MANUALLY entered the wireless address info (from DNS servers to IP subnet) and changed my IP to xxx.xxx.x.101, and wow. Suddenly I went from random disconnects/slow speeds to insane speeds and the connections has yet to drop (knock on wood).

So, in summary, I simply changed my Mac's IP address to something completely different from the other IP address (and manually entered in all the other network info).

I don't know if this is a perfect fix (or a lasting one) but it seems to be working amazingly so far. I'll post back later with an update.

Message was edited by: Ann Hutto

I forgot to add I also turned AppleTalk off.

Alright so check this out, it was working awesome for most the day that I could tell, and the it started going back to its usual routine of dropouts and slow connections during the end of day. So I changed the IP address again to something different, and suddenly it's steady and fast again.

I'm using 10.5.5 on my 17" MacBookPro and my wireless was working just fine w/a single desktop HP printer (HP#1). I subsequently purchased a portable HP printer (HP#2) which was also just working fine (cable connected). I then tried to connect (by cable) to a third HP printer (HP#3) w/o any success. I uninstalled the first two print drivers and was able to connect successfully to HP#3. Reinstalled the software driver for HP#2 and it worked just fine. I then tried to reinstall HP#1 w/o any success. Worked w/apple support for over an hour and even they couldn't get it to work. Our conclusion was that either the MacBookPro or 10.5.5 will NOT support 3 drivers.

Anyone out there have any ideas that might help?

BigMulie

If your WiFi keeps dropping after updating to 10.5.5. Try going into System Preferences. Then into Accounts, Select your account from the accounts list, then go to the right and select Log-in items. Then Remove REAL PLAYER from your log-in items. You will then be fine. Real Player keeps pinging the Base Station. It will save you a lot of headaches.

It is not the Real Player Downloader that is causing a problem.

After trying just about every solution I found here, I took a look at the router itself to see what was happening. When the MacBook Pro connects to the router, it issues two DHCP requests with slightly different parameters and gets issued two IP addresses, back to back. The lowest IP address becomes the "official" IP address, but the MacBook Pro accepts the second IP address as the real IP address. The router after examining network traffic, notices that there are two DHCP entries for the MAC address, and issues a network Disconnect command back to the MacBook Pro, causing the WiFi on the MacBook Pro to all of a sudden halt sending data to the router.

Releasing the lower IP address from the router's DHCP list resolves this problem. the MacBook Pro then maintains it's connection to the router properly from then on. I do not know if reserving a MAC address / IP pair will help with this or not, since the MAC is sending out a mangled DHCP request followed by a corrected DHCP request. The mangled request may still get assigned improperly.

This was with a N-capable router, D-Link DIR 625, using WPA/WPA2 combo setting.

I noticed zero problems with my MacBook Pro on an older AT&T router that uses 128-bit WEP for encryption.

Removing Real Player Downloader in Log-in items works if you are using an Apple Wireless Base Station. 3rd Party Wireless Routers you can go into System Preferences/Network/Airport/advanced/tcp/ip/ and click on Renew the DHCP lease.

If your using a 3rd party Wireless Router and it is using a WEP64 bit password that will not work with the Mac OS 10.5.X. Some times a dollar sign works in front of the password but its not guaranteed.