Dropped Signal...I'm Going to Go Crazy

This sounds like something is interfering with the signal, especially considering that the signal is fine on your laptop.

Click here for information about interference.

You my also want to try changing the channel that the AE is using.

Two things I would try, first is check to see if there is channel interference and if so change the channel on your AE. How to check for interference is to download iStumbler (Google it), if you are in an area with a lot of other Wi-FI networks there is a good chance this is an issue. The most common channels used are 6 & 11 in my area so I changed to another channel. To change the channel start Airport Utility, Manual Setup, Channel, Change the channel.

The second item could be a DNS issue. To change your DNS setting follow these instructions:

1. System preferences
2. Network
3. Click Advanced
4. Click DNS tab
5. Click + sign
6. Add 208.67.222.222
7. Click + sign
8. Add 208.67.220.220
9. Click OK.
10. Exit System Preferences
11. Try out your iMac and report what happened.

Regards,

Roger

Greetings,
I have what I believe is a similar problem. I have a Time Capsule which works fine -- wirelessly with my MacBook and also my iPod Touch. Have now bought an internet radio, which cannot find my network but does find others.
I removed the encryption from Airport Utilities and the internet radio worked fine for about two weeks, and has now stopped connecting. I have just tried the radio on a friend's network and it works. I assume there is a problem with my network.
Do you think the interference checker and/or channel changing might help.?

Thanks for your comments

Neil

Barbnei,

I would recommend you opening a new thread. However to answer your question you can always change the channel after using iStumbler to see if there are a lot of Wi-Fi networks competing for the same channel.

Regards,

Roger

Roger,

Thanks for this, and I also take note of your suggestion to start a new thread.

I will try istumbler.

barbnei

Roger
istumbler did NOT find my network.

I changed channel but to no effect.

I will start a new thread.

barbnei

You need to give it at least 5 minutes, if you already did well then you're on the right track.

Roger

lsb wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried the interference angle to no avail. I have downgraded my firmware to 7.3.2 to no avail. The signal keeps dropping and I'm at my wits end. Any other suggestions are much appreciated.
lsb

Hi lsb,

I have what seems like a very similar problem. The Wi-Fi signal from my AEBS (802.11n w/ Gigabit Ethernet, not Dual Band though) just keeps dropping off the face of the planet. When it happens for me though, it happens for all computer/devices connecting over WiFi (2 Macs, 1 Windows Laptop, 2 iPhones). The WiFi network cannot be discovered from any device — it's as though it doesn't exist. In my case if I just wait (leaving the AEBS on and untouched), the connection will magically restore itself after a random period of time. I tried power cycling with varying degrees of success, but usually if I just leave it it will come back eventually. It is as you described, highly frustrating to say the least.

What I've done:-

I have connected the two computers that are in the same room as the AEBS (PowerMac G5 & Windows Laptop running Vista) via Ethernet rather than WiFi, and they are fine. The router isn't freezing, or dropping the internet connection, or anything like that. The connection is fast and stable over Ethernet, but the WiFi just comes and goes as it pleases.

I too thought maybe something had changed to cause interference (the setup was working fine for a while with no problems, and then it just started dropping out), but for the life of me I couldn't think of anything that changed. No new wireless radio-transmitting devices have been introduced to the environment, and now new "other" WiFi network have popped up (I live in a set of Townhouses and am familiar with the names of the other WiFi networks that my neighbours are operating). Nonetheless I checked the channels using iStumbler to see if I was using the same as anyone else, and I am at least 3 channels away from everyone else. At this stage, I don't believe the problem is interference-related.

I tried reverting the firmware in the AEBS back to 7.3.2 as well, as suggested, and at first I thought it had fixed it. Everything seemed to go stable for around 24 hours (as far as I noticed anyway - I'm obviously not at the computer 24 hours a day to monitor it, and like I mentioned, it just "comes back" after a while). But, then little by little, the dropouts returned, increasing in frequency. Just this afternoon it's probably dropped some 6 or 7 times in the past few hours.

The only thing that I can think that I've done differently in recent times is update the PowerMac G5 to 10.5.8. Others with some MacBooks and MacBook Pro's have had 10.5.8-specific WiFi issues that have been widely reported, and then patched by Apple, but this problem is different because it seems to be related to the AEBS rather than the computer. I am wondering however, if something that changed in 10.5.8, possibly to do with the interaction between my PowerMac G5 & the AEBS is causing it to have a fit. That's a long-shot though, because it would be highly strange for one computer to cause the AEBS to "drop" the WiFi broadcast entirely for all machines. The older MBP is at this stage still running 10.5.7.

Can you advise if you updated your machine to 10.5.8 when it became available? That way I can know whether it is possibly related.

Things I'm going to try next:-

- Turn off WiFi completely on the PowerMac G5 that is now wired in with Ethernet. I did still have it on in addition to the internet, mainly for the purposes of monitoring whether the WiFi was dropping out (which it was). This is my feeble attempt to perhaps eliminate what i'll call the "10.5.8 AEBS WiFi poisoning effect", and see how it goes.

- Revert the AEBS back even further to 7.2.1 firmware version. Pardon another story, but when I first got my AEBS, I had *chronic* issues with it just hanging completely and requiring a power cycle many many times per day. I can't remember exactly what Firmware I was on while that was happening, but suffice it to say, I reverted to 7.2.1, and all was good. It ran rock-solid, all day long for months on end. Updates would become available, and I would always ignore them because of the previous pain I'd experienced. The only reason I'd updated to 7.4.2 is because I recently moved and had to re-setup my network, and for whatever reason the config of the AEBS had stuffed up and I had to reset it back to default. Still, I couldn't seem to get it to work properly for whatever reason and had to re-load the firmware. 7.4.2 was the latest update available (and I'd forgotten how to select older versions at that minute), so I just went with it. Perhaps a mistake? Time will tell.

- Failing, the above two steps restoring the prior stability to my network, I will investigate somehow downgrading my PowerMac to 10.5.7 to see if that helps somehow, because this instability *seems* to have only kicked in after I upgraded it to 10.5.8. I would love to just upgrade to Snow Leopard and be done with it, but alas it is Intel only, and this beast is a PowerPC (the last of them). Probably time to sell it off and replace it, even though it is still a highly capable machine :-|

Anways, lsb — please update us on how your experience has gone, either good or bad, and I'll try to do the same. Of course, if anyone else has any insights, that would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Michael

Message was edited by: smartygus (re-read OP's post and edited mine to clarify)

You guys should update to 7.4.2 (the most stable firmware) and also try this:

1. System preferences
2. Network
3. Click Advanced
4. Click DNS tab
5. Click + sign
6. Add 208.67.222.222
7. Click + sign
8. Add 208.67.220.220
9. Click OK.
10. Exit System Preferences
11. Try out your iMac and report what happened.

This will add 2 additional DNS setting for your system to use, these DNS settings do help some people so while it isn't a guaranteed fix it definitely will not harm your system. If it works great, if it does not you can always remove the new DNS settings if you feel uncomfortable.

Regards,

Roger