Dropping Wi FI Signal

I have read many of the posts here, but not all, so please excuse me if this has been suggested before.

I have two macbooks, one never drops its connection but the other was doing so until I set it up the same as the other.

I read somewhere to give a new location in the network preferences for airport. It doesn't seem to matter what you call it but the default "automatic" seems to cause the connection to drop. It solved my problem.

Can anybody back me on this?

putnik wrote:
I have read many of the posts here, but not all, so please excuse me if this has been suggested before.

I have two macbooks, one never drops its connection but the other was doing so until I set it up the same as the other.

I read somewhere to give a new location in the network preferences for airport. It doesn't seem to matter what you call it but the default "automatic" seems to cause the connection to drop. It solved my problem.

Can anybody back me on this?

THE PROBELM:
I recently upgraded to SL and last weekend i came back to college and since then I can't get my wifi to work "Normally". I did not install anything new on my mac. I am running my wifi on a Netgear WGR614 wireless router. When i turn on my mac, i'll be able to access net properly for couple of mins and nothing seems to load after a while. That's the cue for my airport of start "acting up". I cannot connect to my signal. Sometimes, it just wouldn't scan for signals.

On the other had, a windows based desktop and my iPhone seems work just fine. That ruled out the router to be the culprit. (NOTE: I was using the same router with same settings for this macbook before i upgraded to SL). If i sit next to my router, i'll be able to access net. if i move to next room I can't load pages(Wifi shows all bars).

THE SOLUTION:
Somehow I manage to get the wifi working with few tricks. I disabled the DHCP server on the router. Set router to both B&G bands and Channel 9. Secured the network with WAP2. I assigned a Static ip address and DNS to the mac's airport connection while i connected the mac via an ethernet (When i tried to do the same without ethernet connection, it didn't seem to work.). After assigning the static ip, i disconnected the ethernet, turned off airport and turned it back on and BOOM airport works normally.

But there seems to a be a problem, when i close my mac(sleep) and open it again, I have to do over the entire process all over again and Assign a different ip to airport.

I just want you all to know that, i am no networking technician. I am just a regular joe who know a little bit about computers. I can't tell you why this works and why it doesn't. This is one the hundred random things i did to get my airport work.

Mightybull,

You are not seriously suggesting that your "solution" is an acceptable one?

Anyway, if it is of any comfort to Mac users, the Windows 7 TechNet forum postings would indicate that the problem of WiFi disconnects is quite universal and very topical.

putnik wrote:
Mightybull,

You are not seriously suggesting that your "solution" is an acceptable one?

NOPE, I suggesting that you "try" it........End of the day that worked for me pretty well and i am not the one complaining and drawing comparisons to pathetic windows!

Sorry, I meant to say your solution looks short term and maybe the problem is located outside of whichever operating system we are using.

I guess the problem is solved when we all stop talking about it on here:)

Well it's been just about two weeks since the "fix" of booting from the SL DVD, and now my WiFi isn't working again. Tech support told me to try and reinstall SL if I continued to have an issue so I did that today and I still have the issue. Unlike most of you I would revert back to Leopard but I was having this issue even with Leopard. So a new airport card (didn't fix it), new router and other ISP equipment (didn't fix it), a new laptop altogether (didn't fix it). So I ask you Apple, what are people to do? I was told my case is unique by many tech people who said they are part of the wireless specialist team and yet I've found 15+ pages of people with the same issue. Thank you for replacing the Airport card, and when that didn't work thank you for replacing my laptop (especially since the new one was a lot better then my previous one), but none of that helped the actual issue.

putnik wrote:
Sorry, I meant to say your solution looks short term and maybe the problem is located outside of whichever operating system we are using.

I guess the problem is solved when we all stop talking about it on here:)

Well either case everyone, I agree with putnik. It really doesn't matter what OS we use. My home WiFi connection has always disconnected and reconnected whenever it felt like but at least my college WiFi worked 100% of the time. Now since I've installed SL or since I got this replacement laptop it won't connect at all! The wireless specialists have never seen this issue before and think it may have something to do with the SL OS being incompatible with the Networks hardware. So I said okay, I will install Windows Vista Business on Bootcamp and see if it is the OS - it didn't work with Windows either. No matter if this issue is caused by faulty hardware, incompatible hardware firmware, or OS software incompatibility, Apple needs to find a viable permanent solution. I am a new Mac user as of the beginning of the year, and I love everything about Mac but this issue is killing it for me. I truly never had any problems with PC's and Windows. I use Windows XP on my Dell desktop, and I've used Windows Vista running with bootcamp on my MBP, and I've even participated in the Windows 7 beta testing for almost a year. Apple, please come up with a solution very soon!

Forum1983,

Yes, I too did Windows 7 beta for a year and am now glad to have moved to a Mac.

I existed on the internet for months by listening to the BBC World Service in order to keep a data stream going to avoid disconnects. (not an unpleasant experience:) It was solved eventually by a firmware update to the router...

I wrote a blog on the move to a Mac. I expect not everybody would make all the silly mistakes I did, but I hope you find it amusing and maybe educational...

http://putnik.blogspot.com/

so we know it's not just 10.6, but also 10.5.8 where we get the connection timeout for wireless. It doesn't matter if we use, wep, wpa, mac acls etc, if you do get connected and the machine goes to sleep, you're back at square one. How do we resolve this?

I never had the problem until the day I switched to 10.6. Never had any friends with the problem until then.

forum1983 wrote:
Well either case everyone, I agree with putnik. It really doesn't matter what OS we use. My home WiFi connection has always disconnected and reconnected whenever it felt like but at least my college WiFi worked 100% of the time. Now since I've installed SL or since I got this replacement laptop it won't connect at all! The wireless specialists have never seen this issue before and think it may have something to do with the SL OS being incompatible with the Networks hardware. So I said okay, I will install Windows Vista Business on Bootcamp and see if it is the OS - it didn't work with Windows either.

Then you should either visit your local Apple Store to have your hardware checked.

If you can't connect under Mac OS X or Windows, meaning *two completely sets of device drivers*, then it's a hardware issue somewhere - either with your machine or in the routers your college is using.

Since you've had your AirPort card and your laptop replaced, that points directly at your college's routers, for better or worse, or to a hardware issue in the Broadcom chip that provides Wi-Fi connectivity.

William,

You are right with all the assistance I've had from Apple the chances of it still being a hardware problem are slim to none, and as a matter of fact it most likely was never a hardware problem since I still have the same issue. I will definitely check with AT&T on any available firmware updates for my router. But they just came and replaced the router a month ago, I would think it would have the most recent software/firmware but on the other hand it is AT&T and I wouldn't put anything past them (I have an iPhone) lol.

HI,

I would like to share what I have found and how I have solved the problem of dropping wifi connection. I realized that this is not only problem with SL 10.6.1 when I got the same on my FreeBSD laptop (Windows and Ubuntu have no problems). My disconnections varied from 1 a day to one every five minutes and it was absolutely intolerable.
I found on the Linksys page (I use their router) the following solution and it worked like magic. I still think that SL simply cannot cope with some routers and their settings so it is not routers to be blamed for it... (Had no problems prior to the upgrade to SL)
Now my internet connection is solid after two months of constant struggle.

I hope it will work for you.

"Open an Internet Explorer browser page on your wired computer(desktop).In the address bar type 192.168.1.1 and press Enter...Leave Username blank & in Password use admin in lower case...Click on the Wireless tab.Set the Wireless channel to 11-2.462GHz...Click on Advanced Wireless Settings,Change the Beacon Interval to 75,Change the Fragmentation Threshold to 2304, Change the RTS Threshold to 2304 and Click on "Save Settings"...

This is for WRT54GS router, however I used it successfully on mine which is different (I cannot remember the symbol now).

@Przemek55 .. I've made the wireless changes you suggested to my Juniper FW and all is well. The defaults which used to be fine I guess are not as tolerated with the new versions of SL (10.6) and L(10.5.8)

For those still having issues, please grab a kernel log:

1. Open a term
2. cd /usr/libexec
3. sudo ./airportd debug +AllUserland +AllDriver +AllVendor
4. sudo ./airportd logger
5. reproduce the problem
6. open a console
7. find your kernel.log on the left side (expand /private/var/log
8. copy your kernel log for 3 minutes before and after your reproduced the problem and paste it to this thread.