Dropping Wi FI Signal

Fine - it's supported in Snow Leopard.

For the curious, this document describes the meaning of the various AirPort menu bar icons:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3821

hello, I'm in the same situation as you.
Three days after updating Leopard to Snow Leopard, the wifi connection
disappeared.
Can not connect Airport. No signal received. The terminal is 1 meter.
With Leopard, everything worked.
I set the pref, I redo a new network, no effects, nothing.
I'm back with an external drive has Leopard and then stupefaction, not over wifi
more!
After 3 hours of essaix and research, I give up and go to bed.
This morning I turn on my macbook pro 2.4 ghz on Snow, and everything works again.
Then try to restart with Leopard, and it also works.
Meanwhile, I am very worried for my journalistic work, because without wifi
I am blind and dumb ...

William Kucharski wrote:

radlure wrote:
Note: I was able to fix the dropping issue for my home network by upgrading the router and reconfiguring the network, but that does not explain why only one machine, the MBP, was continually losing the connection while the others either connected to wireless solely or in unison didn't.

Because by definition if a firmware update helped, it was probably a firmware bug.

It could be anything from an issue with how the router handled a certain sequence of packets to it not handling more than a particular number of clients properly.

You either don't read well or you read selectively, and you chose to focus on just a part of my post that implies it was the router firmware. (I replaced the router with another brand and radio frequency type)

Why, in both my experience and many many others, do computers that are not running snow leopard stay connected? I know if you provide a near perfect-non varying-signal these effected computers will probably work as they are suppose to, but that doesn't mean the fault is with the router not when other computers using the same network do not show this tendency to lose the signal!

Also in my case again I repeat ubuntu linux worked, running from livecd, with no connection lost on the MBP that was continually losing the connection. Others have said that booting into windows on the affected machine allowed that computer to just work.

Apple isn't served by blind booster-ism it needs people to ask hard questions and keep it from shooting itself in the foot which it seems overly capable of doing.
Although I realize that not all the hits are relevant you can find a half a million hits if you google "macbook pro connection problems". I've been at many sites describing this issue and there is a problem-despite attempts to say otherwise.

Or perhaps using techno babble fan boys in conjunction with some fancy ad work will be the next Apple promotion?

Instead of it just works we could have something like; +The new uni body macbook pros they lose wireless signal like crazy but instead of blaming our product blame yourself for not being a network wizard.+ Or how about this; +While other computers stay connected your new macbook pro will show networks that aren't up to our extremely tight standards and drop those imperfect connections immediately.+ After finding or is it losing less than perfect signals you can then use your MBP as a fancy cheese board.

Bump. Luckily this only occurs to me at a place I occasionally go on weekends and when I does I have a back up laptop which I have not upgraded to SL.

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10135320#10135320

radlure wrote:
Instead of it just works we could have something like; +The new uni body macbook pros they lose wireless signal like crazy but instead of blaming our product blame yourself for not being a network wizard.+ Or how about this; +While other computers stay connected your new macbook pro will show networks that aren't up to our extremely tight standards and drop those imperfect connections immediately.+ After finding or is it losing less than perfect signals you can then use your MBP as a fancy cheese board.

I've explained how firmware bugs manifest. I've explained why a driver change may expose them - and why Apple has no responsibility to and in fact should not change them back if it complies with the spec.

I further explained why some machines may stay connected when others do not.

Finally, I said those with the issue should contact AppleCare; have you?

Yes, William, I have. The Apple experts response was "Go out and try other connections" The Apple Store-closest to me was recommended it's in an extremely busy mall and about a 50 minute drive.
From all that I knew I was on my own. In other words if other computers stay connected to the signal the MBP loses it doesn't mean a thing. <insert laughter here>
"Why?" the heretics among us might ask-because an Apple product has that mystique thing going for it-it doesn't need to function too!
Next time I'll go for a computer that functions the way I expect it to NOT how the Apple boosters and Ad department want me to see it or more to the point how they want me to pretend it works.

As a parting (I have other things to do so I'll leave you to your work here) note you did not explain well at all how the same machine could run linux and not lose connection while it lost it with 10.6.1.

I've mentioned it on several other threads but not here.

The firmware analogy again:

Say there is a bug where, when asked to add "2 + 3" the router's firmware returns "5" but when asked to add "3 + 2" it returns 6.

If Windows, Linux and perhaps Leopard all add "2 + 3" but Snow Leopard adds "3 + 2," Apple does not have the responsibility to nor should they rewrite their drivers to work around the broken firmware.

If you don't believe things like that happen, I have personally seen many, many examples, from hard drives that would fail to spin up on days with low barometric pressure at altitudes above 5000' to a longstanding firmware race condition that existed that would cause a drive to hang but that was sold in the tens of thousands to customers running any driver but my own and that I could work around by changing the order of two commands.

(It was still a bug and yes, I was able to force the company to fix it.)

I'm sorry you're having issues, but at the same time I can use either of my MBPs anywhere without issues, likely because my local Wi-Fi hot spots don't use the precise routers you're seeing problems with.

Think of it from Apple's point of view - seeing if you have the same problem at their stores immediately tells them whether it's a hardware or some other configuration issue that's at fault, given they've a room full of Macs there that have no AirPort issues at all.

So if your Mac dropped a connection even at the store, that is de facto proof that something's wrong on your Mac.

Disagree completely. If new MBPs only work well with Airport, then that should be made readily apparent to the buyer. By reading all the threads, you'll notice people using aiport having some of the same problems anyway. Which tells me they could walk into an Apple store and have the same problem and it would not be de facto proof that something is wrong with their mac. It could easily be the software. The fact is this: Apple does have a responsibility to their customers to ensure that their products work as advertised. If I buy a computer that doesn't play well with other networks, I should know about it before hand and that is not the case. I had the same problem everyone is talking about. I reinstalled Leopard and everything is fine. I will not reinstall SL until Apple has a solution.

rickrob wrote:
I reinstalled Leopard and everything is fine. I will not reinstall SL until Apple has a solution.

That's your right and perhaps the right solution for you.

For all you guys complaining about wireless issues with SL, please make sure you mention the make and model of your Access Point/Wireless Router and the firmware version running on it.
It'll help other users see if there is a growing trend with a particular model of an Access Point.
Also do check if you are running the latest firmware on it.

I am using a Dlink DI-524, with the latest firmware, 3.23 (which is at EOL). IF someone can recommend a wireless router brand that solved their problem, I'd appreciate it. My macbook has an airport card with the Atheros chipset:

en1:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x86)
Firmware Version: Atheros 5424: 2.0.19.4
Locale: FCC
Country Code:
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165
Status: Not Associated

A new interesting datapoint with an Ubuntu boot...
First some background: MBP from 2006.
My WiFi problems began with 10.5.8. No Wifi connection unless I'm very close to the base station.
Things I've tried
1. Deleted all the plist files mentioned in this and other threads
2. Downgraded kext files to 10.5.7 and then upgraded again
3. Waited for 10.6 AND 10.6.1 to fix this
4. Rebooted my router/AP (Netgear DG834Gv4) multiple times. Checked for new router firmware
5. Searched for open source firmware for my router/AP with no result
6. Tried 2 other routers/AP, 1 Zyxel and 1 D-link. Both situations show the same symptoms
7. Booted from the SL install DVD (as suggested in this thread)
8. Waved my hands and said magic words over the keyboard
9. Walked around in my house to locate any new invisible RF-blocking walls
10. Searched high and wide for solutions

Various other computers, iPhones and iPod touches have no problem at all connecting

This evening (Swedish time) I tried a new thing, I booted from an Ubuntu live CD and tried to connect. This should have made sure that the computer hardware was "seen" by something other than SL.

But... I get exactly the same symptoms, i.e a really lousy Wifi connection with stable connection only very close to the router/AP.

Prior to my Ubuntu try I really thought that the Apple had done something in the low-level firmware for the Airport card (Atheros 5424: 2.0.19.4) but now I'm even more confused.

I have absolutely no idea what to do now. And btw, we do not have Apple stores in Sweden so there are no geniuses to ask. I do NOT want to downgrade my machine to 10.5.7

I'm left with the hope that there is a fix in the upcoming 10.6.2

/Anders

William Kucharski wrote:

Say there is a bug where, when asked to add "2 + 3" the router's firmware returns "5" but when asked to add "3 + 2" it returns 6.

If Windows, Linux and perhaps Leopard all add "2 + 3" but Snow Leopard adds "3 + 2," Apple does not have the responsibility to nor should they rewrite their drivers to work around the broken firmware.

After 18 years in technology marketing for engineering-driven companies, I can attest to this being the answer given by engineering every single time.

But it was, is, and remains absolutely the wrong answer for any company that wants to gain or keep marketshare and customers. Just because we uncovered someone else's bug doesn't mean it's not a problem for us, and our product.

I use Linksys Wireless-N ADSL2+ Gateway WAG160N and have 4 computers on the network. Two desktops and two laptops with WIndows7, FreeBSD, Ubuntu 9.10 (from today), Gentoo and one Snow Leopard 10.6.1. Unfortunately only SL keeps losing signal. The router was running on old and now it is on the latest firmware. No change. I did contact Linksys and spent about an hour trying to change the setting of my router. No go.

I'm not that sort of person who would moan without making an effort himself to try and fix a problem. However, Mr. Kucharski's claim that Apple holds no responsibility for other's "broken software" is just ludicrous. What broken software? Does it mean that Leopard was working fine because Apple made a mistake and issued it with a driver which accidentally worked with my router before??? And now, they have rectified the 'problem' and it is not working!!! That's great! I'm just waiting for few more updates which will be 'ok' and yet make my laptop totally unusable.

What is interesting I have tried upgrading to Snow Leopard again only this time I started the upgrade but I turned off the Airport and I had no ethernet connected. Low and behold it worked! Everything works perfectly! What is strange is that after I finished the upgrade to SL. I turned back on the Airport and it signed right on to my network. I was able to access the internet. Yet, the funny thing is when I clicked to run Update it said I was not connected to the internet and had me connect to my LAN like I never had done it? Weird? Whats even more strange is that I also updated my Mac Mini the exact way as my MacBook and the Airport connection did not ask me to create a new connection?