Q: Dropping Wi FI Signal

Oh come on...

I have Ubuntu Linux working fine, I have Mac OS X 10.5 working fine, on three different systems, i had IOS 3 and now have IOS 4 working fine, I upgraded one of my systems to Mac OS X 10.6 and it wouldn't connect. I downgraded it back to 10.5 and it's working fine now... All on the same wireless router.

Now where would you start looking to find out what was going on?

My 2 cents as I'm also experiencing other machines being knocked off my home network after upgrading to SL 10.6.4 on my MBP:

I previously had no problems with the wireless connection to my DI-624 when my 2006 MBP was using Tiger, but since the upgrade I noticed that if I'm only running a moderate download on the MBP via Wifi (say <1MB/s), the connection holds perfectly and indefinitely, but when if I try downloading a steady 1.3MB/s or more, the transfer stops in less that a minute, and I then see the router rebooting => knocking all the other machines off.

The MBP automatically reconnects after 30 seconds or so. After the router reboot, I occasionally see a 'ghost connection' on the router DHCP list with a MAC address 00:00:00:00 associated with the MBP IP address.

If I connect the MBP via ethernet, there's no problem. I've tried most of the remedies on this thread but none seem to resolve the issue, but it's seems to be SL causing the router to reboot as I can't get any of my other machines (Tiger, XP) to do this.

Hey guys,

same problem here - installed 10.6.4 and the problem arised. The problem has something to do with the DHCP lease, therefore with the AirPort Driver, since I spontaniously get a connection when I hit the "renew DHCP lease"-button in the system preferences (or deactivate and activate the AirPort in the menu bar).

Any idea how to solve this problem?

george-totnes wrote:
I have Ubuntu Linux working fine, I have Mac OS X 10.5 working fine, on three different systems, i had IOS 3 and now have IOS 4 working fine, I upgraded one of my systems to Mac OS X 10.6 and it wouldn't connect. I downgraded it back to 10.5 and it's working fine now... All on the same wireless router.

Now where would you start looking to find out what was going on?

Obviously with the router's manufacturer to see if they have any firmware updates available for the router in question.

As I've said time and time before, "it works with everything else" is not a valid debugging strategy, either pro or con - it's no better to say "the router works with everything else" than it is to say "my Mac works with every other router."

Also, when you say Mac OS X 10.6, did you upgrade to 10.6.4? Did you experience issues connecting to other routers with the machine you updated to Snow Leopard? Did you check to see whether you could access the router when booted from the Snow Leopard install DVD?

Thanks for the experimenting, if you could explain exactly what to do and look for many people having the issue could try and see if there are any common points.

I would correct you on a point: it's not SL, it must be how Sl AND the internal wifi card or one of its chips interact. Here we have the same machine NOT working with the internal card and working with an USB key, so it's not just SL. Both are Apple products, so PLEASE deal with it.

No problem - By SL I meant that it was as a consequence of the SL upgrade rather than a co-incidental hardware fault.

I've actually made a further discovery: on another mac forum, I saw someone had seen an improvement by changing their encryption from WPA2 to WPA. As I have an old router that only supports WPA - which I use - I turned the encryption off and the problem disappeared completely! I re-activated the encryption (WPA) and it returned.

Any high speed download triggers the transfer to stop, even video streaming on some sites with high speed feed: The transfer stops abruptly (I have iSTAT in the menu bar so its very obvious), the signal/connection is lost while the router reboots, and then it searches for the AP signal and reconnects all in say 10 - 15 seconds.

I don't know enough about how the encryption works to make sense of why a high speed transfer would cause the router to reboot but not affect a low speed transfer, but since an open connection is stable regardless of load, it would suggest that this is the area that would benefit investigation.

I'm tempted to downgrade to 10.6.3 to see if it disappears but it seems easier to ad-hoc knock off the encryption when I need to.

So I tried to dig through this whole article looking for a fix to my problem, but to no avail... can't say I read the whole thing, so maybe my proposed solution has already been brought up.

Just set up a new iMac with Snow Leopard and a new airport extreme... had been having issues with the old airport (and I knew it was the airport because all of my wireless goodies were getting booted, not just the MacBook). With the new iMac set up, went ahead and reinstalled 10.4 from scratch on the MacBook for a clean slate... and immediately ran into the issue of having full signal, but nothing could connect. Changed some settings on the airport to no avail... then decided to tap into my neighbor's unprotected network, and had the same problem. Since every other piece of equipment in the house works fine with the new WiFi, I can only assume, as many have, that the issue is with the MacBook itself. On restart it would find the network, then lose connectivity within 3 minutes.

I found my fix on another website... figured it was worth a shot since nothing else was working.

I turned off my bluetooth, and I haven't lost signal yet. For me it's not an issue, since it's my "sit in front of the TV and browse" machine.

I'm certainly no technical computer master, but it worked for me.

Hey guys,

I did turn off Bluetooth, and believe it or not, the problem disappears. Thanks mellerbroek.

Thanks for the suggestion; tried with bluetooth on and off - no difference in my case. Still drops on heavy transfers. The hunt continues.

Well, I lied, the problem is not solved. I still lose my signal every few minutes even though bluetooth is turned off.

I found the solution to my issues (posted earlier in this thread). Turns out the issue of the flooding of 'SOA local.' DNS lookups was being caused by EPSON driver software - there's a post here that describes how to turn off a 'network discovery' feature in the EPSON Event Manager software... my problem is fixed!

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2519348&tstart=0&start=15

I have had my 17" MBP for 18 months and never had a wifi problem. Within the last couple months (maybe after the 10.6.4 upgrade) I started getting drops every 5-20 minutes. I use my machine with a CiscoVPN connection so it is a bummer every time the link drops since I have to re-login.

Started looking into this yesterday. I see this message in my /var/log/kernel.log file when the link drops:

Aug 12 22:35:52 mbp kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 4 (Disassociated due to inactivity).

I have been been experimenting with running a background ping of my wireless router while working on my machine. I am just running a ping inside of a terminal window. So far I am just running with with no options (about 1 per second).

I got 2 hours with no drops last night and another 1.5 hours tonight with no drops. Last night after the 2 hours I stopped the pings and the link dropped within 5 minutes. Tonight I turned off the pings and and it dropped within 15 minutes.

I have a 2wire wireless router with our AT&T Uverse setup. It has been rock solid for 2 years.

This is an acceptable work around for me until Apple figures out what happened.

I've had this problem ever since upgrading to SL. I've been keeping an eye on this thread from time to time and I can confirm mitziron's workaround does indeed work.

I have been opening a terminal window and starting a continuous ping. I have been doing this for probably 6 months and it has been ROCK FREAKING SOLID 100% of the time. It hasn't let me down. This was really annoying at first, but I was so frustrated with this problem I can live with the workaround. Starting the ping doesn't even phase me anymore. It takes 2 seconds to start.

Now if only I knew how to automate the process at start up

The background ping works for me as well.
Thanks a lot for the workaround!
Any news from apple?

"I have been been experimenting with running a background ping of my wireless router while working on my machine. I am just running a ping inside of a terminal window. So far I am just running with with no options (about 1 per second)."

I'd like to try this as i'm having the same problem. Would anyone be able to tell me how to run a ping inside a terminal window please as I can't work out how to do it. (I have found the terminal window though). Thanks very much.