Q: Dropping Wi FI Signal

after 10.6.1: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 4 (Disassociated due to inactivity).

Hi everyone,

I have three machines running on WiFi and an iPhone 3Gs 32GB:
1. iMac G5 2.0GHz ALS 1GB RAM Mac OS 10.5.8 - Broadcom Airport Extreme chip
2. MacBook Pro 15" Core Duo 2.0GHz 2GBRAM Snow Leopard (just updated) - Atheros Airport Extreme Chip
3. MacBook Pro 17" Unibody 2.66GHz 4GB RAM - Broadcom Airport Extreme Chip.
They all connect to a Global Surfer II 7.2. Router.

I run a Wireless internet connection. All the machines connect to WiFi. The MacBook Pro 15" will not connect to WiFi with a full signal unless the WiFi router is only a couple of metres away. If it's too far away it will not find the signal. On 10.5.8 it was connecting with a full signal. All the rest of the machines including the iPhone have no trouble at all.

I have a tendency to think that the Atheros chip needs a firmware update to work properly with SL.

BTW, on earlier Mac OSs, eg. 10.4.x and 10.5 the MacBook Pro 15" worked flawlessly. It was only on the later updates that the WiFi started getting very flaky.

Can anyone confirm this theory or have any ideas? Apple?

Cheers.

I am having a simular situation with the Airport on my macbook after SL, i think the WEP , WPA2 & WPA i think they are broken. no such problem before upgrade to SL.

i could only connect to wi-fi via open wi-fi network (which means no security at all).

Looked around some more on the net. Many people have tried different workarounds but none of these worked in my case. I had to bring the router closer again to get a full signal. I don't know what it is. I may try no security WEP but I can't see how this actually affects it.

Just wanted to say that I'm having the same issue. WiFi works for 5-30 minutes, then drops completely. I have to move my MacBook close to the Airport Extreme to be able to reconnect. Network traffic seems to trigger the disconnect.

I can't believe this wasn't fixed in 10.6.1 - both my MacBooks are running SL and both having this serious network issue.

Does Apple even know about it?

I take it there's no fixes, just a load of workarounds with varying milage...?

I just want to add my voice to this- I just bought a new MBP about a week ago and went ahead and installed SL out of the box. I also have a year old MBP that I am running next to it. Installed SL on it as well. Old MBP runs just fine, stays connected - no problems. Brand new mbp drops every 10 minutes or so. I don't experience the issue when I take the new MBP home- it runs fine on my personal system. I'm becoming very frustrating as it seems like there is something particular to this machine- but again there's no rhyme or reason when my old MBP works just fine. It's obviously not my network itself.

Also- I only lose external connection. I can brows our Domain systems and resolve internally just fine.

I have been watching many of these threads daily for some time now and I am beginning to get very frustrated and concerned. I too am having many of the same wireless problems that others are reporting. Mainly, I'll be surfing along and then BAM no web access. I am able to get back online by going to Join other Network, enter my network name, select WPA2, and enter mypassword. Sometimes it will work for an hour or two and other times it will drops multiple times over a short period.

I've tried every recommended solution and nothing has resolved it. Apple has to know about this right? I think it's definitely a Snow Leopard issue. 10.6.1 does not fix it. I never had this issue until after I upgraded. In fact my MACBOOK RAN ROCK FREAKING SOLID on 10.5.8. I even tried a clean install of SL with no luck.

I am very frustrated! Arg! I just want toss my macbook! Apple if you read these posts, PLEASE HELP US! We need a fix!

I agree. We need an update of some sort. I've had my 2.66 macbook pro now for 2 months and I've had network issues from day one on 10.5.8(before snow leopard). How do we know this isn't a hardware issue. I owned a powerbook g4 for 4 years and didn't have the "drop-out" issue like this. When i click the icon, it sometimes doesn't even recognize the airport and it's right next to it. It's just inconsistent!!!! It seems like apple has either skimped out on the wifi cards or it's some sort of software issue.

FIX IT APPLE! WE NEED HELP.

Hey guys, new Mac user here. Just got a MB Pro 13.3 and ran 10.5.8 when I first got it three weeks ago. Thing ran great! I was wholly impressed and happy with my purchase, now since I've clean installed SL I've got wireless problems worse than I had with my old IBM x60S running vista and about par with everything on this forum. I agree, Apple, Respond.

I am also having this problem, where the little signal meter just pulsates. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to actually connect.

For me, problems started on 10.5.7.

A fresh SL 10.6 seemed to fix things. I think 1 or 2 times the connection was lost. Nowhere near how bad it was on Leopard. So I was happy this problem seemed to have been fixed.

Now it's back with a vengeance after the 10.6.1 update. It's worse than ever. Connections dropped more frequently, and I have to rejoin my network to get it back. In Leopard, at least I could get it back simply by opening the Airport menu in the menu bar. After scanning, the connection would come back. So that much, at least, is different.

It's hopeless, utterly hopeless.

Follow up on my post:

I accidentally discovered that power-cycling the AP will let me see the SSID and reconnect. This is the only way I've been able to restore WiFi. I want to emphasis that 10.5.X was never like this.

Look for any AirPort errors in your system.log file - viewable via Applications->Utilities->Console.

I've got two MBPs running 10.6.1 and experience no AirPort issues whatsoever.

Don't know where I read this but the suggestion that worked for me was changing my router's encryption settings from WPA/WPA2 to just WPA.

I tried this with both my AT&T 2Wire Gateway and a Netgear W824v2 MIMO. The dropouts seem to have gone away.