Q: Dropping Wi FI Signal

Sorry to hear all your problems - "I feel your pain" as they say! But PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Apple - be careful how you fix them - my two year old MacBook that could not hole a wireless connection for more than ten minutes prior to Snow Leopard is now solid as a rock - so let's not take one step backwards in an effort to fix networking problems that you seem to have introduced for others!

Deleted the pbooks or whatever that post recommended and I'm buzzing along......for now.

I have also the problem that my signal strengh is very low and often dropping if I am more than maybe 5 meters away from the router. This problem is new since I have installed SF.
In the console I always get some of this in the console:

16.09.09 00:28:30 AirPort Utility[223] Could not connect the action importOK: to target of class AAUDocument
16.09.09 00:28:30 AirPort Utility[223] Could not connect the action importCancel: to target of class AAUDocument
16.09.09 00:31:30 [0x0-0x12012].org.mozilla.camino[152] Debugger() was called!
Installing 10.6.1. has not changed anything.

Message was edited by: hannesdierotznase

I was so frustrated that I called the friendly free expensive Apple Care (more than 5 EUR phone costs).
Well we created a new Network - no success
We did some fancy stuff with the network assistant - no success
Checked the Ping - don't ask me why - no success
Reseted Safari - thanks for loosing all my cookies - no success
We used the shift - Power-button thing - now I have a loud fan thank you - no success ether
I crated a new user Profile - no success

Well I wondered how a reset of one program could solve a systemwide problem... Maybe the help person was running out of ideas.
The fun thing is MAC OS claims the signal is there but truly it isn't and it's not working.
There is only one thing sure now they have no idea what causes this problem or it's so divers for everyone of us. I'm feeling so disappointed and sad now.

Please if someone has a solution for dropping signals let us know!

Thanks for the update. Is there a way this can be escalated up the Apple support chain? Or is there was way to find out if they even acknowledge this is a problem? It would be nice to know if they are working on a fix versus us banging our heads on the wall. I can live with this a little longer if I know they are at least working on a fix.

I've been having this problem too and getting sick of it ever since upgrading to Snow Leopard. I'm going to the genius bar to see if they'll do anything.

both my MacBook Pro does this as well as my wifes MacBook.
there are many logs like this one
9/17/09 8:52:10 PM SystemUIServer[92] Error joining Applejuice: Connection failed (-3930 result unavailable)

Applejuice is my airport extreme. This started only after the SL upgrade, my wife is ****** at me,
doesn't Apple care at all? fix this please !

Did you try my suggestion of switching from WPA/WPA2 encryption to simply WPA?

Yep, changing between different wifi encryptions doesn't help. Same result... it might work for for a couple hours with no problems and then crap out or it might crap out several times in a short period of time

This is jacked up!

Temporary workaround that works for me:
As soon as you connect to your wireless network, Open Terminal and start a ping going. I use my router IP address; but any local address will do:
ping 10.10.10.1 <return>
You'll see a string that looks like:
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=728 ttl=64 time=1.527 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=729 ttl=64 time=1.513 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=730 ttl=64 time=1.203 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=731 ttl=64 time=1.684 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=732 ttl=64 time=1.063 ms

For me this keeps the connection active and I can browse and move around the house to my hearts content without problems. It even survives sleep/wake.

Removing all traces of the wireless network, rebooting and then re-connecting seemed to help on on MB, but on the other, it takes ages to pick up the wireless network when you switch it on or wake it form sleep. Very frustrating.

I too am having this issue with my MBP. Seems to happen as well when either my MBP or my mac mini go to sleep.
Very annoying

Just got off the phone with an Apple wifi expert. He said he's 95% sure the problem is that the router is using WEP 64-bit encryption, which is not compatible with 10.6 (apparently wasn't supposed to be compatible with 10.5 either, but usually worked for some reason). It's an easy fix - just call your provider and get it changed to 128-bit.

Haven't had a chance to speak with my internet provider yet to get mine changed, so no guarantees this is the problem, but it's worth checking if y'all are still having problems. I'll post again once I've changed my internet.

There are so many factors that also go into reproducing the problem, such as what router your using ,your distance from the router (very important) as well as the time it takes before a problem occurs relative to your distance etc. It's not helpful to post multiple times about your ability to NOT reproduce a problem. Your previous requests for logs was already fulfilled, so I am not sure what your hoping to do with these sort of posts over and over again.

Bluedevil986 wrote:
Just got off the phone with an Apple wifi expert. He said he's 95% sure the problem is that the router is using WEP 64-bit encryption, which is not compatible with 10.6 (apparently wasn't supposed to be compatible with 10.5 either, but usually worked for some reason). It's an easy fix - just call your provider and get it changed to 128-bit.

And just how many such routers are out there in public WLAN access points that can't be so easily fixed? ("Erm, excuse me. I'm trying to connect to your wireless network with my shiny new MacBook Pro, but it doesn't work. Could you please call your provider and have them change your encryption to 128-bit. If you do, I promise to order another cup of coffee.")

In other words, add me to the list of people having similar problems since upgrading to SL, but who is not going to jump through all the hoops suggested in the various posts here. Airport networking worked fine for me under Leopard and Apple should issue a simple, i.e. "It just works", software fix for this problem asap.