Q: Dropping Wi FI Signal

Yeah - if a Genius actually made that kind of sweeping statement, they need a little "reeducation" from the head office.

I can see that statement being made regarding a particular model of router, but not about an entire brand.

I swear the genius actually said that and to be honest after having no resolution for over a month and the internet not really working the way it should on my new macbook.. i was happy to pay the $99

so far so good

Thief4 wrote:
I swear the genius actually said that and to be honest after having no resolution for over a month and the internet not really working the way it should on my new macbook.. i was happy to pay the $99

so far so good

I really hope this solves the problem for you. Just so you know there are people in this thread having similar issues using the Airport Extreme as well. So far there does not seem to be a common type of router that fails.

Uninstalling PeerGuardian fixed it for me.

adolfox wrote:
Uninstalling PeerGuardian fixed it for me.

This has come up before. Were you the original poster that mentioned uninstalling PeerGuardian? Or are you a confirmation?

Hi fellows:
I've upgraded to SL 6.2 nearly a months ago, I have the same issue and found this discussion when searching for a solution. Tried all the suggestion(except getting a airport ex) but none worked.
was on tiger b4 the upgrade, no such a problem. reinstalled SL and things was a bit better for a while.
Now, I realized when I'm on ethernet connection, the problem still happens!! browser says i'm not online while skype, ichat etc is working ok. i checked istat during signal drop, it says my ext. is updating.
I was ready to get the new imac, but after this, I lost a good part of my royalty for mac. countless hours and efforts were lost. I'm also convinced its SL's problem. no response whatever from apple on such an issue is very disappointing. hope it gets solve on the forever taking update!

I just bought a mini sunday. I is having this problem even with the freshest updates. Is there a solution? If not, I will be taking it back ASAP. This is unacceptable as this thread started early 09' and apple is not fixing their end. From my reading, it is a snow leopard issue.

Does anyone think apple will fix this soon?

Please note all that I have found 8 topics covering this problem or similar the common probelm is Snow Leopard. The topic lines are.

2wire wireless router problems after 10.6
Network okay butnot internetz
Internet connection Fails
help please: dhcp not working, self-assigned ip addresses
Airport Dying....
irport constantly disconnecting and reconnecting...
Wireless 802.1X Dropouts Network Diagnostics
Can we please have a FINAL solution to slow internet in Snow Leopard.

All you guys in the states with dLink and 2wire routers I have an airport extreme and still my macbook is not working properly so I really do not think it is a router problem.

Thanks must go to all those how have contributed to this discussion my own conclusion now is we must wait and see what happens with 10.6.3. I have however learnt my lesson which is do not buy any upgrade until at least the x.x.5 version and that all the bugs are cleared. I bet if I switch on my old Snow iMac running 10.4.x it will work on my wireless network.

Another person with the same problem. Brand new MBP. Works great on my mom's network but goes in and out on my home network. A network that works just fine for the thinkpad and osx10.4 MBP.

My experience mirrors that of an earlier post: When it drops the wifi, it tends to pick it up again within 60 seconds, but turning the airport off and back on forces it to reconnect immediately. It's never dropped a connection when I was downloading/uploading anything and otherwise goes in and out nonstop (sometimes giving me 10 minutes of uninterrupted peace).

This is extremely frustrating. I've already lost far too much time messing with computer and router settings. I'm taking it to the local apple store this weekend. I'm a loyal apple fan and if I'm this ******, I can't even imagine what recent converts must feel. In the meantime, my bf has decided he isn't going to switch to mac after all.

I'm thinking Apple is unable to fix the problem. And now to force-reconnect my airport and post this.

Some weeks ago, an Apple engineer -- after a lot of detective work involving obtaining a DLink 615 wireless router exactly like mine and configuring it the same -- found what he thought was the cause of my wireless connection problem. After making the change he suggested, I have been using the system for several weeks with absolutely no problems. The problem he found was a default network setting in the router. The simple fix is:

On your wireless router, go to:
Network Settings -> Always Broadcast ( compatibility for some DHCP clients)
Uncheck this option.
Save Settings.

I do not know if Apple's procedures will mean that this diagnosis will be posted internally so it eventually gets to all their support personnel. It is possible that a similar fix will work with other routers.

california99 wrote:
Some weeks ago, an Apple engineer -- after a lot of detective work involving obtaining a DLink 615 wireless router exactly like mine and configuring it the same -- found what he thought was the cause of my wireless connection problem. After making the change he suggested, I have been using the system for several weeks with absolutely no problems. The problem he found was a default network setting in the router. The simple fix is:

On your wireless router, go to:
Network Settings -> Always Broadcast ( compatibility for some DHCP clients)
Uncheck this option.
Save Settings.

I do not know if Apple's procedures will mean that this diagnosis will be posted internally so it eventually gets to all their support personnel. It is possible that a similar fix will work with other routers.

Does this mean that he had you turn off the SSID broadcast?

I don't have a Dlink router, but I did have some luck with going to a non-secure non-SSID broadcasting router. Qwest gave me a different modem/router at another location and I can't get it to talk to my router where I had working before. Not really thrilled with the Actiontec modem/router they sent me.

No. This was a different setting. I actually don't know what this particular function is, but it sure did cause problems for Snow Leopard.

Speaking of Genius statements, here's a very interesting one I heard when I brought my MBP in to schedule a fan replacement:
I mentioned off hand that it was also suffering from wifi problems with SL. I told him that even though the Airport bars remain full, it loses the connection randomly and I can't reconnect to my network unless I restart Airport.
His reply was that a lot of people have been coming in with the same problem, they haven't been able do anything about it, and they're waiting for Apple to issue a fix.
I mentioned your take on it about how SL tightened up wifi compliance, and since fixing it would require going back to the sloppier standards in Leo (making it essentially a downgrade), that Apple wasn't likely to do anything like that.
His reply was that doing nothing was a very bad idea, and that because of this issue alone they've had more returns than they've ever had, and that their sales had even suffered from it. He hoped I wasn't right.
I'm hoping he's right, and that a fix will be issued soon. I now have hope again.

Don't forget that Apple has a tendency to be stubborn...
But it does sound like that something will have to happen, I just got some hope back, thanks mate.

Maddoktor2 wrote:
I mentioned your take on it about how SL tightened up wifi compliance, and since fixing it would require going back to the sloppier standards in Leo (making it essentially a downgrade), that Apple wasn't likely to do anything like that.

I've never said anything like that, though others have.

What I have said is that it's likely that different router vendors adhere to specs in different ways and those differences can cause these issues, and historically when a bug was the fault of a third party, Apple usually doesn't modify their software to work around the third party's issues.

On a side note, as I've also mentioned there are a number of posters who have stated they've had issues since Leopard and have had to go back to Tiger, so the issue isn't as cut-and-dried as many would like it to be.

There are very likely multiple issues occurring here which unfortunately have been lumped under one overreaching thread.

For example, the problem california99 referred to above and its solution is not one of dropping Wi-Fi at all, but rather is due to a disagreement between a DHCP server implementation and Mac OS X over how to handle DHCP traffic. Such an issue would leave you connected to the router but unable to obtain an IP address - not a Wi-Fi drop in the same way as those who see their AirPort bars go grey for no obvious reason.