Q: Dropping Wi FI Signal

Focusing on the "original" issue of this thread, which is the situation where 10.5 works just dandy, and 10.6 does not, I find it surprising that Apple can't just review the changes they made to the Airport software, and identify the guilty piece of code. They know what the software is doing differently --- they wrote it!

The first issue is whether a change in the code is causing misbehavior - what matters is if it complies with the applicable specification.

But more to the point, the vast majority of people are not seeing issues. I've mentioned I haven't had an AirPort drop at home, in hotels, at actual airports, coffee shops - anywhere - since March of 2007.

So it's not a matter of looking at the code to see what's broken, it's matter of figuring out why there are particular issues with particular routers and figuring out whether it's the router or their code to blame.

In general, this results in one of three resolutions:

1) If it's the router, the manufacturer is notified and it's up to the manufacturer to fix their code, or not.

2) If it's an Apple bug, Apple will fix it.

3) If Apple's code complies with the applicable specification, in general they will not modify their code to work around an issue with particular third party products if their code works fine with other specification-adherent products.

As you American say go figure this. We have at home two macbooks, one imac, one ipod touch, apple airport extreme router and my Lenovo lap top for work. All used to connect to the network and it would run for days when all apple machines were on 10.5.8 no issues what so ever.

I upgrade one macbook to 10.6 then the issues start this machine can only hold a signal for max of one hour then the whole network freezes, The result is that we have to switch off every machine and reboot.

If the 10.6.3 machine is not running then the whole system will run for days.

I have re installed 10.6 several times, I have contacted Apple support all to no avail.

There have been no other changes.

So ergo the issue is with 10.6 no if no buts FACT.

Apple have lost at least the purchase of two new lap tops because of this issue.

Totally agree.

But to play devil's advocate, I've ordered 2 different routers and I'll test those, and see whether they make a difference.

Will report back in a month or less depending on results of those tests.

James

Quite a few makes of routers have been mentioned here, all are not working with SL correctly.

Robin Bonathan wrote:
Quite a few makes of routers have been mentioned here, all are not working with SL correctly.

No, some of them are not.

There have been people who have mentioned issues with a wide variety of routers, but there have been cases of people with those same routers not having issues at all, many after having installed a firmware upgrade.

Then there's the question of what even the same model of router really means.

I've used this example before, but take a look at all the different hardware configurations, operating systems and Wi-Fi chips used in just one "model" of router, the Linksys WRT54G:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinksysWRT54Gseries

So for example two people, one with version 6.0 of the router and one with version 7.0 of the router, could report differing experiences when in fact in version 7.0 Linksys changed to a completely different Wi-Fi chip vendor.

I think you begin to get a sense of how complex all this really is.

Donald_Paul Ramsay wrote:
I upgrade one macbook to 10.6 then the issues start this machine can only hold a signal for max of one hour then the whole network freezes, The result is that we have to switch off every machine and reboot.

How do you connect to the Internet? The AirPort Extreme Base Station can't provide that access itself - it has to be talking to a router somewhere along the line that can actually connect to the Internet.

Is that router's firmware up to date? Is the AirPort Extreme Base Station's?

I foolishly posted when my problem was solved by de-select 'Wake for network access' in 'Energy saver' preference but I was wrong.

I could be wrong again to post this to this topic again but please spear me a bit of time. I cannot stop from doing this one.

My problem did not go away and basically, I had DHCP problem and dropping and reconnecting problem even when AirPort signal is in full.

Last week I thought my MacBook Pro is not talking to the router properly. I suspect Mac isn't identify itself to router therefor router doesn't understand Mac because in the "DHCP Client' list doesn't show the MacBook Pro. Mac's identity should be able to set in 'Account' preference, I thought.

I went to 'Account', then I found that by default, my account was set 'Standard'. This doesn't seem right it should be 'Admin', then I changed it to 'Admin'.

My connection hasn't dropped for a week nor been slow. After wake or boot up, there's been no problems.

The only thing I am still pazzled is that my Mac's 'Host Name' in the 'DHCP Client' list in the router is still 'unknown' and my PowerBook G4 and iPhone has thire host names correctly.

So, if anybody want to try it, please try it. For those who doesn't think this is no relevant, I apologise for posting this in wrong topic again.

I have been experiencing frequent wireless disconnects as well, and I'm seeing this in my console:

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

I have a fairly new MacBook Pro with all the most recent software updates, and we recently switched to AT&T UVerse, which means that we have the 2Wire 3800HGV-B gateway that seems to be causing others trouble too. But it was initially working just fine, with no disconnects -- it wasn't until several days after the switchover that I started seeing these disconnects. I had installed an Apple software update and thought that it might have introduced a problem, but now I don't think that was the cause.

Things I tried (that didn't work):

* (on MacBook) Deleting my network settings and recreating them
* (on MacBook) Setting net.link.ether.inet.keep_announcements=0 in /etc/sysctl.conf and rebooting, which someone on one forum said fixed his problem; it was allegedly suggested by Apple tech support
* (on 2Wire gateway) Changing the 802.11* channel
* (on gateway) Changing the security mode (WEP, WPA, WPA2)
* (on gateway) Changing the 802.11* mode (b, g, b/g)

What finally seems to have helped is rebooting the gateway. It may have a bug in its firmware that causes it to act oddly after a few days, oddly enough to confuse Apple's software, but other devices appear to be able to handle it -- though who knows whether letting it go for a few more days wouldn't have made the problem happen on other devices as well. It's been over an hour since I rebooted the gateway, and I haven't had a single disconnect, whereas previously I would have expected to see 5 to 10 disconnects in an hour.

What I am experiencing is not an Apple problem. Apple can't be held responsible for the bugs in third-party firmware. 2Wire needs to fix its firmware bug. And the fact that the MacBook was the only device affected is no reflection on Apple -- I doubt the devices that managed to hang on did it on purpose; I'm thinking that it was a lucky accident in how they were programmed that let them work around this problem. The next bug might mess up other devices while Apple's driver toughs it out.

As someone who posted in this thread (or similar threads) a long time ago (and is still having issues), I do at least have a working theory based on some testing. I think this is related to the DHCP bug that is known to exist with iPhones and iPads.

Setup:
Netgear router (WPN824), large number of wired devices, few on wireless (MacBook, iPhone 3GS, linux notebook, wii)

Originally, everything was dynamic IP. Every 2-3 days, the wireless on the router would just completely quit on me. The MacBook and iPhone were the only frequently used devices, so I knew they had to be the root cause (since the other two would not even be used and the failure would occur). The wired devices would keep working like nothing was wrong; only the wireless would cut off.

After some issues with a network printer, I changed everything to fixed IPs. The router almost never has a problem, but the MacBook and iPhone would cease to connect after a few days. The fact that static IPs had that impact tells me that DHCP is part of the issue, and having read over the thorough analysis put out by Princeton on the iPhone and iPad, I would suspect that Snow Leopard has some part of this issue as well.

I plan to upgrade to a new router (my wired network is otherwise gigabit, and that is driving the upgrade as much as anything), and plan to set that up as static from day 1. I will be interested to see if that resolves the problem in full.

As an update, after rebooting the gateway I stayed online for slightly less than 5 more hours without the connection dropping before I had to go. I think we can definitely blame my troubles on an upstream problem, probably in the 2Wire gateway, because they can be temporarily fixed by rebooting the gateway. It might be something further upstream (AT&T), but I think a firmware bug in the gateway device is the most likely culprit. I don't know whether they're even working on a fix for this at 2Wire.

Many thanks for this tip, quAn. I did this and it works much better now.
--
pqb

I solved my problem - picked up a new Macbook Pro!

All kidding aside, I think what happened, is after the SL update, it screwed up the wireless card (I had to keep turning airport on and off). After doing this so many times, I believe it made the card faulty, and after awhile the turn airport trick off wouldn't work.

I believe after the SL update, something happened and it made the Macbook run hotter (my battery fattened up and as soon as the computer heats up a bit, the wireless stopped working).

Just my thoughts....

I had to have a new airport card put in my 9 month old MacBook (luckily still under guarantee) after my wifi-dropping problems so maybe there's something in what you say Directo.

Switching off IPv6 worked for me.