My Macbook keeps disconnecting itself from the internet

As an update to my own situation, I finally contacted Apple Customer Service and they suggested that I change my security settings on my 2WIRE router from WEP to WPA or WPA2.

I had kept the security on WEP originally because my 10 year-old Clamshell iBook on OS 10.2.8 could only use WEP. But since we rarely use the old iBook, and because I read somewhere that if I update it to OS 10.3.9, I could then do WPA, I went ahead and made the change. Now I just need to update the old Clamshell iBook.

It's been a day and a half since I changed the security to WPA and WPA2, and it seems to have solved my situation.

Good luck to the rest of you. If it re-occurs, I'll re-post more info.

Both my 15" and my GFs 13" MacBook pros have this problem. I have to close and open my MacBook to get reconnected takes seconds but is a right pain. I dont hold my connection for more than 30 mins, on o2 broadband os x 6.2.

Wheres the use "connection robustness" that was in tiger lol

No it is a pain though and no fix yet by the look o it.

Hi guys,

I had the same issue. Here is what worked for me.

1. Turn your computer off.
2. Press Option, Command, R and P simultaneously and turn the computer on
3. Keep Option, Command, R and P pressed until you hear the typical mac rebooting sound twice.

This will reset some of the hardware settings and it solved the issue for me. Please report back if that is helpful.

nope ive done a full reinstall too and nada!

OK everyone, I'm feeling your pain here. I have the exact same issue as all of you with my Late 09 MBPro. Heavily and relentlessly encouraged by my Mac-owner friends to go Mac after yet another problem with my PC, I took the leap of faith. Now, so far I love the machine except for this issue and the learning curve which I expected and can deal with on my own. However, since I spend a vast majority of my time on the internet, this problem has me questioning my purchase of a 17' MBP for $2500 and your issues with this problem adds salt to my wound. Like others, I've found that turning the AirPort off and back on corrects this issue for short, irregular periods.

While literate and very talkative, the young souls at the Apple Experts have proven totally useless as it seems they believe this is a software issue. I know for a fact that this issue only occurs when I am using wireless at ANY location using ANY router type. Yet,the focus is still on me making certain I have installed the latest updates and reinstalled Snow Leopard time and again.

Now that I've found this discussion I'm pretty much convinced that this is a hardware issue even though I'm a Mac Newbie. I really wanna love this thing unconditionally but I gotta tell ya, something with this problem has to give and it certainly won't be me. Any fix-it results I get I will pass on. Please do the same! Sighhhhhhhhhh

I've been using WPA2 all along. I had this problem for a few months, then didn't have it for a few months, and in the past month it has come back: if I close the laptop for any significant length of time (haven't done the experiments to make this precise) and open it up again, it has lost the wireless network and I have to type in the network name, protocol, and password again. It doesn't seem to drop while I'm using it actively, though.

I suddenly had the same issue a few days ago. Required a PRAM reset. Cleared my caches and inputted DNS IPs into the DNS tab of the network settings. Seems stable for now, but reception can be patchy and I can either get drop outs (loses connection) or even being connected it fails to connect to a server. Luckily, it's okay at the moment...

Same thing. As I earlier reported, I was having trouble staying connected; but then, in the past month, I had no problems, but for the past two weeks, I have had nothing but disconnect problems with my Macbook. I find the situation to be unacceptable, which is a real shame because other then the disconnect issue my mac has performed admirably.

I am having the same problem. I bought a new 13" 2.53ghz MacbookPro a week ago. The wifi is randomly disconnecting. I have tried:

1. Reconfiguring the router with WPA and Wep encryption
2. Changed SSID.
3. Changed DNS and ip to static config.
4. Changed the channel the wireless router is on.
5. Zapped the pram.
6. Unchecked "Ask to join new networks"
7. Deleted all known networks except one.
8. Unchecked "Remember networks this computer has joined"

It seems less frequent now. It was happening every few minutes. My airport connection is full bars. I have an old powerbook g4, dell laptop, and my iphone connecting without problems.

Apple please recognize this as an issue. If there is a solution out there. Please let me know.

There are two things you should do:

1) change the radio channel on your router as some of you have tried. You are probably running into a lot of interference with other devices in the area and the wireless router is dropping you to a lower speed. I did this and it solved my problems.
2) Most wireless routers in your neighborhood are using the same default IP address ranges! 192.168.1.X. When there are conflicting IP Addresses, routers and devices tend to get confused and drop connections.

Change those factors and voila...

It would be great if Apple's changed the wifi networking device drivers to be more forgiving instead of dropping to the lowest speed on conflicts.

Che!

Exciting for me is that a new modem/router seems to have fixed my problem. Since the moment I configured it, my MacBook Pro hasn't dropped the connection while in use. The modem/router is an upgrade to the previous one.

I will keep you posted.

Changing to channel 10 fixed has solved my disconnection problems for the last week. It had been an issue for the last 6 months. I can see at least 6 other wireless networks in the area.

For those of you who are unable to correct connectivity problems by changing the Channel number, try changing the IP address range assigned to your network.most networks are default to the 192.168.1.X range.Switch to something else like 172.16.125.X. You need to make sure you reduce conflicts with other computers in your neighborhood that can result in lost network packets leading to connectivity issues.

If none of this works, try using traceroute 192.168.1.1 in a terminal window to see where your connection is failing. Use the router ipaddress in place of 192.168.1.1.

Che!

Changing the Wifi broadcast channel on my Netgear DGN2000, moving over to WPA2 security and modifying the IP range of the DHCP has solved my disconnecting issues on a late 2009 MBP 17" and my partner's Macbook plastic 2008.

Don't know which of the above fixed it but I would advise all of them as you don't know how many other routers could be conflicting your own setup and the solution above addreses 90% of what the root cause could be.

I've been using a friends new MBP to try to diagnose this issue. What I have discovered is that on my home Network the signal hasn't dropped out once in 4 hours. BUT I am on WPA2 (Airport Extreme) and my friends is on WEP.

Is there any way to adjust the wifi settings on the MBP to allow it to see more/less stable secure networks? Anyways it's going to the genius bar on Thursday for a check anyway