WiFi dropping connection in OSX but NOT in Windows 7

Exact same issue, iPhone and Windows laptop don't drop connection but my new MBP drops it like it's hot potato. let's hope Apple fixes this.

mic mac moe wrote:
Exact same issue, iPhone and Windows laptop don't drop connection but my new MBP drops it like it's hot potato. let's hope Apple fixes this.

I think this might be a driver issue. My new i7 MBP has occasional connection drops, and also often not as good signal as my wife's late 2006 MBP (which isn't that good wrt. signal strength anyway) or my previous late 2008 MBP (which is very good). Our wlan router is a Time Capsule.

I hope this really can be fixed with a driver update - i.e. that it's not the card (which I assume is different on the current Intel chipset than the previous nVidia chipset) or the antenna that's subpar to the previous version.

I have to add that the connection drops are quite infrequent and not really a big issue, but the signal strength issue is more of an annoyance, since I don't seem to be able to use the computer outdoors in the garden at a spot where even my iPhone gets a signal, and where the other computers in the family have few or no problems connecting.

I have the same exact problem. My Mac is only 3 weeks old. A $2000 computer should NOT have this problem! I can't believe Apple won't just fix it...

Espen Vestre wrote:
I have to add that the connection drops are quite infrequent and not really a big issue, but the signal strength issue is more of an annoyance, since I don't seem to be able to use the computer outdoors in the garden at a spot where even my iPhone gets a signal, and where the other computers in the family have few or no problems connecting.

Hmm. The signal strength issue is gone after a Time Capsule restart. Now it's stellar. My iPhone also had problems with the TC just before I rebooted it.

So, I apologize for jumping to conclusions here, my MBP seems to have good networking after all.

I have same issue in my MBP13 PRO purchased in June 2010

Unfortunately I have the exact same problems mentioned. I only bought my Macbook Pro yesterday and this is already happening! I'm calling Apple tomorrow...hopefully they can help me but seeming as this has been an ongoing problem since 2006 I'm not too hopeful. People warned me about Macs, I should have listened to them!

I too have this issue. I have a first gen macbook pro and a 2 year old white mac book and they both have this issue since upgrading to snow leopard. They both worked great using 10.5. I have tried just about everything and nothing fixes it so far. It seems that if I use a static ip that it will work longer but it still cuts out. I did notice on one forum to manually enter your dns address - I have not tried this yet.

God Dammit Apple.
Respond!!!! There are many topics about this problem.

I have had same problems with later 2008 MBP. I'm located in Finland.

So far I have gone trough Motorola, TP-Link, Cisco and Buffalo routers with same result. Signal just keeps dropping.

Usually it starts by internet lockin up. Then if you try to reboot Airport it won't find the router anymore or keeps getting time out when trying to reconnect. Rebooting router usually helps. It looks like mac is somehow able to lock the router's wlan so that nothing moves trough. Usually lan works fine when problem occurs. When this happens my router drops also our Win computers signal.

I think this started during summer 2009 when my MBP was about 6 moths old. Snow Leopard is installed but don't remember when.

I have noticed that keeping router in factory settings usually makes it little bit more stable.

My biggest question is that is anyone suffering this problem with Apple routers? So far almost all other brands of routers have been mentioned in this discussion except Apple TC, Airport extreme ect.

2.2 core 2 duo, 10.5.8 and the same problem here, doesn't happen on the two win7 I have here only my macbookpro. to be honest I'm beginning to think Apple have jumped the shark. My iPhone4 also has the speakerphone fault so I'm beginning to think product has now been substituted for profit. If this is the way Apple treat their long term customers I'm not sure if they deserve them 😟

Reading through all of the threads the problems are related to the mac. I have 2 MBP13s at home, an Embarq 660 modem, even a just replaced one, a dLink wireless. Both macs time out at seemingly rendom times and the modem has to be reset even though airport shows as connected, but my Windows laptop is not affected at all nor or other Windows machines used on the network. This is obviously an Apple defect, as all of us are using a wide variety of other system components. Is anybody at Apple reading this stuff, or do they care?

If you read through all of the thread everyone has listed all of the combinations of hardware you could iterate. It is obvious that no matter what the equipment it boils down to Apple hardware and firmware. I have been using Macs since the 1980s so it's not like I have an axe to grind.

{quote:title=Quadron wrote:}
My biggest question is that is anyone suffering this problem with Apple routers? So far almost all other brands of routers have been mentioned in this discussion except Apple TC, Airport extreme ect.{quote}

Yep, same problems here with my wife's new MacBook Pro 15" i7, and we have an all-Apple network downstream of the wired router: an Airport Extreme (Simultaneous Dual-Band), an Airport Extreme with 802.11n (Gigabit Ethernet), an Airport Extreme with 802.11g (snow), and an Airport Express with 802.11n, all with the latest firmware available, which is 5.7 for the old snow BS and 7.4.2 for the rest. They're all in bridge mode with a wired D-Link router providing DHCP and NAT, and running a dual-band network with wide channels on 5 GHz, WPA2 security. We have an earlier MacBook Pro 17" and a MacBook, both running 10.5.8, that have absolutely NO problems on the same network in the very same locations. I think this is a Snow Leopard issue.

wwalkersd wrote:

{quote:title=Quadron wrote:}
My biggest question is that is anyone suffering this problem with Apple routers? So far almost all other brands of routers have been mentioned in this discussion except Apple TC, Airport extreme ect.{quote}

Yep, same problems here with my wife's new MacBook Pro 15" i7, and we have an all-Apple network downstream of the wired router ... I think this is a Snow Leopard issue.

But... We have a similar issue, with a Motorla cable modem connected to an Airport Extreme. However, only my wife's year-old (new to her) MBP has the problem. I'm running an older MacBook, which does not have the problem, and we're both running Snow Leopard (10.6.4). So this is evidence that the problem is restricted to MBPs, perhaps.

I've found similar problems posted all over the Internet, and one frequently suggested solution is to assign the MBP a static IP address and adjust the range of addresses the Airport will assign to avoid that particular IP address. I'm sure I could figure out how to do this, but (1.) does anyone here know whether it's likely to work, and (2.) could you point me at least in the right direction to figure it out if so?

—B2

Some more info: the problem is not just dropping the connection, there's also a problem with throughput.

I ran the network speed test at dslreports.com/speedtest on each of our three laptops, each sitting in the same place, with all other computers asleep, Time Machine turned off, verified nothing else happening with Activity Monitor.

MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz 10.5.8
19623 Kbps download/1502 Kbps upload/36 ms latency

MacBook Pro 17" Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz 10.5.8
17300 Kbps download/1213 Kbps upload/32 ms latency

MacBook Pro Core i7 2.66 GHz 10.6.4
2876 Kbps download/1464 Kbps upload/31 ms latency

I ran the test on the i7 a couple of times for consistency. But, yeah, the hot new i7 can only download at about 17% of the speed of the MacBook Pro 17 it replaced.