Wireless issue - every 30 minutes it drops

Do you have some sort of DHCP expiration setup on your wireless router? Have you checked to see if there's newer firmware for it?
DHCP addresses do expire, but that should happen pretty quickly and you normally wouldn't lose connectivity.

joebednarz wrote:
Having quite an issue. I am going to say it is a software issue but not completely sure.

So, have a MacBook Pro 17 inch. I've used it for about 6 months now and sometime between 10.5 and 10.6 the wireless started giving me issues. The problem is that EVERY 30 minutes, it drops the wireless connection... no issue with wireless routers, wireless card has been replaced by Apple, etc, etc. Did a PRAM / SMC reset. On the Disk Utility, I've had it "Verify Disk Permissions" and did the "repair".

Nothing seems to work... I move from various networks at work, at home, in between, and the drop occurs at the 11th and 41st minute of every hour whenever I'm on the laptop.

It is a very frustrating problem especially if I'm moving large files from my network to the laptop or vice versa because the connection completely drops out. Smart programs such as the Remote Desktop Connection will detect the drop and once wireless re-establishes, the RDC will open the session again, but that really isn't acceptable...

So, anyone else have this issue, and of course more importantly, has anyone SOLVED this issue?

Many thanks!

-JoeB

If I read this correctly this happens very regularly and in a variety of locations on different networks. If this is correct it implies something with your computer. The other poster was asking if a specific router was set up for some reason to have the DHCP IP address expire after 30 minutes. Normally they are set to expire once per day or longer. Also I don't think they would expire always at the same time each hour, you probably don't start your working everywhere at the same time so a lease expiring at 30 minutes would expire at more random times.

Do you see a drop in the airport strength by looking at the bars in the airport icon at these times? Or does it drop to zero bars? How are you reconnecting to the network once dropped? There might some clues as to the issue based upon these details.

Is there any chance you have software that tries to anything at these exact times? iCal event? Anything? Might not have to be something trying to access the internet? There have been reports of some out of date software causing wifi issues (Peer Guardian, Parallels and VMFusion known issues, Sophos antivirus) so you could see if you have these.

I am having this problem only it's more frequent and less consistent than every 30 mins. Sometimes it's every few minutes. It just started since the latest Software Update of Airport Utility that I did on 12/25. I'm beyond irritated.

I think it's a bug introduced in 10.6.5 - plenty of people experiencing it, see: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13320402#13320402