iMac 12,2 (mid 2011) airport (wireless) problem

You've hit on something with internet radio! I bought an iMac yesterday and I'm not too pleased😮 with the wi-fi problems. Despite system and firmware upgrades my record was five minutes of wi-fi connectivity. However if I have iTunes playing a radio station in the background it seems better, i.e 52 minutes of connectivity.

tententwenty,

Instead of Radio, if you keep a ping going to your wireless router, does that also keep your connection alive ?

eg:

Launch Terminal app and paste this:

ping x.x.x.x

where x.x.x.x is your router IP address ( say 192.168.1.1 etc.)

In my own case ping or a continuous activity on Wi-Fi connection was just extending the connectivity period from 4-5 minutes to 30-35 minutes (that's too only some of the times). The important point is that iMac does not release it's IP address. Router still keeps the status of iMac's IP as active.

Wifiguru,

Pinging kept the connection open for half an hour, so that does have an appreciable effect.

All,

It has been said before in previous messages, but the simple fix is to remove WPA2 encryption down a level to WPA and your wifi should perform as expected. It appears that the new 2011 iMac's have some issue with WPA2 that will hopefully be addressed with the next software update.

pitti,

My iMac was connected to the WPA/TKIP network since the day it was bought but I'm still here posting problems.

Not too sure if there is any others on WPA and still getting the problem but I'm guessing it might be a little more complicated than just encryption.

That's to bad, as I had hoped problem was solved for all. I can still report that mine has been up since I made the encryption change. Let's hope that Apple will address this issue and post a permanent fix for all.

it is not an encryption issue in my case either

others have posted here and in other threads that encrytion change did not resolve issue

I'm on WPA too so it can't be that.

I have noticed however that if I ping the router continously that my wireless connection stays up for much longer. I therefore have to leave open a terminal window doing this in order to use my IMAC

This doesn't solve the problem completely - I still get the wireless dropping occassionally but it does allow me to get a few hours of work before it happens and I don't seem to get repeated drops like I do if I'm just surfing the internet without constantly pinging the router.

Add me to the list of people impacted by this problem.

- I've tried just about everything including replacing the machine before finding this thread -- at least now I know i'm not alone...and now I know not to go out and buy new router or get my cable company to replace my modem.

I find that this disconnection happens when i am doing something other than browsing (ie watching a movie, in excel, ect). When I go back to browsing I lose connection and have to turn off and on airport. Very infrequently do i lose connection while browsing and never while downloading/ uploading.

There has to be solution to this----hopefully someone cracks this case soon----good luck to all.

Another follow-up...removing the password from my network worked for about 10 days. Then, all of a sudden, I had dropout after dropout. I then turned my 5 GHz n network into a g-only network. I also went back to password-protecting my network. After about a week, I have had no dropouts. I wonder if the culprit is networks running in 802.11n mode? It seems the best we can do is trial-and-error. In my case, it seems just when I think I've found a temporary workaround, the dropouts reappear. At this point, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all will be fixed next month with Lion.

The important point here is that only 2011 iMacs are dropping off the network. No other devices in people's networks are dropping off. This is not a router, network, modem issue. It's a driver or airport card or firmware issue (or a combination) with the iMacs. Apple MUST fix this.

Count me in with this wi-fi issue on my mid-2011 iMac 27". It is driving me crazy!! Have tried all the suggested fix and the problem persists. Apple are you listening? This is a major foul up...I have never purchased an Apple product with such a fatal flaw.

I agree that it only seems to happen to iMacs- in my case a 2007 model. However all iPads, iPods and my wife's MacBook are unaffected. Just to +1 to say I'm glad this thread is here because I though I was going crazy. This happened to me when I had to replace a failing UFO shaped AirPort and got a new Dual-Band AP Extreme 2 weeks ago. Now my iMac has to use a neighbor's wifi to get reliable internet.

I want to add that my MAC is a 27 base mid 2011 model---

in response to david K - I disabled N on my router and this did not solve the problem for me--