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

Martinimac,

I like the Apple TV2 a lot. Had the first gen ATV as well, but the second gen is much nicer and only $99. We use it to stream music, Netflix movies, watch video Podcasts and occasionally rent recently released movies.

Another feature I really like and use is AirPlay. It allows any iOS device (we have 3 iPads and an iPod Touch in the family) to stream photos, movies music and more to the HDTV/Home Theatre system via Apple TV2. IMO, more and more Apps for iOS devices will be AirPlay enabled.

Regarding my iMac, no AirPort freezes since last Wednesday morning. I'm running some file transfers and downloads today, working the WiFi connection pretty well ... not even a blip in the connection that I have noticed. Doesn't mean it's gone, just a long time between drops for me.

If you head over to the MacBook Pro discussions, they have been having problems just like the new iMac's.

but... only the new 2011 MBP's. they have the 3 antennae's just like the new iMac's.

my problems started before i set up Time Machine also.

I'm betting that the 10.6.8 update will cure it. speaking of.. Anyone have the dev preview and a new iMac? working fine?

Ever since i got the emails with the Apple Eng, my network has been running pretty good. only the random stutters when loading websites. not anywhere near what it was.. so i bet all my info they wanted is not any help at all lol. I still leave Terminal open so i can run ping's etc when ever my connection seems to have problems.. so far i seem to miss it everytime. should just run a ping constantly when i go online.

I have been following this and similar threads ever since I upgraded to a new 2011 iMac a couple of weeks ago. I get Internet dropouts lasting from a few seconds up to a minute or so. Streaming radio stops and has to be restarted manually, sometimes causing iTunes to crash. All other Wi-Fi devices in my house work fine. I have tried all of the suggestions I could find on this and other message boards, but like most everyone else, nothing has worked. I had similar problems over a year ago with an older iMac I had. I finally had to remove the network password, and that fixed the problem. Even though my neighbors don't live within range of my Airport, I had always felt uneasy without a password. So a few months later, I tried password-protecting my Airport Extreme, and it work flawlessly. This was after Apple had released several software updates. Last night, I once again removed the network password from my Airport Extreme, and it has now been nearly 24 hours since I've had an Internet dropout. Streaming radio has been running uninterrupted for a good part of the day, and there have been no delays in loading websites. Since security is not a crucial concern for me (at least on a temporary basis), I may have to go without a password until Apple release a software fix. Of course, the next dropout could always be just moments away. I'll have to wait and see.

I changed my Airport channel yesterday after a dropout that lasted over an hour. I was waiting to see if the problem would self correct as before, but after an hour I restarted the Airport. The iMac connected instanty and then I changed the channel. No dropouts yet. However, it has only happened 3 times in 3 weeks.

The previous two dropouts lasted about 30 minutes and self corrected.

Zenobius,

What I'm doing to detect an AirPort freeze on my iMac is pinging it from a different computer. This may not be an option for you.

I have an Ubuntu Linux machine on my LAN. It is running a shell script that pings the iMac with a single packet, once per minute. If the packet fails, the script sends me an email. I then have the exact time of failure within a minute or so. This was helpful for the Apple engineer when he asked approximately when did the issue occur ... helped guide him to the right spot in the log files 🙂

I'll send you the script or post it here if you (or anyone else here) has a Linux machine and want to do the same thing. You could also run the script on a Mac, though you may have to tweak it to send email. Simply logging the "date" timestamp to a file with the word "fail" would suffice too ... skip the email.

I dont have a Linux box, but I do have a PowerMac G5 if the script will run there. could come in handy.

You'll have to tweak it to run on your G5. Change the PATHs and possibly the parm to ping ... -c 1 is for a single packet. Play with those parms on the command line first. Let me know if you need help.

The mailsend.sh won't work for you, but you could just write a log entry with the time stamp, similiar to the success line about the else. Write the fails to a diff logfile and use >> for append.

Your G5 might have Postfix, in which case you could:

echo "some message" | mail -s"ping failed" yourID@someplace.com

# ping_check.sh

PATH=$PATH:/home/user1/bin/

while [ : ]

do

ping -c 1 $1 2> /dev/null | grep " 0% packet loss" > /dev/null 2>&1

if [ $? -eq 0 ]

then

echo "`date` $1 OK" > /home/user1/bin/ping_check.log

sleep 60

else

mailsend.sh ping of $1 failed

sleep 3600

fi

done

# mailsend.sh

echo "To: your.userid@gmail.com

From: your.userid@gmail.com

Subject: $*

$*

" | /usr/sbin/ssmtp your.userid@gmail.com

One way to call it is like this:

ping_check.sh 192.168.1.23 (or whatever the IP of your iMac)

or

nohup ping_check.sh 192.168.1.23 &

I have a DNS server on my Linux machine, so I use:

nohup ping_check.sh imac &

As a follow-up to what I posted yesterday, this morning I had numerous streaming radio/Internet dropouts while using my iMac. I was relieved to discover that I was unknowingly connected to a second network that I'm running in my house. This other network is currently password-protected. When I switched back to the network that I removed the password from yesterday, the dropouts stopped. In fact, I'm going on several hours now without a dropout.

Very good news indeed!

I haven't had any AirPort connection "freezes" in nearly 5 days now.

Update on my saga (new iMac 27" lost all wifi connections completely - no dropping out occasionally, just out constantly).

Anyway, following running all of the tests that have been mentioned here, I dropped it off at local Apple store for repair last weekend and have just heard that it's ready for collection.

Whether it'll be working or not is another matter, especially if its a driver issue - will keep you updated when I fire it up tonight.

If you can find out, I'm very interested to learn what the Apple Store did to your iMac. Particularly if it was hardware, software or both. Pleaser let us know.

Will do.

Was surprised (and pleased) that it was 'repaired' as the thought did cross my mind that they would hang onto it until the drivers were updated - there's a lot I can be getting on with.

As a short term workaround, has anyone tried using USB wifi dongles for a stable connection? Being new to macs I don't know if these would work?

My new iMac 27" (3.4 GHz i7) experienced a loss of wireless connectivity today. Network all good (full set of green lights etc). My MacBook Air was connecting normally, so the problem clearly lay with the iMac and not the network or Time Machine (my router).

I tried turning AirPort off and back on, but this did not help.

I restarted the iMac and it cleared the problem.

I too have the issue, but only when it goes to sleep and rewakes...

I also don't have the Airport service as the 1st in the list, as I have a mac-to-mac direct ethernet gb connection... and I need that ethernet connection serviced first...

And I use an old Linksys wrt54g router, stock firmware (not dd-) - while my new Buffalo whr-hp-300n is on loan. When it's back, I'll see if its worse on N......

27" iMac, 2 weeks old. Add me to the list of users having internet connection issues on wake up. All connections are either extremely slow or timeout completely.