Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

Presumably both your Macs have Atheros chipsets? .... Mine doesn't. It's a Broadcom on a late 2011 MB Pro...... I guess there may be a similar solution for these chipsets?

I have Atheros on my iMac and Broadcom BCM43xx on my macbook air and it work well on both!

Hi everyone, I would like to share my solution to a similar problem on the MBA I recently bought. Before I started to have the wifi dropping constantly, the wifi access was simply stable.

First, I used the airportd debug logger as mentioned by wifiguru. After rambling in my memory lanes for the past couple of hours, I noticed I disabled 'the password prompt required after sleep or screen saver begins' and screen saver. So I examined what the Mac said whilst checking event timestamps against my actions.

The following airportd debug is from a situation where I had the password prompt disabled:

Sun Mar 18 16:08:08.47 <configd[18]> SleepAcknowledgementCheck: Checking sleep readiness

Sun Mar 18 16:08:08.47 <configd[18]> _wowEnabled: WoW is active on en0

Sun Mar 18 16:08:08.47 <configd[18]> _apAppleWoWCapable: AP on en0 does not support Apple sleep notifications

Sun Mar 18 16:08:08.47 <configd[18]> wowExchangeRequiredForNode: WoW exchange not required for en0

Sun Mar 18 16:08:08.47 <configd[18]> _acknowledgeSleepEvent: Acknowledging sleep event

Sun Mar 18 16:11:34.38 <kernel> en0: link down event, informing supplicant.

en0 is the wireless interface on my MBA in this. MBA went to sleep mode at 16:08:08, with no password lock, and I woke him up at 16:11:34. Alas, the link is down... I have no idea of what the function name WoW stands for, but the event log text seems to suggest the Access Point on this interface does not suppoet Apple Sleep Notification feature.

Accordingly, my focus shifted to console logs (available from Applications>Utilities) to see if there might be something helpful.

18/03/2012 16:08:10.000 kernel: LE is supported - Disable LE meta event

18/03/2012 16:11:34.000 kernel: Wake reason: EHC1

18/03/2012 16:11:34.000 kernel: Previous Sleep Cause: 5

18/03/2012 16:11:34.000 kernel: The USB device HubDevice (Port 1 of Hub at 0xfd000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (2)

18/03/2012 16:11:34.000 kernel: wlEvent: en0 en0 Link DOWN

18/03/2012 16:11:34.000 kernel: AirPort: Link Down on en0. Reason 4 (Disassociated due to inactivity).

18/03/2012 16:11:34.000 kernel: en0: link down event, informing supplicant.

There you go, for some reason, the wifi could not stay available if the computer went into sleep mode. In my situation, I was forced to select the netowork from the list every time the MBA woke up so that it would be on the wifi network.

So the solution is to turn on the screen saver, which has done a trick!

This way, I see airportd debug keep emitting logs from the link quality check event, indicating that there is no link interruption.

Sun Mar 18 16:57:39.457 <configd[18]> __AirPortOpportunisticRoamTriggerRSSI: <en0> Opportunistic Roam : Current RSSI <-50>, Last Opp Roam RSSI <-42>

Sun Mar 18 16:57:45.459 <configd[18]> _bsd_80211_event_callback: LINK_QUALITY (en0)

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Lastly, as many others, I am one of a multitude of computer users who want computers that work to get jobs done. Although I do not mind debugging, this does not serve the primary purpose of using a computer. I do hope Apple address user experience from this angle, not just its unrivalled aesthetic appeal.

Thank you wifiguru for your nice pointer.

Sorry, but I paid a lot of money for my MacBookPro and started having the wifi dropping problem after of install and paid for a new version......of Lion...what happens when they try to sell us Mountain...sorry but Apple now is more similiar to Microsoft...bugs ...and bugs....and what happens with the company...only silence...

<Edited by Host>

At least someone here agrees with me!

I just did a software update on a brand new 21.5" iMac, updated iTunes, Safari, etc. as well as the RAW compatibility upgrade. Now having trouble with wifi dropping intermittently, it can only see my Airport Extreme if I do the look for networks feature. Then it connects without difficulty and works, until it drops the signal again.

This is a stock new iMac, I am a new Mac user and will not be be doing any serious under-the-hood work to fix this problem.

Yeah, this is officially ridiculous now...mine's still buggy, and takes a good 15 seconds to connect after waking from sleep...my $500.00 iPad? Nanoseconds, and perfectly reliable even 1/2 block from the house. My iMac is 10' from the Apple wireless Wi-Fi station... :-(

Not impressed. Maybe I'll try tech support again....

This is the most persistent problem Apple has had since I joined them in about 1999.

Cameron

I'm also suffering from this, with an 11" MBA. 10.7.3 did nothing for me, neither did re-installing Lion myself, or leaving my computer at the Apple store for them to investigate (they also tried reinstalling Lion, said it was fixed, and as soon as I got home I saw it wasn't). Definitely a problem with Lion, because my 2007 17" MBP running Snow Leopard works fine.

Seeing that there are at least a few hundred thousand views of this issue in the Apple Support forums (across multiple threads, but some single threads like this have that many views) this makes me think that this is on the scale of the iPhone antenna issue, but Apple just hasn't acknowledged this yet (the Genuises even said that there was not all that much they could do if this chronic problem doesn't go away because it's not an "official" Apple issue).

So how was it that the antenna problem finally got big in the media, forcing Apple to address it? Maybe if a few people in this support community have tech journalist friends, they can get this issue more prominently featured. $100B in the bank, I'd expect Apple would think that fixing this is important. Sad to see that the company's getting like Microsoft...keeping to locked-in release schedules and releasing products even if they aren't yet good enough (case in point, Mountain Lion!).

With the move to wireless products, this problem is even worse, because we're stuck unless we buy an ethernet to USB converter and happen to be in a place with an etherenet jack.

So what your saying, is newer technology is not completely compatible with technology that was used five years ago. It's possible. Or maybe technology that is from five years ago is not completely compatibible with newer technology. It's possible.

sgt_harris wrote:

I'm also suffering from this, with an 11" MBA. 10.7.3 did nothing for me, neither did re-installing Lion myself, or leaving my computer at the Apple store for them to investigate (they also tried reinstalling Lion, said it was fixed, and as soon as I got home I saw it wasn't). Definitely a problem with Lion, because my 2007 17" MBP running Snow Leopard works fine.

Seeing that there are at least a few hundred thousand views of this issue in the Apple Support forums (across multiple threads, but some single threads like this have that many views) this makes me think that this is on the scale of the iPhone antenna issue, but Apple just hasn't acknowledged this yet (the Genuises even said that there was not all that much they could do if this chronic problem doesn't go away because it's not an "official" Apple issue).

So how was it that the antenna problem finally got big in the media, forcing Apple to address it? Maybe if a few people in this support community have tech journalist friends, they can get this issue more prominently featured. $100B in the bank, I'd expect Apple would think that fixing this is important. Sad to see that the company's getting like Microsoft...keeping to locked-in release schedules and releasing products even if they aren't yet good enough (case in point, Mountain Lion!).

With the move to wireless products, this problem is even worse, because we're stuck unless we buy an ethernet to USB converter and happen to be in a place with an etherenet jack.

Message was edited by: Carlo TD

Carlo TD wrote:

So what your saying, is newer technology is not completely compatible with technology that was used five years ago. It's possible. Or maybe technology that is from five years ago is not completely compatibible with newer technology. It's possible.

Well that was definitely my findings..... as detailed a few pages earlier in this thread.

So... in that situation, would you think upgrading a router, might be necessary.

Actually, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. My new MBA doesn't work with my new anything else, and my 5 year old computer does. My old computer and new computer aren't interacting with each other...it's the same 1 year old router interacting with both computers.

That's what fixed it for me..... well not technically the broadband router, but I just switched off it's Wi-Fi and let my new 2012 Time Capsule do it instead.

do you think the idea that everything is chaning over to 64 bit this year (hense why some usb dial up modems dont work) could be a part of the newer technolgy vs older technology dilema?

sgt_harris wrote:

Actually, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. My new MBA doesn't work with my new anything else, and my 5 year old computer does. My old computer and new computer aren't interacting with each other...it's the same 1 year old router interacting with both computers.

.... which mirrors my situation too.... albeit 2008 and 2011 MB Pros instead, but Lion "broke" my Wi-Fi. My Leopard and Snow Leopard MB Pros both exhibited the same issue too, but only on the day that Lion came to live with us.... They'd been fine for 3 years plus. If my Lion wasn't present on the network then it all ran fine.

I still have 2x SN, 1x Leopard and the 1x Lion all working happily on the Time Capsule now.

.... and btw - my iPad and iPod never once had a glitch throughout all this.