Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

And don't expect it to get any better. Tim Cook has said that the PC era is over. He wants to replace our Macs with iPads. I'll give you my Mac when you pry it from my cold, dead hands... it will be using an Ethernet cable mind you.

Pax,

I am right there with you... I need my Mac. iOS is great but it does not meet my computing needs. My previous generation Mac Pro with Snow Leopard was the best Mac I ever had, (going all the the way back to a Mac Plus). My SE/30 comes in a distant second. I am just extremely frustrated by Apple's silence. They appear to have forgotten how they got through the bad times... It was customers like you and me who got them here. By the way I am letting my MacWorld subscription lapse for the same three reasons. iOS, iOS and iToys.

You can't have my Mac, I'll keep it going as long as I can get parts. Snow Leopard Lives.

See a separate post for my fix to the whole WiFi problem...

Mike

I see very, very, few people here telling us what wireless router they are using.....
.
.

No one is going to read 106 pages of complaints.

And, no one here can help you with your complaints.....

The common thread here is that Lion fails with wireless routers that work reliably for Snow Leopard, Leopard, iOS and Windows. It does not matter what the router is. The same computer re-booted into Snow Leopard has no WiFi problems. This is a Lion operating system problem, nothing less.

WiFi PROBLEM SOLVED... TREMENDOUS IMPROVEMENT IN NETWORK SPEED. ANYONE CAN DO THIS!!!

Here is how I did it:

1) I spent two weekends wiring the entire house for gigabit eithernet. (My muscles are very sore from crawling around in the attic like a monkey with a drill and a roll of wire.)

2) Purchased an eight port gigabit switch to direct traffic.

3) Connected all Mac desktop computers and printers to the network.

4) TURNED OFF WiFi everywhere. (Time Capsule WiFi is now only for our iPhones and a Snow Leopard MacBook.)

5) Measured the peak network speed at 3.1Mb/sec. This is limited only by my internet provider and is about a 100x performance improvement over Lion WiFi.

6) Renamed my Mac Pro as the "Cowardly Lion".

7) Poured myself an adult beverage.

Someone send me an email if the problem is ever solved. I am still rooting for the rest of you.

Mike

Holy smokes, my WiFi stayed up overnight! It is still connected to my b/g network.

So, I think Lion has an 'n' mode issue. To be certain, I'm going to purchase (then return)

another 'n' capable AP. But, all my diagnostics point to 'n' driver issues in Lion.

Any one else try this? Results?

QJack wrote:

It is still connected to my b/g network.

So, I think Lion has an 'n' mode issue.

I found it to be exactly the opposite.

Remember that 802.11b is a very simple signal type. 802.11g is a more dense data encoding for more bandwidth on the same channel size. 802.11n, is a multi-channel use that allows up to three channels to be "bonded" into a single stream. On 2.4Ghz, that allows about 3 different APs to be active without interfering with each other. On 5ghz, there are many more channels, so that you can get many more APs up and running, interference free.

On 2.4ghz, you have bluetooth, portable phones, VCR rabbits, baby monitors, and many other types of user devices which can create interfering signals.

It appears to me that Lion is having problems "recovering" from interferring signals. That is, if you have a great network, you see limited issues because you don't have things happening that cause the WiFi layer to report errors and keep trying to recover/make things work.

But, those that are reporting continued problems, no matter what, and then buy a "router" and/or "switch bands" or "switch technology", seem to illustrate that when there is a problem network, you can switch your network type and have good results.

This would be why people switching to the old driver no longer have problems (those that it works for at least). Either the old driver is not reporting the kind of error that the new one does, or it is not reporting anything up the stack to the other layers and so it stays working fine with the old driver. If you've tried the driver and it doesn't work for you, then perhaps you don't have "The Lion WiFi Problem", and you need to look at a different level of the network for your issue.

I modified to b/g only and I still encounter numerous disconnects.

It is a general wifi issue, not only N.

You're probably right...

Michael Sciascia wrote:

I see very, very, few people here telling us what wireless router they are using.....
.
.

No one is going to read 106 pages of complaints.

And, no one here can help you with your complaints.....

The common thread here is that Lion fails with wireless routers that work reliably for Snow Leopard, Leopard, iOS and Windows. It does not matter what the router is. The same computer re-booted into Snow Leopard has no WiFi problems. This is a Lion operating system problem, nothing less.

I really don't know why this simple point get's lost in all of this. I don't know how it can be seen as a 'network problem' when the problem only exists for most of us with a computer running Lion, but works fine with all other devices. None of us were told when upgrading to Lion that it would only work with certain routers. So it's a Lion/Apple problem.

torndownunit wrote:

I really don't know why this simple point get's lost in all of this. I don't know how it can be seen as a 'network problem' when the problem only exists for most of us with a computer running Lion, but works fine with all other devices. None of us were told when upgrading to Lion that it would only work with certain routers. So it's a Lion/Apple problem.

Whilst you are correct, it seems that Apple are burying their heads in the sand and are either really unknowledgeable about this, or doggedly sticking to the lie that they don't know and blaming all manner of other things..... e.g. Apple Care took me through all the usual what cordless phones to do have?.... then microwaves, monitors etc etc, and then they insisted I reset SMC and PRAM etc etc.... All standard stuff and shouldn't be regurgitated to us victims as it's insulting for many of us, and wasting of a lot of time..... I just couldn't get past any of that with Apple Care.

Anyway, the point is that the fix for me was a new model Time Capsule. Maybe a new Airport Extreme will do the same as it's presumably the same gubbings inside...... Now I know it's a significant expense, but for me it saved the continual tearing out of hair, and I just HAD TO get it fixed for productivity reasons..... & I'm delighted with the speed of my Wi-Fi now that I'm mostly on N.

It was worth the expense to me as if I hadn't then I'd still be screaming about this on a daily basis.

I could not agree more with this view!! It is 7 months I am struggling with the issue and evey time I call Apple (In Italy) care I have to explain the whole story. The last advice was to reinstall Snow Leopard.... 😢 no comment

I repeat THIS is the FIX!

Mauro, con questo si risolve!

FIX FOR WIF DROPS:

Guys i had this problem in both iMac (mid 2009) and Macbook air (2011) i've just tried all the solution and now i found the only that REALLY WORKS!

it's easy just follow this:

http://rys.pixeltards.com/2011/09/04/osx-lion-wifi.html

THIS JUST WORK

This will reinstall Snow leopard wifi driver into Lion.

It worked both on my iMac and Macbook air.

No more drops.

No problem for which WiFi u have it work both with BROADCOM and ATHEROS.

(on my macbook air i have broadcom, and atheros on my imac this fixed both!)

bye

Well, I hope this wasn't a trojan, because I followed the instructions and still have disconnecting internet. This fix may have worked for you, but was useless for me.

i'm really suprised! Have u restart your computer?

Have worked on both my computers!

What I don't understand is why Apple don't make an announcment informing us luckless 'consumers' that Lion is the source of the problem?

If it worked under Snow Leopard/Leopard then surely it should be easy for Apple (with a $100 billion of our cash in its bank account!) to fix the **** thing! Meanwhile, hundreds oof us Lion users are spinning our wheels, effectively doing Apple's work for it!

I might add I've been using a Mac since 1984 aside from excursions to Linux, I still think it's the standard for its GUI (even if they did 'steal' it from Xerox Parc).

A thousand quid for a product that doesn't do what it's meant to do?

B

PS: and censor my response