Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

I didn't say anything disrespectful or obscene. I merely replied to another commenter saying that I would be willing to join group action to get this issue resolved, and talked about my issue (blah blah, can't stay connected for more than 10 mins etc etc..) I have also posted about my lion wifi issue on a thread that specifically talks about the wifi issue with the 27inch imac because I at first thought that it was an imac issue and several responses from posters that mentions (and rhymes with 'glass paction toot' ) were all deleted.

Freducken wrote:

I am also at my wit's end with this. Every other computer (5 total) work perfectly.

What kind of router are you connecting to? What protocol (802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n) is your router configured to use? What frequency/channel and band is your router using?

If you turn off all of your other devices or otherwise stop them from using the WiFi network, does that change how your mac behaves?

There are reports on the internet of "too many" devices causing routers to stop working for some devices. There are also documented situations of broken firmware in the routers being the issue. Does your router need to have its firmware upgraded to fix any problems which the manufacturer has provided fixes for?

I did not read your post nor wish to. If it was removed then it was removed for a reason. You were lucky that it was you post and not your account that was removed, as is often the case.

Cheers

Pete

The other computers are an iPhone 4, New iPad (silly name IMO), 2 windows laptops, and the iMac (2011 model) in question. Originally I had (still have in the closet) a Netgear wireless N router. After much, much, trial and error I discovered that the iMac would drop wifi when N was active from the router (either in singl N, or combo N G B). When N was deactivated the iMac did not drop it (this is not acceptable). I figured hey, the router must be faulty (after updating the firmware and trying tons of troubleshooting) so I purchased a Berlin wireless N router. Same issue! Dun! Dun! Dun!!!.

I have tested and retested with only 2 computers connected and the issue persists. No joy. AppleCare escalated my case to Tier 2 and then had me gather up a bunch of data to be sent for engineers for review- that was more than 6 months ago and no word from them.

Every solution posted on the various I have tried with no avail (probably a total of 30 hours dedicated to this by now, not including reinstall times of the OS. I downgraded to Snow Leopard, no joy. Clean installs of Lion and further troubleshooting 3 times over now, no joy. Used the Atheros firmware downgrade floating around in other posts, no joy. Set up static DHCP, no joy. Set up encryption other than WPA2, no joy. Set up without encryption and only MAC address listing, no joy. Installed only non wifi related Apple software updates over clean lion install, no joy. Installed only wifi related Apple software updat over clean Lion install, no joy. Deleted network location, keychain presets for airport connections, re established new location in wifi settings, no joy. I am sure I am missing other troubleshooting steps I have taken, but hey, I am not a robot.

Now when I contact AppleCare on this issue which has only been twice, they direct me to the Tier 2 agent that 'helped' me originally but he never returned my voicemails or emails. I really don't see a point to a hardware swap since so many other folks have this issue, but I would be up for it if Apple and their Geniuses would allow me the option. Can you tell how frustrating this has been for me? LOL

I have a 27 inch imac running lion (it was purchased Feb 2012) and I've tried all of these fixes (including reinstallation) and as you so elegantly put it, no joy 🙂 I've had customer support remote into my computer and take information, but I haven't heard from them either. One poster mentioned that they purchased a powerline AV (it puts the signal through the electric wiring in your house so you don't have to run a 100ft ethernet cord) and just connected the computer via ethernet. They cost about $100 and before I lose my sanity trying to make this computer work, I think I am going to have to try that as a last resort. Judging from when these posts began, the problem is already close to a year old and yet still there is no fix..and I cannot wait another several months for this issue to be fixed.

I think if you have money in the bank to go that route, or even better to buy an airport extreme, I would say perfect. I actually wouldnt mind purchasing an airport extreme and leave all these issues behind, but my wallet and I aren't seeing eye to eye on that. LOL. The biggest slap in the face would be if the Airport Extreme had the same issue, LOL. I hope there is some light at the end of this tunnel for us. Sigh....

Re: wouldn't mind purchasing an airport extreme and leave all these issues behind.

Sorry to dissappoint...but same issue with 3 different locations with 3 different version of Airport Extreme. (All running current firmware thank you.)

technomystic wrote:

Re: wouldn't mind purchasing an airport extreme and leave all these issues behind.

Sorry to dissappoint...but same issue with 3 different locations with 3 different version of Airport Extreme. (All running current firmware thank you.)

Shame it didn't help you, but it fixed my nightmares instantly. I have a new Time Capsule, but I expect the WiFi part is the same as a new Airport Extreme.

WSR wrote:

technomystic wrote:

Re: wouldn't mind purchasing an airport extreme and leave all these issues behind.

Sorry to dissappoint...but same issue with 3 different locations with 3 different version of Airport Extreme. (All running current firmware thank you.)

Shame it didn't help you, but it fixed my nightmares instantly. I have a new Time Capsule, but I expect the WiFi part is the same as a new Airport Extreme.

There are, of course lots of things about WiFi which could of gone wrong. You may have had a problem with WiFi router compatibility/firmware issues and the new router fixed that for you.

Others are seeing behaviors that seem to indicate that perhaps there is a bug in the driver. But, since some people are fixing the problem with new routers, it might be that Apple is using an obscure feature of 802.11n which is only correctly working on some of their routers, but might break under circumstances of too many devices connected, mode changes from n/b/g etc.

It's hard to say, and since Apple is not describing there viewpoint anywhere that we can see, it's hard to "act" on your own to fix the problem without some very direct problem resolution steps to eliminate the non-problems.

Freducken wrote:

I think if you have money in the bank to go that route, or even better to buy an airport extreme, I would say perfect. I actually wouldnt mind purchasing an airport extreme and leave all these issues behind, but my wallet and I aren't seeing eye to eye on that. LOL. The biggest slap in the face would be if the Airport Extreme had the same issue, LOL. I hope there is some light at the end of this tunnel for us. Sigh....

It sounds like buying one of the USB wifi dongles works just fine. If you don't have a lot of distance or harsh building structure to deal with, perhaps it would work for you.

gphonei wrote:

WSR wrote:

technomystic wrote:

Re: wouldn't mind purchasing an airport extreme and leave all these issues behind.

Sorry to dissappoint...but same issue with 3 different locations with 3 different version of Airport Extreme. (All running current firmware thank you.)

Shame it didn't help you, but it fixed my nightmares instantly. I have a new Time Capsule, but I expect the WiFi part is the same as a new Airport Extreme.

......You may have had a problem with WiFi router compatibility/firmware issues and the new router fixed that for you.

....... it might be that Apple is using an obscure feature of 802.11n which is only correctly working on some of their routers, but might break under circumstances of too many devices connected, mode changes from n/b/g etc.

I have tens of potential WiFi devices, be it PC, Apple or handheld.... All were perfectly happy until my Lion MBPro came to live with us.

My original router was b/g only and so it was not an "n" problem. Only with the purchase of the TC did I change to n and 5GHz wherever possible.... which has been a big benefit to my network, so I do not begrudge having bought the TC..... Other people here can rightly be upset that a new device breaks something that was working perfectly well.

Freducken wrote:

Every solution posted on the various I have tried with no avail (probably a total of 30 hours dedicated to this by now, not including reinstall times of the OS. I downgraded to Snow Leopard, no joy. Clean installs of Lion and further troubleshooting 3 times over now, no joy. Used the Atheros firmware downgrade floating around in other posts, no joy. Set up static DHCP, no joy. Set up encryption other than WPA2, no joy. Set up without encryption and only MAC address listing, no joy. Installed only non wifi related Apple software updates over clean lion install, no joy. Installed only wifi related Apple software updat over clean Lion install, no joy. Deleted network location, keychain presets for airport connections, re established new location in wifi settings, no joy. I am sure I am missing other troubleshooting steps I have taken, but hey, I am not a robot.

Here's what Apple Engineering sent me to do, and I don't have the problem. The data this creates is pretty significant, but if you understand enough of the fetch_debug.sh, you can probably find the reason that the WiFi stack disconnected and that might be more revealing than anything else.

Step 1: (Enable Logging)

- Steps to enable Logging on the Mac:

Launch Terminal and then paste this:

sudo /usr/libexec/airportd debug +alluserland +alldriver +allvendor +LogFile

sudo killall configd

Step 2: (Reproduce the Issue)

Now reproduce the issue. Once you reproduce it, please note down the time the issue occurred. Wait a minute before you proceed to Step 3.

Step 3: (Send Apple information)

Now copy the the attached shell script (fetch_debug.sh) to your Desktop and run it in Terminal: (Remember to run it as root)

sudo ./fetch_debug.sh

This saves a file on your Desktop. Please email this to me along with the time the issue occurred.

Please email me the

- SendToApple.tar.gz file saved on your Desktop ( from step 3 )

Step 4: Disabling the logs ( Paste the command below in Terminal)

sudo /usr/libexec/airportd debug -alluserland -alldriver -allvendor -LogFile

-------------------------

below is fetch_debug.sh

#!/bin/bash

cd ~/Desktop

mkdir SendToApple

sudo cp -R /var/log/* ~/Desktop/SendToApple

echo getting mobility......Please Wait.. This can take a bit

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/SystemConfiguration.framework/Versions/Current/Resou rces/get-mobility-info

sudo cp ~/Desktop/mobility-info* ~/Desktop/SendToApple

tar cvzf ~/Desktop/SendToApple/kerneltar.tgz /var/log/kernel.* /var/log/wifi.log

echo Scanning for networks now

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -I -scan \

>> ~/Desktop/SendToApple/airport_scan.txt

echo Saving System Information Report

system_profiler -xml -detaillevel full > ~/Desktop/SendToApple/systemProfiler.spx

gnutar -cvf SendToApple.tar SendToApple/

sudo rm -rf ~/Desktop/SendToApple

sudo rm -rf ~/Desktop/mobility-info*

gzip ~/Desktop/SendToApple.tar

This is definitely worth a shot. It is exactly what the Apple guy had me do too, only I didnt look through the files myself. I will try this on the weekend 'cause for now I have to worry about other stuff.

For now I will keep using WPA TKIP encryption which seems to mitigate the issue, of course, with a huge throughput decrease in my network. It seems to only happen when I am on WPA2 AES Encryption, but I don't think that, specifically, is the issue. Even when I'm on just N network without encryption the connection drops. When I am on N WPA TKIP the connection does not drop but I am also limiting my Router to B G Speeds because of the encryption so I am not really getting N. Somewhere in all this is my culprit, and I am sad to see in posts above that even getting an Airport Extreme may not solve the issue.

Freducken wrote:

This is definitely worth a shot. It is exactly what the Apple guy had me do too, only I didnt look through the files myself. I will try this on the weekend 'cause for now I have to worry about other stuff.

For now I will keep using WPA TKIP encryption which seems to mitigate the issue, of course, with a huge throughput decrease in my network. It seems to only happen when I am on WPA2 AES Encryption, but I don't think that, specifically, is the issue. Even when I'm on just N network without encryption the connection drops. When I am on N WPA TKIP the connection does not drop but I am also limiting my Router to B G Speeds because of the encryption so I am not really getting N. Somewhere in all this is my culprit, and I am sad to see in posts above that even getting an Airport Extreme may not solve the issue.

In particular, if anyone having this problem will open a terminal window and do

sudo /usr/libexec/airportd debug +alluserland +alldriver +allvendor +LogFile

sudo killall configd

and then just wait for the problem to occur and look in the /var/log/wifi.log file for what WiFi is seeing, that might be enough for many people. If there is a driver problem, or something else weird going on, one of the other mentioned log files might be the place to look.

When you are done with looking at the logs, remember to turn off all the logging with

sudo /usr/libexec/airportd debug -alluserland -alldriver -allvendor -LogFile

It might be a little bit of work to do this, but it could be very revealing. If you find something in your log files that is interesting and indicative of your problem, you might go ahead and post it here so others can find that "text" in searches if they are trying to figure out what's going on.