Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

delventhalz wrote:

gphonei wrote:

I have new hardware in my family, and we haven't had problems with Lion running on 4 different Macs. So, I contend that there are problems with the environment which is stimulating the broken software to be visible, that's all.

Ah. Now that is likely a correct assertion. Mostly at any rate. Obviously most users are not having pesistent issues. We know that much. There are no official numbers, but I would guess the number is high (thousands?), but not high enough to really put egg on Apple's face. The key factor is that the issue varies a lot from user to user. That generally indicates an upgrade or overhaul at a very deep level in software. You saw this sort of problem with Vista, when suddenly tons of pieces of hardware needed new drivers, many of which didn't exist.

So Apple overhauled the way Lion handles wireless somehow for some reason (probably a good reason), and it doesn't play nice with certain pieces of hardware that don't quite know how to handle it. Atheros chips seem to be having lot of trouble for example.

We can, of course, speculate for all eternaty. My guess is that AirPlay devices coming in and out of range, were not behaving quite right, and so someone made some changes in how disconnection was handled to deal with that. It could also be that there was a revision of the Atheros hardware which required some additional driver support that broke something. It could be all kinds of things, including faulty code that was dropping the connection itself, and not telling the OS to reconnect.

Another example, my iMac only has issues with my (old) Airport express. My friend's generic router works fine.

Atheros + Snow Leopard + Airport Express == GOOD

Non-Atheros + Lion + Airport Express == GOOD

Atheros + Lion + Lynksys == GOOD

Atheros + Lion + Airport Express == BAD

Something in that last combo doesn't work well with the new way Lion handles wireless.

You didn't say whether both routers were tested in the same environment, on the same channel, with the same 802.11 b/g/n selection with the same encryption etc. It may not of been any of those details that matter, but a specific behavior of the driver. But, I'm still really interested to know why I've never had problems, if it was a "lion" issue, as opposed to a "lion misbehavior when WiFi is messed up"...

I posted a message 2 weeks ago, suffering from the same random wifi loss.

I bought myself a TimeCapsule and created a wifi network from it, from which all my idevices (iMac, iphone 4S and 3Gs and my girlfirend's ipad 2) connect to. I haven't had any wifi loss since....

It has only been a week, but I would encounter this problem at least once a day in the past.

So if anyone has a time machine, could he try to create a wifi network from it and see if this problem still occures?

antrozous wrote:

I posted a message 2 weeks ago, suffering from the same random wifi loss.

I bought myself a TimeCapsule and created a wifi network from it, from which all my idevices (iMac, iphone 4S and 3Gs and my girlfirend's ipad 2) connect to. I haven't had any wifi loss since....

It has only been a week, but I would encounter this problem at least once a day in the past.

So if anyone has a time machine, could he try to create a wifi network from it and see if this problem still occures?

I've said the same thing fixed my issues here a few times... and it works whether it's 2.4 or 5Ghz. My old router was supplying the WiFi before and I knew perfectly well it wasn't caused by interference from cross bands, or microwaves, cordless phones, or any other such stuff. I'm in a quiet cul-de-sac and the misbehaviour started the moment my new Lion MB Pro turned up.

But then, in this case, I don't see what the problem can be. I know it's up to the Apple's tech team to figure it out, but I just don't understand what the problem can be...?

although i was sceptical, since switching to channel 11 a couple of days ago, the signal hasn't yet dropped out. (fingers' crossed ...) thanks everyone who has helped me on this thread.

if i do end up changing my router, it's unlikely that i would buy an airport or time capsule - i've been thinking of a Billion BiPAC 7300N or 7800N. would this be a good move ?

10.7.4 and the misery continues...again and again.

It's enough for me, I'm downgrading to snow leopard today.

How hard can it be for one of the biggest companies on the planet to find a solution for such a basic feature?

Even Microsoft is doing better I guess.

antrozous wrote:

But then, in this case, I don't see what the problem can be. I know it's up to the Apple's tech team to figure it out, but I just don't understand what the problem can be...?

Lines of code. Thousands, if not millions, of lines of code.

Here let me cook up a little example:

* * * *

Let's say one of the lines in 10.6's wifi code, not a very important one, says "I love cake."

Cake, of course, is inherently insecure, so in 10.7, they changed that line to "I love pie."

Now, for most hardware, most of the time, this is fine, because they are looking for the code "I love <dessert>." Any dessert will do.

But for some pieces of hardware out there, certain wireless chips, or certain routers, or maybe just when certain pieces of hardware are combined, they are more picky, they look for "I love cake." But you updated to Lion, and suddenly, they can't find it. In a panic, your WiFi explodes killing millions.

* * * *

This is why any new piece of software, especially an OS, needs to go through a ton of testing on a variety of hardware and combinations of hardware. You just never know where little incompattibilities like this could pop up. Windows has a particularly hard time of this. There are tens of thousands, if not millions, of different possible Windows machines out there, and just as many peripherals. In Apple's case, I'm not quite sure how they missed this one, particularly since I am using all Apple hardware (iMac + Airport Express). In the past, there stuff has always "just worked," which is why I've been willing to pay a premium for it at times. I guess that's not true for me anymore.

But I'm not an Apple engineer, so who knows, maybe it was unavoidable.

I am currently investigating with an Apple engineer to identify where the problem comes from. It seems to be linked to dns resolution. (not clear yet why this only happens with Wi-Fi).

Try to do the following: Go to System Preferences->Network->WiFi->Advanced->DNS

and set the DNS to google DNS: 8.8.8.8

Please report if this helps or not.

patplusplus wrote:

I am currently investigating with an Apple engineer to identify where the problem comes from. It seems to be linked to dns resolution. (not clear yet why this only happens with Wi-Fi).

Try to do the following: Go to System Preferences->Network->WiFi->Advanced->DNS

and set the DNS to google DNS: 8.8.8.8

Please report if this helps or not.

Your friendly Applecare engineer got that from a Level 1 script. I'm sure it's been tried here already (without success), but think about it.... Wi Fi dropping due to a DNS entry?.... I don't think so.

Yes, I know this seems strange. But according to the tests I did, the Wi-Fi connection is actually up & running (ping on an ip works). It's just the dns query which fails for some reason... Wondering if it's due to the changes in the code they did to support Airdrop...

What do you guys think of this. I just bought a 2012 i5 iMac and dropping connectivity issues with 10.7.4

The iMac is connected wirelessly and it will not allow me to turn on WiFi. It defaults back to Ethernet2 and there is no ethernet cord plugged in. WTH?

This is a different issue. (In my case Wi-Fi is active, but dns requests are failing which means you can't do much, and it looks like the connection is down).

Did you try to change the setting on your Wi-Fi router? btw, why do you have 2 ethernet interfaces?

I've tried to set wifi to an unused channel, delete network from keychain, set dns to 8.8.8.8 (google), change IP V6 settings...

None of them worked. I live in the same building as 1 week ago when I upgraded to Lion. Before (with SL) I have never experienced a wifi drop on my Macbook.

I think this problem has to be solved by Apple. It's incredible they didn't do until now, we are at 10.7.4, not at 10.7.0!!!

I'm thinking to downgrade OSX or wifi drivers, too much annoying problem...

Did you try a clean install? anyway downgrading to Snow Leopard might be the only valid option at this time...