Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

the same here:

update to 10.7.1 helped nothing, but one iMAC which hadn'd had the prob before now has WiFi drops alle the time too.

Very bad work has been done. Beta-status of SW for customers to get sad...

same, 10.7.1 fixed nothing for my early 2009 MBP with Airport Extreme...

Sure way to get it to drop is to do a big download, it breaks it within 30 secs, then takes 2 mins to sort itself out again... wired and non Lion wireless devices are fine during the 'broken wireless' period

Please fix asap Apple...!

I have been having MAJOR problems with my wifi since upgrading to Lion. The speed was constantly going up and down, up and down. The speed graph just looked like mountains.

After waiting for the first update, which didn't do anything to help, I tried some other things.

I proved there was no fault with my wifi router/connection etc by speed testing on a windows machine.

In the end, the thing that seems to have cured the problem is resetting the PRAM

For anyone who doesn't know how to do this, boot your mac and at the grey screen hold down option/cmd P and R all at the same time.

The machine will then reboot.

This seems to have fixed all my wifi issues since updating to Lion. I'm not impressed with apple that this has had to be done though.

Hope it helps other people out there anyway !

Just to be certain that we're on the same page--what I was referring to was not a loss of Wi-Fi connection; my computer is still connected to my home AirPort network, and I can see the other computers and printers and servers, and interact with them. In my case, the problem is, or was anyway, that the connection to the Internet would drop. And I suspect that it had to do with the Network portion of the OS software. Someone suggested that rather than allowing the DHCP assign an IP address dynamically, (which is when my connection would drop, due to the loss of the IP address,) I assigned an address manually. Since doing so, my connection has remained constant. Knock wood. Thoughts?

same here...

Having issues here too, but changing wireless channel from auto to 3, helps me out.

Very disappointed.

After two weeks traveling, I came home last night and immediately installed Lion 10.7.1. But what a disappointment: After falling asleep, the internet connection was gone again. No improvement compared to 10.7.0. Could recover the connection through the "Network maintenance" dialogue in Safari.

I tried then the following, which obviously helped some people in the forum:

First this hint published by charles260:

1. Unplug all cables from the iMac, including the power, for 10seconds, and then plug them back in. 2. He then made me locate the Cmd, Alt, R and P keys and told me that I shoudl turn on the iMac and immediately hold down these keys and keep them held down until the iMac had made the 'power-on' chiming sound three (3) times in a row. 3. Then release the keys and let the iMac start up as per normal.

Second this hint published by anthonyfromNJ

1. Open Network Preferences 2. Click Advanced 3. Remove ALL of the Preferred Networks (should be completely empty when completed) 4. Ensure that Remember Networks is checked 5. Click OK 6. Select your network in the Network Name dropdown menu 7. Ensure that Ask to join networks is checked 8. click Apply 9. Restart your computer

Since then, the problem seems solved. No more dropping wifi connection after falling asleep. iTunes, Time Machine on a TimeCapsule, Safari, appleTV (V1.0), ... all works well.

I am among the more unfortunate, apparently. I have tried everything suggested on this forum and nothing has worked. I have to wake up the connection by using a Windows in Boot Camp, and then usually I can get on using my other Mac operating OS X only.

2009 iMac with 10.7.1 here.

Upgraded to Lion shortly after available ... didn't notice any wifi issues ... about the time I loaded the 10.7.1 update, I started having major issues with my router, which finally went completely belly-up in two days ... bought a new Linksys E2500 and installed ... then noticed that after Sleep or start-up from Shutdown, my wifi connection would not come up automatically. The icon would scan but never hold the link. If I went to the top bar icon, clicked on it and let it scan and then I selected my router, it would connect and pretty much stay connected.

So, been looking here for a few days, and decided to try the anthonyfromNJ hint that you, StefanSze used. It has seemed to do the trick. I have restarted and sleep/awake a couple of times and the connection resumes correctly. The chief difference here is that NOW I have the "Ask to Join Networks" checkbox checked (as described above). Before, I did NOT have this checked. When I looked under the icon, several of the neighboring routers would show up before. They are NOT there now.

I am fairly ignorant of wifi and router issues, so I'm just going to take the money and run here, hoping this will keep working as it seems to be now. Hope the others here find this helpful.

Zapping the PRAM on my new iMac did the trick for me. No drops in 2 days. And I was having at least 8 a day.

Steve

I've done nearly all of the things (including PRAM zapping) suggested on this thread, and my wireless is quite reliable now EXCEPT when I awaken my iMac from sleep and Time Machine starts a backup with Time Capsule. I nearly always lose contact then. I am avoiding this by manually controlling my Time Machine backups (instead of automatic hourly). There is a connection to this problem with Time Machine/Time Capsule which Apple still needs to address.

I have been on the phone with APPLE CARE this morning and they were very helpful and enabled me to fix my wifi issues.

Before speaking with APPLE CARE I tried so many of the unusual little tricks on this board (and others) which seemed to be working uniquely for certain people. It turns out the problem in my case isn't LION as such, or my WiFi rather it's to do with the SECURITY on my ROUTER.

I had an old MacBook at home which was very useful as I was easily able to make the adjusments on my Router through this to then later allow my new iMac (LION) to log on etc.

I'm using a NETGEAR router, but the procedure will be much the same for other routers etc.

What I did was sign in to my router (on my older MacBook in my case):

http://192.168.0.1

Put it my USERNAME and PASSWORD (which, by the way, is usually:

USERNAME: admin

PASSWORD: password

Then selected WIRELESS SETTINGS.

Within WIRELESS SETTINGS there is a subheading entitled WIRELESS SECURITY.

Within WIRELESS SECURITY there are four options:

1) Disable

2) WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

3) WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)

4) WPA-802.1x

I had

2) WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

!! THIS WAS THE PROBLEM !!

According to APPLE:

WEP is being used less frequently as it appears to be not as SECURE as it's contemporaries (namely WPA etc). As a result LION struggles to communicate with the router using this security. BUT the good news is it CAN be easily changed!

For a home setup Option 3:

3) WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)

Seems to be the best option. Option 4 is a for a bigger setup (I wasn't listening too much, but apparently it's more suited to businesses using their own servers/networks etc?!).

Next things we did was:

SELECT OPTION 3:

3) WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)

After selecting it asked me to enter a new password, so I did.

Then I selected APPLY (or SAVE depending on your router). It took a minute to load...

Then I went on to my new iMac (LION) clicked on

SYSTEM PREF > NETWORK > ADVANCED and REMOVED (pressing the negative / '-' symbol) the network I've been struggling to get on for the last two days.

Then ADDED (pressing the positive / '+' symbol) a 'new' network giving it the same title obviously as the one I had just deleted. It'll ask what SECURITY you want of the options, but just leave it as 'None' (as your WiFi will work it out itself). After this press ADD, then OK in the next window. Lastly press 'APPLY'.

After this - go up to your WiFi putton on your top bar, click it, then select the new network you've just created (which will of course have the same name as your old one) then when asked for a password put in your NEW ONE as you created on your ROUTER...

...Alas IT SHOULD WORK!

It did for me, and the chap on the phone was so very useful and said this will be in the info they'll be putting on the discussion boards ASAP. I'm sorry if ym explanation has been a ittle convoluted as I'm not a techy person, but wanted to share this after sharing the struggle with so many.

Good luck!

Thanks for the detailed info from LucciLucciLucci, but I think this is another case of an AppleCare person "winging it" until a proper fix is prescribed for Lion. My MacBook (Lion) doesn't have this problem, nor do any of my three Apple TV's, nor my two iPhones nor my iPad. All are served by a Time Capsule which has reliably and strongly supported all of my stuff for years.

As I said above, I seem to only have the problem on my iMac (Lion) associated with a Time Machine backup to my Time Capsule. There clearly is a Lion problem here. Here's hoping your complicated fix works for you LucciLucciLucci. However, I can't recall Apple ever having to resort to such complicated gymnastics before. They've always just fixed the obvious problem with the Operating System.

Thanks again for giving us your experience in such detail

Hey, nice from Apple Care to help you there, only thing is I´ve been running a WPA2 network for over a year, and i still got the problem (and the only fix i found was changing the channels on my router from auto to 3), the solution given is NOT a proper solution, once again you have access to a network that you can modify in order to stay connected, but what if you grab your laptop and go to a starbucks or a library or anywhere else for that matter that is not up to the specs that lion "needs" in order to connect?

I am still quite upset, us getting to find out work arounds to fix the wi-fi connectivity issue is just NOT right! This stuff is suppoused to "just work". And it is NOT!.

Instead of reading through 484 posts in this thread, let me just ask:

Has a general solution been found? (As opposed to idiosynchratic solutions that work for idiosynchratic situations.)

I have a closed network on a Time Capsule router, and wi-fi has been seriously lagging ever since I upgraded to Lion (upgrading to 10.7.1 hasn't helped).