Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

I used your method yesterday and the wifi has not dropped since. Thanks because I was ready to reinstall Leopard.

I have the EXACT same problem as of upgrading to 10.7.1 as the guy said before. This thing is driving me INSANE!!

I hate to say this, but don't bank on the Ethernet cable working for you either. When my wireless doesn't work, my Ethernet doesn't work. Both are either working or not simultaneously, but only in Lion. On the Mac with Windows on it (which connects only wirelessly) I can always get online wirelessly through Windows XP, as is true of an old PC laptop. The problem is with Lion, and apparently the gurus that be don't have a clue how to solve the problem. Apple's apparent disregard for the urgency of this matter for some folks and its dogmatic determination to address issues only through dot-digit releases rather through emergent patches is alarming to me as well.

When I'm freeling really brave I will go into my router and change it so that it broadcasts over Channel 3. That seems to have worked for some folks. For now, I'm burned out. I have maintained a connection for two or three hours now, so I'm leaving well enough alone for the time being.

P.S. I just lost my connection again as I was trying to post the above. Only spent 4 minutes trying to get back on.

Try this is worked for me after everything else failed. Have not had a drop since yesterday on my iMac.

I may have fixed this by going into Network in System Preferences, under Wi-Fi, click Advanced, and remove all prefered networks and then reconnect to your desired Wi-Fi. I have not had it drop yet, I will keep you posted.

This was the first thing that worked for me. Wifi now comes up every time through Sleep, Restart, Shutdown.

Removing the preferred networks and then re-connecting did not work for me. Frequent dropping resumed as usual. Get it together on the bug fix, Apple.

'interference robustness' - checked off

mine is an old domed airport extreme

use 'airport utility' click through airport/wireless/wireless options

fixed mine,

but then again i've tried all the suggestions,

so maybe the fix was a blend of a few 'fixes'

Hi All ,

same issue here after a couple of days of lion 10.7.1 testing on my macbook pro ( late 2008 ):

No problem to connect to office wifi network (multiple airport extreme network) , but experiencing some sudden drops ( two or three in 9 hours).

Went home, connected to my single airport extreme wifi network: connection seems ok, but browser can't access.

i have checked network config: all seems ok ( DHCP IP ok, router address ok, DNS ok)

apparently what you see is not what you get!

i fired up the terminal and tried to traceroute www.apple.com: no way (to Steve or Tim)

so i checked the default gateway with netstat...

Despite the data shown in the GUI, the gateway is till pointing to my office router.

Changed manually with System Preferences/Network config to my router IP.

bingo!

It sounds like a potential routing issue with stability concerns.

Wifi drop out issues on Lion have been so widely reported now since it was released and so clearly ignored by Apple that it makes one wonder. 10.7.1 was an absolute non event as far as fix was concerned. It fixed none of the critical issues. Are Apple at all interested is solving this problem? If you can't connect to the Internet your Macbook is basically a brick. Don't worry about trying to find a fix though. There ain't one until Apple gets moving on a fix. This smells to me like another Mobile Me mess, except worse.

'It just works' is starting to sound awfully hollow these days because 'it just doesn't.

The only solution to the wifi drop out problem is to open System Preferences, turn the **** thing off, wait for the spinning beachball of death to finish its performance, then reconnect your wi-fi and hope for a hour of uninteruted wifi access. If you're lucky.

I know this is not the forum to complain, but really. Hey Apple! Do something!

Mugendai, do you have more than one wireless router in your house, or are there two wireless routers feeding off the same router within reach of one another? Your problem sounds similar to the one I had, and it was caused by two wireless routers being used simultaneously without first being properly configured.

Since installing Lion, my entire "fleet" of Apple devices are pretty much useless. I get an hour or so then I have to reboot routers, modems, devices, etc... I've tried just about everything suggested by the great and helpful people in the forums but to no avail. Apple TV (2nd gen) has especially become a door stop as it won't connect at all. Streaming music....forget about it. I've been an Apple disciple since my first 64k Mac in 85 but considering that Apple's entire line of products is built on wifi connectivity these days, this current issue and Apple's lack of response to it is unfathomable. Apple? You out there?

I understand how frustrated you are; this kind of situation makes you want to kick the computer.

But Apple is listening and working on it. A couple of weeks ago Apple engineers contacted me about the problem. I had only posted on this forum; I had not contacted AppleCare or anything like that. They asked me to send activity logs, mentioned what 3rd party software might interfere, made various suggestions, and asked me to keep sending any updates. So they are working on it; I am just surprised that it is taking so long to fix. On the other hand, I really don't know anything about software engineering.

At any rate, I hope that this at least reassures you and others they are not ignoring the problem.

Try the Lion supplied app in this link http://www.macworld.com/article/162117/2011/09/monitor_wi_fi_with_lions_hidden_t ool.html#lsrc.rss_main

Maybe you get some data that helps solve the problem.

i experienced first time the wifi connection issue yesterday. i was using a wpa personal protected network, when suddenly the connection dropped. airport still showed that i'm connected to the network, but no webpage loaded, ping wasn't working. i restarted my mbp 13, middle 2009, clean lion install, shutdown/restart, nothing helped. then suddenly the network reappeared and the pages were loading.

after my mbp has awaken from sleep, once again, connected, but no traffic. i tried everything, restart, shutdown/restart, wifi on/off, restarting router, hardwired net... nothing. as i noticed the problem was, that i didn't received a correct ip, gateway adress from router. renewing the dhcp lease didn't help, i still got the wrong settings from router with wifi, and hardwired too. i tried to set the ip, gateway, subnet mask manually, but it didn't help.

i was getting quite nervous so i tried the one thing that broke the network, sleep/wake, and behold the net was ok on wifi.

today i could connect to my work network (wep) without any problem.

i coludn't think of any reasonable answer for the problem... it wasn't only a wifi issue, cause i had the same problem with a wired network (same router as wifi). airport was seeing other wifi hotspot so airport was working, i could connect to my home network, but there was no data traffic (web pages not loading, update not working).

i hope this isn't going to happen again, i'm waiting for the software update.

Perhaps not suprisingly, the diagnostic utility seems to misbehave also. I turned on debug logging, and after a couple of minutes it started pegging one of the cores, displayed the pizza wheel and would not respond to mouse input. Had to force quit.

Hi Gregory,

thanks for bringing this up.

I thought I was too stupid to use it... the wifi diagnostics I mean.

The bad thing is, if you watch this in console.app, the scan is still running, just the frontend - wifi diagnostics - is stalling. I got several spin reports (beachball of death).

To stop the running scan, I rebooted the computer.

I still think that Lion has a serious Wifi problem.

So far I did everything that Apple care told me (even reinstall from recovery partition), but so far nothing helped.

Even after booting from recovery partition, I could not get constant wifi connection.

That is why I had to use ethernet to reinstall Lion as it needs to download files from the net.

Martin

I just read this from another thread on the wi-fi issue. At least this gives us hope. It was posted by Radiation Mac on Sept. 4th:

"ATTENTION Fellow Frustrated Lion Users: I got off the phone with U.S. Apple Support a few days ago . The Rep said that indeed Apple is aware of the loss of Internet connection and the loss of Wi-Fi connection after awaking from sleep, and the automatic immediate wake from sleep. He said the problem as the Apple Engineers see it is that instead of Lion putting JUST the monitor and harddrive to sleep as it should, Lion is instead put almost all Sytem Functions to sleep as if you had temporarily turned off the computer.

A fix is almost finished and will soon be available as a "Software Update."

Hang in there guys ;-)"

Message was edited by: craigfromgoshen