Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

I bought my new iMac 3 days ago and I've been having the drop in connection issue right from the start. Although the wireless network is shown as being connected, I get a freeze of internet access. Over the last 2 days I've tried every single suggestion here. You name it, I've tried it and still the problem remains. I have the following devices ALL connecting to the network and internet with no dropouts or problems whatsoever, it's just the new iMac with Lion OS:

iPhone

PC

Laptop PC

XBox

Blackberry

Squeezebox

Macbook Air running Snow Leopard

This problem at least needs to be acknowledged by Apple, it's very annoying!

Sounds like the exact same issue I was having. Did you try changing your DNS numbers? The google 8.8.8.8 didn't work for me, but the one from my ISP did the trick.

I tried the 8.8.8.8 DNS but that didn't work. Contacting my ISP is one big headache, so admittedly I have not tried that. I live in Malaysia but don't speak Malay.. and the ISP telephone support staff don't speak English, so you see my problem

good morning david. my neighbour told me he bought a new imac last week and was having the wi-fi issues we all had with lion. he told the apple support guy he was in communication with instructed him to download the latest

OS X Lion Update 10.7.2 Client Comb and delete his current wi-fi then load the new combo set up isp then go to network preferences in the connected devices click the minus button and have nothing there but the new isp that you set upand bingo.he showed it to me this morning and its working a dream for him.for myself i reset the pram and smc and if you are trying that method disconnect all devices speakers ect from your mac so i hope this helps you as it seems to have solved mine i have no dropping at all on my mac since i done the resets and its suggested you may have to do it a couple of times to get pristine conditions it worked first time for me.so best of luck david and i hope you get it fixed thanks for your post

sohyule wrote:

 

My wifi worked fine with snow leopard, then got messed up with lion.

solved by

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

basically replacing lion wifi driver with snow leopard one.

Someone please teach me how to extract wifi driver from snow leopard and put this on Lion. Just like this guy after reading that blog article.

I'm using iMac 7,1 wi-fi chip Broadcom. Definitely if I'm using file that rys provided, it will not work. So my option only extract this from my Snow Leopard installer DVD using Pacifist. But I don't know the path folder or name. It will be great if anyone found the kext file for broadcom, Snow Leopard and upload it.

Hi suitess, thanks for your words of encouragement. As I said I've tried everything, including your suggestions. I still experience the same problem. I'm convinced this needs to be addressed in an OS software update.

A-lee-see-uh wrote:

 

Sure. The preferred DNS is 68.94.156.1. The alternate DNS is 68.94.157.1. Who knew one number could fix something that I've been trying to figure out for a month?!

There could be a DNS compatibility issue, given this example.  Anyone having this problem, can go into network preferences, click on the WiFi entry on the left, click on Advanced, go to the DNS tab, and add the 68.94.157.1 address into the list of DNS servers, just to see if that fixes your problem.  If it does, then WIN!!!  If not, remove it, and keep talking to Apple support, hound them if you have to.  It's this kind of "software stack" issue, that could be a real problem that is hard to find, because a lot of peoples ISPs could have compatible DNS servers, but others do not.

if your atheros card is 4 that fix wont work it will go through the motions but if your card is 3... and you upgraded from snow leopard it will best of luck  btw you will find out what atheros is on your mac  in your utilities folder under system information

I believe I have fixed the problem finally. It seems my iMac didn't like my wireless router so an upgrade of the router was required. I've not had any drop of connection since installing.

I reset the Pram & smc, updated to 10.7.2 and rebooted my router, no drops for 5 days now.

Not the greatest suggestion in the world, but I just replaced my old router with the Apple Airport Extreme, and now my wifi is solid as a rock. It's been up for several hours now, and no dropping out, which my old router did all the time after the Lion upgrade. I know it's a $179 fix, but if you happen to need a new router, this seems to work.

Ok here my last update I think. My solution is as follows: I got a Fritz box router/wifi access point. This kind of router chooses it's own radio channel by default. Also it adjusts it's transmission power according to the needs it assumes. The default channel it choosed was 1, which showed some interference (not a lot - but some) from other networks / devices. I fixed the channel to another number which showed no interference. Also I put the transmission power to maximum. These 2 alterations seem to fix the problem I have with Lion dropping connections.

I hope Apple will soon address the problem so everyone can just use it's apple Lion without all the hassle it gives to fix the wifi problem. Hope this post / 'solution' might be of some help to others.

still going strong here too jim glad to hear you got it fixed cheers

A little update here.

I had been having wifi trouble, specifically where my computer would forget my network every time it woke from sleep, or on log-in. I tried pretty much everything posted on the net to try and fix this, but nothign worked. Eventually I did fix the problem by switching my network from WEP to WPA security. I later tried switching the security back, and the problem returned, so for me at least (27" 3.06GHz Core 2 Dup iMac running 10.7.2) there seems to be a definite problem with WEP security.

Anyway, although I fixed having to sign into my network everytime I logged in, I started having the same sort of intermittent issues a lot of other people are having. At seemingly random times my connectivity to the internet would bottom out and drop, and I would have to turn off wifi on the computer and turn it back on to get it back (I happened to be playing an online game during one of these drop outs and watching my ping spike to almost 2000 before I lost internet entirely).

So, this new wifi problem remained very persistent, and I tried a number of the more common fixes hear (reinstalling 10.7.2, erasing all wireless prefs etc) and it persisted.

Finally, you know what fixed it? I reset the PRAM.

I'm kind of impressed, because in years and years of trouble shooting Macs I have never actually had that fix anything. But yeah, make sure you try resetting the PRAM before and after you try some of the other fixes on this forum. A lot of other people have had success doing that. It must be holding on to some bad wireless prefs or something.

Update for all.... After months and months of stressing about and trying EVERYTHING the problems seems fixed on my end. I have a d-link DSL-2640R router and have changed the channel from 11 to 8.... Signal has not dropped since (fingers crossed).