Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

I need some help / advice...

I too have been having severe problems with my late 2009 iMac's wifi signal constantly dropping. I tried all the proposed solutions I could find, and the only one that worked for me was installing the Snow Leopard wifi driver as described here: http://rys.pixeltards.com/2011/09/04/osx-lion-wifi.html

With that installed, my wifi works perfectly. When I saw the iMac wifi update, I obviously installed it thinking it would be a better solution to the problem. I reinstalled the Lion wifi driver first, and then the new update. After half an hour or so I was back to the same old problem -- wifi signal dropping out incessently. So I reinstalled the Snow Leopard (didn't see any other option) and voila -- things were working perfectly again.

I then saw someone suggest downloading the combo update, as opposed to updating through Software Update. I gave it a shot. This time I forgot to reinstall the Lion wifi driver first. After the installation my wifi was completely off and the Airport menu bar icon said something about "no hardware installed". It wouldn't turn on or give me any options at all. So I restored to a previous state via Time Machine, back to when I had the Snow Leopord driver installed and before I started tinkering around. Obviously, my wifi started working again flawlessly.

So does anyone have any suggestions (i'm looking at you in particular DrVenture)? I don't really like the idea of having a wifi driver from a previous OS installed (since there might be a chance that it could cause problems with future updates, etc). But I don't see much of an alternative.

Sorry if that was a bit long-winded. Hope someone can advise.

Hello everyone,

I have been following this thread for ages now and have tried most suggestions mentioned in the thread, none of which have worked for me.

The 10.7.3 update made things even worse for me on my iMac (mid 2010 model)

Last night, I did a clean install of Lion 10.7.3. I reset my router to it's default settings, then setup a new WPA key. I have the Firewall and also iCloud disabled in System Preferences. I think having those enabled causes some problems because when I enabled those after creating a new profile, my wifi went back to it's original behaviour.

So, it could possibly be an iCloud or Firewall issue that's causing these problems.

With the changes I've made, everything works, for now!

I hope this issue gets resolved ASAP.

anonadieu,

Before we start, what kind of wireless issues where you having before you installed the Snow Leopard driver on Lion? Could please answer/do the same things I requested here:

"Aleresi,

So you are connected after you wake your iMac, then sometime later your iMac loses it's network connectivity. When you lose your network connectivity, does your WiFi icon go grey? Do you ever get a pop up box showing available WiFi networks, while you where already connected?

Or, is it that your iMac's WiFi icon looks black, but other applications report no connection to the Internet?

One thing that can help profile your wireless really quickly is to open up a terminal and copy and paste these two lines into the terminal while your iMac is connected to your WiFi network:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -I

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -s

paste the results to this thread."

The reason I am asking is before I try to help you get to a known good state with your 2009 iMac, which the IO80211FAMILY and Atheros Driver should look like this:

  Software Versions:

  CoreWLAN:          2.1.2 (212.1)

  CoreWLANKit:          1.0.2 (102.2)

  Menu Extra:          7.0.2 (702.1)

  configd plug-in:          7.1.2 (712.1)

  System Profiler:          7.0 (700.3)

  IO80211 Family:          4.1.2 (412.2)

  WiFi Diagnostics:          1.0.1 (101.1)

  AirPort Utility:          6.0 (600.92)

  Interfaces:

en1:

  Card Type:          AirPort Extreme  (0x168C, 0x9A)

  Firmware Version:          Atheros 9380: 4.0.61.5-P2P

I want to know what is really going on before we go through that kind of trouble. Also in addition to the questions I asked above could you provide me with the same information I provided above (as far as IO80211 FAMILY and Atheros driver version)?

DrVenture:

Thanks for the response. The wifi issues I was having before installing the Snow Leopard driver were my wifi signal constantly dropping. It would be fine for an hour or so, then it would start dropping repeatedly, every couple of minutes. Then eventually it would be fine for a little while, but then the whole cycle would soon start again. This would happen very consistently -- many times a day. It never really seemed to work steadily for more than maybe an hour at a time. I had some problems with Airport not autimatically connecting after waking from sleep as well, but to be honest I didn't pay much attention to it, as it was a minor inconvenience compared with the wifi dropping out constantly.

When I would lose my wifi connectivity, the lines in the Airport menubar icon would turn grey. A window showing available wifi networks wouldn't ever pop up. To get a signal I would have to turn the Airport utility off and then back on. Sometimes the first attempt would make it reconnect to the network (though it would usually just drop out again a minute later). Sometimes a window would pop up saying there was an error in trying to connect to the network. Afer turning it on and off numerous times, I'd eventually get a steady signal and things would be fine for maybe 30 - 60 mins or so.

Here are the results from pasting those command lines into Terminal:

Resources/airport -I

     agrCtlRSSI: -55

     agrExtRSSI: 0

    agrCtlNoise: -96

    agrExtNoise: 0

          state: running

        op mode: station

     lastTxRate: 54

        maxRate: 54

lastAssocStatus: 0

    802.11 auth: open

      link auth: wpa-psk

          BSSID: 0:26:91:e:b0:e7

           SSID: SKY45286

            MCS: -1

        channel: 6

SSID                          BSSID                RSSI   CHANNEL  HT CC  SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)

BronzeElephant           98:fc:11:cb:95:32   -68    6                Y   --    WPA(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)

BronzeElephant-guest  72:fc:11:cb:95:33   -70    6                Y   --    NONE

SKY45286                  00:26:91:0e:b0:e7   -56    6                N   --    WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

BronzeElephant_EXT   7a:44:01:74:b4:86  -85    6                Y   --    WPA(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)

SKYEE00E                90:01:3b:2e:e0:0f    -72   11               Y   --    WPA(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)

Richard's Network       00:21:e9:b9:0b:9e   -87   11               Y  GB   WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)

Galcom                      00:18:4d:ad:c6:54   -66   2                 N   --    WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES/TKIP)

And finally, here is the additional information (IO80211 FAMILY and Atheros driver version). Just to remind you, I currently have the Snow Leopard wifi driver installed, not the Lion one:

CoreWLAN:          2.1.2 (212.1)

  CoreWLANKit:          1.0.2 (102.2)

  Menu Extra:          7.0.2 (702.1)

  configd plug-in:          7.1.2 (712.1)

  System Profiler:          7.0 (700.3)

  IO80211 Family:          3.2 (320.1)

  WiFi Diagnostics:          1.0.1 (101.1)

  AirPort Utility:          6.0 (600.92)

  Interfaces:

en1:

  Card Type:          AirPort Extreme  (0x168C, 0x8F)

  Firmware Version:          Atheros 9280: 2.1.14.6

Thanks.

anonadieu,

Channel 6 in your environment is fairly crowded. Not sure why the 2.1 driver can handle the environment better than the 4.0 driver. I would definetly swtich to channel 1 for now. Really, if you can afford it, I would invest in a dual band WiFi router at some point. 2.4Ghz seems faily crowded by you. A new router that could offer 2.4 and 5GHz at the same time would allow your iMac to join at 5Ghz and take advantages of MIMO with its 802.11n chipset. Not to mention greater speeds.

But back on point. It is really up to you, if you happy running the above, then stick with it. If you want to try to get the latest driver loaded, without the WiFi dissappearing, I could probably help you there. You could always revert back.

I tried all the proposed solutions I could find, and the only one that worked for me was installing the Snow Leopard wifi driver as described here: http://rys.pixeltards.com/2011/09/04/osx-lion-wifi.html

That's the solution that worked for me since I first saw it several months back.

Several updates in the meantime caused me to also go back to the same problem. I did download the new updates and having webpages stop being responsive and just losing or seeing the connection just crawl.

A friend who is a technical genius suggests that while this is a workaround and certainly solves the problem, my problem and perhaps many others, may be using legacy router / wireless hubs that in turn, are not compatible with the chipset/driver combo on this 2.93 core i7 2010 iMac.

Reason I say this is i have a legacy late 2008 MacBook Pro that exhibits no WiFi drops when I am experiencing it on the iMac - and both systems are running same version of Lion.

My Router is a Netgear Model WPN824v2 - It's set at Auto 108Mbps -- tells me that then the router will only use Chaennl 6. I wonder if I should change mode to  B & G?

The pixeltards link from above and the snow leopard driver does solve my problem. I haven't installed the new updates related to Wifi Apple just released. Frankly, my problem has never been waking from sleep and not reconnecting to the network. It's simply been the drop of the signal. And often the signal strenght doesn't even change. But it's clear especially when Safari tells me Web Pages Are Not Responding.

So I just might have to borrow or buy an Airport Extreme Base Station and see if the combo of the new better router/wireless point and the iMac Core i7 will result in a fix and then allow me to freely update software and not have to go back and reinstall that Snow Leopard driver?

I am in the same situation as you.  Constant drops where more my issue.   I ran every fix in this thread, and something stuck.  The problem is, I don't really know what it was.   But I won't update now because I am worried about being back to square one as soon as I do like you mentioned.   I am still on 10.7.2.

Your friend explanation makes as much sense as any.   It would be interesting if all the people with new macs having the issue could experiment trying an Airport Extreme.  There is no way I am paying money for one though to try the theory.  It's completely ridiculous that that is an option some of us have to consider.   If you do try one, I'd love to hear your results.

That solution may not even help me.  I am tied to using the modem/router combo that my cable company provides (Rogers in Canada).   But, at least things are working for me.  I am just stuck at 10.7.2 though.   My personal solution is going to be to get some ethernet cable so I have a backup for when I try to update.  I have to run it up from the basement.  That way if things are shot again, I can at least just plug in.

MacMyDays,

I took at look at the specs of your current Netgear and it looks like a pre 802.11n router from 2005. It supports "turbo mode" 802.11g which never really caught on. And, I might add no Mac product supports.

Macs and iOS devices do not support any sort of bursting or channel bonding in 2.4GHz. The reasons for this are two fold:

1. Bursting and channel bonding (HT40 or wide channels) in 2.4GHz may sound like a good idea, but the 2.4GHz spectrum is too small (to few channels) to allow this to be used efficently unless you are in an ultra clean environment. Meaning, you are the only router/client combo out there. Once you throw more APs and clients on the same + neighboring channels, the whole thing kinda breaks down.

2. Think about BlueTooth. BlueTooth also has to operate in the 2.4GHz spectrum. Guess what happens if you combine BlueTooth and bursting or channel bonding?

To prove your Macs do not support Turbo mode at 108, connect either your iMac or MBPro to the router, open a terminal and do:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -I

Does either Mac show 108 as a max data rate or just 54 with an MCS index of -1?

Have you tried setting your Netgear router to 802.11g mode only (non of the silly turbo nonsense)?

While I agree with you that since your MacBookPro works well with the Netgear router, and the iMac does as well (as long as you have the 2.1 driver), that router is 6+ years old now. Time Marches on. 802.11n is a standard now and I would look for a nice dual band 802.11n router and be down with it (for now).

@DrVenture

Good point. Rather, points! Thanks for the input.

First, I have a $100 credit at Apple and currently Apple has 2011 Airport Extreme refurbuished for $149 - the router came with the place I'm renting, so I never bothered to get my own.

I did the Sudo command you suggested and certainly enough from my MacBookPro I got the 54 maxRate and MCS at -1

    agrCtlRSSI: -54

    agrExtRSSI: 0

   agrCtlNoise: -82

   agrExtNoise: 0

         state: running

       op mode: station

    lastTxRate: 54

       maxRate: 54

lastAssocStatus: 0

   802.11 auth: open

     link auth: wpa2-psk

         BSSID: 0:1f:33:be:a3:52

          SSID: xxxxxx

           MCS: -1

       channel: 6

I'll try the G only mode, but will pull the trigger and get the AE as I think it makes sense, no?

Ick. Your noise floor is -82. That gives you a signal to noise ratio of only 28. I would say you are in a congested area. Make sure the airport extreme is a dual band one.

Dr Venture

Here are the results of excuting the commands you requested.

     agrCtlRSSI: -37

     agrExtRSSI: 0

    agrCtlNoise: -99

    agrExtNoise: 0

          state: running

        op mode: station

     lastTxRate: 144

        maxRate: 130

lastAssocStatus: 0

    802.11 auth: open

      link auth: wpa2-psk

          BSSID: c0:c1:c0:c8:8:b

           SSID: AlePorter1963

            MCS: -1

        channel: 11

                            SSID BSSID             RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)

                 Telecentro-8f86 20:cf:30:04:32:48 -75  1       N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                  TP-LINK_D5AFF0 b0:48:7a:d5:af:f0 -63  6       N  US NONE

                   AlePorter1963 c0:c1:c0:c8:08:0b -35  11      Y  -- WPA2(PSK/AES/AES)

                 Telecentro-81c6 e0:69:95:99:bd:d5 -70  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                        Atenea 2 00:17:3f:6d:43:41 -75  11      N  US NONE

                          dd-wrt 00:21:29:bc:c9:c7 -57  6       N  -- NONE

                          0b4ffa e0:69:95:4e:a3:e5 -57  1       N  -- WPA(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)

                     DELLA CORTE e0:cb:4e:6e:78:33 -75  6       N  -- WEP

                       Logistics 00:25:9c:fc:9f:e0 -75  9       Y  US WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                         Dorrego 00:1d:7e:10:c8:88 -72  11      N  -- NONE

                           dlink 00:22:b0:c6:75:19 -75  11      Y  US NONE

                       red_gonza 00:24:8c:79:85:e1 -89  11      N  -- WEP

                            maty 74:ea:3a:cf:24:58 -87  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP,AES/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/TKIP,AES/TKIP)

                   homesweethome 58:6d:8f:9d:27:b6 -80  11      Y  -- WPA(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)

                            Cris 00:02:6f:a4:31:0c -87  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                    Fan del Amor 7c:4f:b5:99:7e:d1 -83  11      Y  -- WPA(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)

                         Atenea5 00:17:9a:8d:c3:a0 -75  11      N  -- NONE

                         SURREAL 08:10:74:24:bd:cc -88  11      N  -- WEP

                            CDPW 00:0f:cb:fc:6e:5a -88  11      N  ES WEP

                       LongoLink 00:1a:70:96:40:3c -86  11      N  -- WEP

                         manuela e4:83:99:22:32:f5 -87  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                              CP 00:02:cf:c4:fb:05 -88  11      N  -- WEP

                Fibertel WiFi171 e0:69:95:28:94:24 -85  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                       Luz_justo 00:13:33:88:f5:89 -87  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                       estudio2a 50:67:f0:a5:70:79 -79  11      N  DE WEP

                       belkin54g 00:11:50:d4:f7:8c -88  11      N  -- NONE

                         DORREGO 00:27:22:18:d3:1f -78  60      Y  AR WPA2(PSK/AES/AES)

             ARNET-NG SOLUCIONES 50:67:f0:95:44:c0 -87  11      N  DE WEP

                      rodeofilms c8:64:c7:83:29:dc -89  11      N  AR WEP

                   Fibertel WiFi e4:83:99:5e:5a:b1 -91  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                 Telecentro-918c e0:69:95:49:4e:7e -89  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                Fibertel WiFi889 70:7e:43:fe:91:14 -87  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                Fibertel WiFi885 00:24:a1:16:9a:2d -62  6       N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                 Telecentro-bda8 e0:69:95:31:2c:05 -86  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

                        kunpalma 20:cf:30:04:53:78 -85  11      N  -- WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

Yeah. The 2011 version is dual-band and very well rated.

Congested? Ha! Yah. This is Southern California!

Holy 2.4 overcrowding batman! aleareis...Holy Poop that is a ton of networks around you. I am surprised you have connectivity at all! I count 27 networks on channel 11, one on channel 9 (that overlaps 11 and 6), four on channel 6 and two on channel one. There is only one router seen by your Mac that is using 5GHz on channel 60 which is a DFS channel (even better).

First and foremost, get off channel 11 and put your router on channel 1. Not a great solution, but a good temp workaround, Meaning, I don't see good things for you on channel 1 either since both of the channel 1 SSIDs are fairly strong. Based on your BSSID, it looks like you have a Linksys/Cisco router:

C0-C1-C0   (hex)                    Cisco-Linksys, LLC

C0C1C0     (base 16)                    Cisco-Linksys, LLC

                                        121 Theory Drive

                                        Irvine California 92612

                                        UNITED STATES

It your situation, I would move to a dual band router. Meaning a WiFi router that can do 2.4 and 5GHz at the same time. That way your Mac can connect on a 5GHz channel. I would choose the low band 36-48 or Hi band 149-161 ranges in 5 GHz. Let your neighbors fight it out on 2.4GHz for elbow room and you stand by and watch at 5GHz.

torndownunit,

If you provide the same airport -I and -s output, I can take a look at it. So far a few people who have been complaining of "WiFi drops" are in a very crowded environment.

When you say another WiFI router is not an option for you, why is that? I mean, if you rodgers cable modem/WiFi dealie has a free ethernet port, then yah, you can add another AP. Heck, you can even keep the DHCP server running on the rodgers cable modem and place your "other" AP in bridge mode.

An airport extreme works well in bridge mode, as well as the Cisco E4200. Both are decent dual band routers. If you get really daring you can load DDWRT on the Cisco E4200 and really have some flexibility.

Dr Venture

My router is a Linsys 3200, dualband capable.

As soon as I get back home from work I will follow your advice and enable the 5.0 band and see what happens.

What I don't understand is why was the current setup working without problem prior to the 10.7.3 upgrade.

Regards.