Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion
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Mar 3, 2012 7:34 AMby Big Red Dog,My MacPro, which is Ethernet hardwired to my Linksys router, drops the Internet connection just as often as my MacBook does. For the MacBook, I only need to turn off the WiFi and turn it back on and I'm good to go for about another 24 hours.
For my MacPro, however, a computer restart has been the only way to re-acquire Internet (WAN) access.
It is worth noting that I do not ever lose connection to the router. The LAN is always up; each Mac can see all devices on my LAN (about 10 of them). Both Macs can access the admin page on the router easily. Only the WAN is shut down.
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Mar 3, 2012 7:50 AMby Big Red Dog,I do not have Apple Care, but somehow, through some service evaluation forms I have filled out, I have been assiged a case number by Apple Engineering.
They have sent to me a WiFi Data Logger untilty to capture all events from which they can analyze why the links are dropping. The only problem is the resulting text file can grow quite large.
So Apple has asked me to make a note of the time when I lose connectivity. But I may be away from the computers for several hours during which the drop-out will have occured.
So ... question: does anyone know of an App that can provide a continuous PING (say every minute or so) to an IP and create a log file that contains a TIME STAMP?
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Mar 3, 2012 1:33 PMby gphonei,Carlo TD wrote:
I just read an interesting article. http://compnetworking.about.com/b/2012/02/18/what-the-fbi-internet-dns-shutdown- means-to-you.htm
Everyone having problems with their network dropping out should check their DNS servers to see if they match any of the ones that this article points at:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911/DNS-changer-malware .pdf
That could be one reason why you network misbehaves. If you have a different problem source, such as this "DNSChanger" malware, it can feel like you have a problem related to Lion, when in fact the appearance of the problem may have just happened in Lion due to other timing.
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Mar 3, 2012 2:05 PMby Big Red Dog,Thanks for the heads-up ... the articles make for interesting reading. But I don't believe the Rogue DNS applies in my case. I have multiple WiFi devices dependent upon a connection to the two DNSs of my ISP (2 IP cameras, a Roku Box, Apple TV, a Blue Ray Player). I also have two Windows machines (WiFi connected laptop and a hardwired desktop), 2 iPhones, one iPad, one MacBook (WiFi) and one MacPro (Hardwired Ethernet to the router).
Everything on my LAN works just fine ... except for the two Macs running Lion.
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Mar 3, 2012 2:05 PMby gphonei,So ... question: does anyone know of an App that can provide a continuous PING (say every minute or so) to an IP and create a log file that contains a TIME STAMP?
In a terminal window, you can just run this script which should tell you about when things come and go. If you pass it a particular address, it will ping that. You could start out, pinging your router to see if that ever goes away, and then move to some external address if not.
#!/bin/sh
failed=/tmp/$$failed
sleep=30
trap "rm -f /tmp/$$*;exit" 0 1 2 3 15
echo "Starting ping to ${1:-www.google.com} at: `date`"
while :
do
if ping -c1 -t 3 ${1:-www.google.com} >/dev/null 2>&1; then
if [ -f $failed ]; then
echo "Resumed ping to ${1:-www.google.com} at: `date`"
sleep=30
rm -f $failed
fi
else
if [ ! -f $failed ]; then
sleep=5
echo "Can't ping ${1:-www.google.com} at: `date`"
fi
fi
sleep $sleep
done
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Mar 3, 2012 2:09 PMby gphonei,Big Red Dog wrote:
My MacPro, which is Ethernet hardwired to my Linksys router, drops the Internet connection just as often as my MacBook does. For the MacBook, I only need to turn off the WiFi and turn it back on and I'm good to go for about another 24 hours.
For my MacPro, however, a computer restart has been the only way to re-acquire Internet (WAN) access.
It is worth noting that I do not ever lose connection to the router. The LAN is always up; each Mac can see all devices on my LAN (about 10 of them). Both Macs can access the admin page on the router easily. Only the WAN is shut down.
That sounds like an ISP problem if the Mac's can access the router then. You might try my quick hack script on your router, in one terminal window and then use COMMAND-N to open another terminal window and ping an external address. See if they report different information at different times. If it's a Lion problem, they'd both report a problem at the same time, indicating that Lion's networking has stopped working.
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Mar 3, 2012 2:18 PMby Big Red Dog,THANKS !
Pinging anything on the WAN (WWW), such as Google, is fine. I don't really have the need to specify the IP address of my ISP. I will use you code as written and let you know what I discover after a couple of hours of pinging.
I have never lost (LAN) communications with the router, as some people have reported. I've only lost connection through my DNS to the rest of the world. But you do make a good suggestion ... I will try the local pinging as well just to make sure.
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Mar 4, 2012 3:37 PMby QJack,I am at the point of losing it...this problem has been occurring ever since I bought my new iMac with Lion
and I connect to an Apple Airport Extreme. My iMac is the only machine in my house with any problems.
I've downloaded and installed the "patch", but my connection seems to drop even more frequently.
I even tried just keeping a Remote Desktop connection open to one of my other boxes...
Arrrgghhh!!
C'mon, Apple, fix this...for real. I can't have an ethernet cable strung across my floor for folks to trip over.
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Mar 5, 2012 12:56 AMby jpjmr,I have had WiFi problems for several months but as it turned out it wasn't a software (OS X lion) but a router problem.
It wasn't a connection loss with the router but the iMac lost connection to the internet.
Maybe my sollution is applicable for more OS X lion and iMac(intel) users.
Many routers can send a mixed WiFi signal like B,G and/or N.
The mid 2011 iMac can recieve both G and N WiFi signals but when a router switches all the time between G and N it gets "confused".
The sollution for my iMac:
My router was programmed to send a mixed WiFi signal (G and N ) on a mixed frequency (20 to 40 Mhz)
I changed that to a fixed N wifi signal and fixed frequency.
Further more I checked which WiFi channels my neigbours where using and changed mine into a channel that was at least 2 channels different than the one from my clossest neighbours.
I hope this will help some of you.
There is only one thing that I realy have to say.
The iCentre's here in Holland suck.
I have absolutly no confidence in their skils.
They tried to convince me that setting my IP adress on manual was responsible for this problem and charged me Euro 79,- to change that into an automatic IP adress because software issues aren't covered by the standard warrenty on a almost new iMac.
Last weekend Europes biggest Apple store in Amsterdam opened its doors and hopefully they will do a better job in the future.
Also I think that the people at Apple can do a much better job in providing sollutions even when it is not directly related to one of their products.
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Mar 5, 2012 3:43 AMby alearesi,jpjmr,
Your problem is clearly NOT the same problem stated in this thread.
Most of us here used to enjoy a wifi connection and after an upgrade (several combinations of them) our Macs started to drop connections (again several symtoms) and/or failed to reconnect coming off sleep mode.
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Mar 6, 2012 2:07 PMby joe619,Did you happen to use the same SSID when you created your new network with your new time capsule?
I'm wondering if somehow a new network name, or BSSID somehow fixes, or avoids the problem.
I make my living helping people with their computers, especially macs, and this problem really has me stumped...
WSR wrote:
QJack wrote:
Darn it, I knew it was too good to be true. My connection has started dropping again.
This is super frustrating.
Other ideas?
Well I bought a new Time Capsule and everything is perfect now, and I'm enjoying 5Ghz (I was mixed b & g before).
