Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

Hi djiti,

tried it, with limited success ...

Before:

Before on SL - everything fine, after upgrading to Lion, very frequent drop-outs of the wireless connection

After drop-out during sleep, no chance for the Mac to wake up - only by a forced restart (holding the power switch)

After following your recommendation (sending constantly PINGs):

Mac wakes up - fully responsive. Meter shows full wireless connectivity. But there is non - actually no communication over wifi. Could make a regular restart over the "apple"-menu.

What helps:

Use your wireless connection only when you need it. Otherwise disconnect.

Take care, that your Mac is not falling asleep while connected.

This results in switching on and off your wireless connection manually all the time, but the alternative would be to restart your Mac all the time.

ok i have had some success with airport not connecting after sleep

I read somewhere that having a disc in the cd/dvd drive can cause issues so i took mine out. bit random but hey

@ the same time i also created a new location in sys prefs/networking, i called it home. then on advanced tab/tcp/ip i selected renew dhcp lease, in dns i added 8.8.8.8 and also kept the existing dns server. thats all, have tested it a few times and seems fine, reconnects airport after sleep. =)

I will re-insert the cd in a minute and see if that ***** it all up again wish me luck.

wow it was the disc in the cd tray, put it back in and airport would not reconnect after sleep, took it out and it was all good again ......***

Many solutions posted here, but I want to find a way to mark djiti's suggestion as successful (at least for me)... this particular ping command in Terminal (I've seen others posted for this same solution) plus adding the to the DNS list with 8.8.8.8 has worked well for me. Actually, my connection is better now than before Lion. I see others who mention they haven't had as much success with this, but I do recommend trying the two in combination.

I'm a software engineer at Nvidia. I understand the basics of how to debug a problem. I'm just saying most of the people in this forum are simply guessing. I've been working directly with an engineer from Apple. My specific Lion WiFi  issue  is I can connect on G, not N. After debugging last night, it looks like this is becuase after the Lion upgrade my network thinks it is Taiwan -- you can see it in the logs. The problem is my router is hard-coded to north america. With TW set, my mac air won't connect:

"This basically means your client is seeing an Access Point with Taiwan Country code and setting its regulatory standards and power levels to this zone's settings. This can cause the issue where it won't see certain channel's and or not connect in certain mode's. If you send me your System Information report I can see a little more information."

This is my fundamental problem, but I think there are multiple Lion WiFi issues.

after pinging yahoo in terminal, i haven't had any connectivity issues but now i'm having trouble in ichat.  when i start a chat, the person on the other end answers but i can't hear them.  they aren't on mute, they can hear me, i can see them just not hear them.  when i try ichat from my mbp, there is no issue.  has anyone else had this problem?  i'm about to reinstall sl.

I have the same problem. Since installing OS X lion I have an unstable wifi connection on my Time machine. I have two Mac Books, and an Mac mini, Ipad and Iphone. I regularly have slower connections and sometimes a few seconds no connections since the last 4 days.

I have other OS X related problems too. Accessing Time machine is not allways possible. Currently Mail cannot start. Hard disks were not found in my network. Iphoto regularly crashes. Sometimes I cannot start or close programs.

Apple Care support team are still in denial phase. I think we need bug fixes in new updates.

For what its worth.

Tried all suggestions on the forum burt to no avail.

Went  back to Snow Leopard, and everything fine after that.

Yesterday I tried Lion again.

Only difference is that I tried Firefox v Safari.

So far no probs with wifi connection after 24 hours with machiine turned on.

Rather then Lion, is  it a Safari problem???

Nope, I use Chrome and still have connectivity problems.

As I previously stated my specific issue is that when my MB Pro goes to sleep, and then reactivates I lose my internet connection, requiring me to turn wifi off, then on to regain the connection.  I reported this problem to Apple through Safari, "report bugs to Apple".  I worked with a systems engineer from Apple yesterday (they contacted me via e-mail, then via phone) and we were able to create a log of the specific problem. While on the phone with the engineer, using specific terminal commands, it was clear that the computer was still pinging a known good website (Google) after restarting from sleep, but Safari was showing no internet connection.  The log file from this event was captured, and forwarded to the Safari engineers, by the Apple engineer I worked with. I beleieve that Apple is working this issue hard, and the specific problem with losing connectivity after the computer sleeps may be with Safari.

MacBook Pro 2.2ghz intel core i7 - OSX 7

Safari - Ver 5.1

Airport Extreme - 7.5.2

Just got off the phone with Apple engineer again.  Ran two separate scripts through terminal, pinging a known good website. Duplicated problem, then ran dual ping test agian,  ping at "higher level" was not working, while "lower level" was working, not sure what "levels" meant but is referring data to OSX Lion programmer/engineers, so it looks looks like an OS issue.  Bottom line for the wifi connectivity issue in regards to the computer sleeping, I would NOT recommend messing with your network or router as they are not the cause. The Apple guys are working the wifi/computer sleep issue hard - have faith!

You might have something on switching browsers. Not that one is better than the other, but one might not have a full cache.

I've captured some data with wifi diagnostics (system/library/core services), and there were some debug messages about cachePurge, clear entries, rescheduling, and then NOT rescheduling.

When i was on a web-site with many large images, it seemed to happen more frequently.

I went to Firefox and in preferences/advanced/network, i cleared the cache and increased the size from 10mb to 30mb. It hasn't happened yet today.

I'm in Safari now, cache at 10mb, and I'll see if it happens.

Anyone else want to try this on theirs and see if it has any effect?

Thanks Flakster, exactly the kind of post needed.

It does, to my uneducated eye, seem to be something close to that low-level ping thing. Which, though a hassle, sounds easy to fix for Apple.

I have the same issue. Several phone calls from Apple Support and no fix. I too ran an emailed script and have captured the problem. This has been emailed to Apple who were sending it onto the Engineering Dept to analyse. I am having to use ethernet cable at the minute until they sort this out. Still waiting after a week.

Both Support personnel have accepted this is an issue with the Lion Uopgrade.

Can we get our money refunded? Like the iPhone free case deal.

dijiti's suggestion (continuous pings set up to my router) is the only one that has worked for me so far. Definately a bug with Lion, worked fine with Snow Leopard until upgrade on my early 2011 iMac. I've tried everything else that I've seen elsewhere to no avail.