Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

I can only assume that some timing values have been changed in the Lion Airport client. I have a new (mid 2011) MBA with Lion preinstalled. The Airport connection would cycle on and off (greyed out icon), sometimes giving 20 second bursts of connectivity with a minute or two between them, with a Linksys WRTP54G router running WPA Personal. I discovered a few things:

iStumbler, Kismac and some other wifi diagnostics don't run on Lion (some of them start, others run for 10 sec and terminate).

802.11b and 802.11n don't work well at all, 802.11g works better (longer times between dropouts). I have some 802.11b clients, fortunately the Linksys "mixed" mode seems to work and the MBA reports an 802.11g connection.

I had my beacon interval set to 1000 msec. This resulted in frequent missed beacon timeouts that force the Airport client to rescan, dropping the connection. Reducing it to 100 msec as described solved the problem as far as I can tell (maybe it needs to be shorter still). This is clearly a bandaid as the Airport client shouldn't time out so quickly. Now it just does an "opportunistic roam" every few seconds (which is certainly more often than needed) but it doesn't drop the connection while doing this.

bugreport.apple.com seems to be down today (earlier, it said there was a website error, now it just doesn't answer) ... perhaps a few people are barking at them about this...

tried it all so far, no luck. just one of the many issues with Lion.

(mid - 2010 imac).

I have been having the problem for a couple days now. Other PC's and MACs work perfect on my D-Link DIR635 router.

My iMac - 21,5i - i3 late 2010 and iMac 27i - i5 early 2010 both do not work with wifi. Wifi works for like 5 seconds then it stops working.

Both stopped working after upgrading to lion

well, bought new MBA 13 yesterday (Australia). my first mac after hearing so many good stories in the past years. and dadaaa wifi one/off all the time. very frustrating. anyway, it would be great if apple could provide an official solutions ASAP! 

Djiti - your ping seems to work. I assume that the ping request stops once the terminal session is closed?

If so, again I assume that it is a case of doing this every time.

If not, how do I stop the ping?

Regards,

Andy

my ethernet wired connection comes and goes too.  haven't found a fix

Hi Everyone

Thought I might add my problem in with this although I appear to be far better off than some of you. Since installing Lion, my iMac 27 does not have a connection on waking from sleep. I re-load my home page in Safari, might take two or three attempts, and then all is well for as long as I use the computer. I did try putting in a new plist but the password would not be accepted so I could not get my original settings, although I did not get any problems with the new plist. I have gone back to the original settings and the same problem is there. As a note to that, I see someone cleared the problem by ejecting a CD/DVD in the drive. I checked mine and found my daughter had left a Sims in there. I'll see if that has changed anything the next time I start up.

The only other problem I have found since installing Lion is that the widgets in Dashboard do not work. The last time I looked, I could not find a thread on that.

Even more interesting is that neither of these problems have occurred on my MBP - one of those too old to have AirDrop (no big loss). The router is common to both and the wi-fi signal is fine.

I have a Linksys WRT54GS V.5 with the latest firmware available (1.52.8.001). After I installed Lion, I loose the connection to my router. After I'm logging in, it's searching for my router. I have multiple other devices hooked up to the router with no problem.

I hope Apple is fixing that soon.

We hope Apple fixes this soon, but there is a workaround that worked for me. Lion seems to have problems with some wireless network protocols, and seems to want to see beacon packets more often than is the default.

If you log in to your router, click the "Wireless" tab and confirm that Wireless Network Mode is set to "G" or "Mixed." Then, go to "Advanced Wireless Settings" and set that to 50.

Please report back if this helps.

I just upgraded to Lion and as a result am not getting on the internet very easily. I am connected however it keeps searching for a wireless connection and my high speed internet access now crawls. Wow, to think APPLE has not even admitted they messed up. This needs to be fixed and its very obvious we are all having a problem. I will never upgrade any of my apple products again (iphone and MacPro) since I always have problems, like this connectivity issue on my mac and a slowing of my iphone with every upgrade. Apple, please fix the problem. You have enough money in the bank...spend it on your customers...

Hi Everyone - again

Well, having taken out the CD I have just woken from sleep (the computer) with the same problem. However, just a click on the reload and all is well. I'm still not sure why the first page is now Facebook when it was always Top Sites. I mentioned this to my daughter and she now makes sure she loads Top Sites before leaving. Strange - the Facebook is hers by the way and not mine!

Forgot to mention - the browser is Safari.

TY

Network mode was set to mixed. I changed the Beacon Interval from default 100 to 50 as suggested. Put iMac to sleep. Came back 10 minutes later, logged in, same problem. So it did not work for me.

i have the same problemessss !!! wifi dropping almost every hour, App Store take 3 min everytimes to open normaly, mail crashhh and iTunes always take minuts to open normaly !!! i start to regreat making upgrade to Lion. waitt, waittt as faster posibile un update for 10.7. please guysss?? did someones else had the same problemes??,

i don't even see where is that option for "Mixed or G", doesn't work for me, in my macbook pro i5 intel,15+ early 2010. i don't have this option in wifi preferances.

I administer one 27" and one 24" iMac both running OS X Lion now in an 802.11n wireless. On both Macs I've got recent disconnects. Sometimes restarting the wlan adapter or the router helps - for a short period of time. No changes on my setup showed any effects what so ever. Not on the one nor on the second mac.

This really is a major issue! I con't understand why the fix has not been released yesterday! This problem effects quite a few Lion users!

Using good old wired Ethernet seems to be the only permanent "workaround"...