Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

Hey Adrian,

Thanks dude! Your method is just for me! I deleted the SystemPreferences folder as you said and gave a restart. It amazingly works fine for more than 1 hour, no wifi drop. Also the browsing speed cleary increased.

Highly recommended A+++++

So I switched the router to Channel 4 and haven't had a drop yet. Maybe that is a quick fix that we need until the repair comes out.

Good luck.

Did anyone else get an email from Apple Engineering about this issue?  I got one today that was asking me to call a phone number or email him my phone number and a good time to call me back.  And they wanted me to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

I'm anxious to get this problem fixed, but I don't trust random emails asking for personal information.

Is this legit or is it a scam?

@jrwhite82

I got an email as well. I responded yesterday, but I missed the call today. It is definetly legit.

Same here - email from Apple, inviting to work with me on feedback I had given on all the issues with Lion.

Gave me a 1-877 number to call, but I am in Australia, so the number is not useful. I have emailed the person and indicated my willingness to work with him/Apple but no reply to date - I am assuming it is all legit, have no reason to doubt this?

EJW Tas wrote:

 

Same here - email from Apple, inviting to work with me on feedback I had given on all the issues with Lion.

Gave me a 1-877 number to call, but I am in Australia, so the number is not useful. I have emailed the person and indicated my willingness to work with him/Apple but no reply to date - I am assuming it is all legit, have no reason to doubt this?

Since your email address is not publicly revealed on this forum, if you've received a message from an engineer at Apple it likely is legitimate.

One thing to remember about these requests is that Apple can't root cause the issue unless they can reproduce the issue, so the easiest way of doing so is to contact someone who is regularly experiencing the issue than to spend days trying to tweak their environment in-house to try and reproduce it.

Also, you will have to sign an NDA to work with Apple engineering on an issue, just has you'd have to with any other commercial software vendor as you'll likely be asked if you're willing to install beta-level or other pre-release software to see if it fixes or otherwise alters the behavior you're experiencing.

@jrwhite82: for the good of all of us with affected (infected) machines, I'd do whatever they ask if it fixes the problem. As a check, you can probably see if the caller ID shows Apple Inc, then you're probably safe.

this problem is actually disappointing im a new mac user (who has been pining to have a mac for years), now that ive finally bought one, and having experienced this issue made me realize that apple is not all to great as i thought it was.  i've read in forums dating back 2-3 yrs ago that this problem has been existing that far back.

apple should do something about it and put up a permanent solution i don't understand why this issue has to recur if it existed since before. anyway just try disappointed and frustrated about this whole thing. regretting buying a mac and might sell the machine instead.  this not only happens in Lion btw, even in the windows 7 i installed via bootcamp it has the same problem. i didn't see this having a solution before so i highly doubt that apple will come up with a solution ever

Thanks for the insight William Kucharski.  I didn't even think about the "shared email address" angle.  I will reply to his request when I get home from work today. 

I've the same WiFi loss issues but my seem to be tied, or at least worst, when Time Machine begins to back up. The instant TM begins indexing my WiFi will kick out and remains poor during back-ups. Clicking WiFi on and off helps on occassion but only temporarily. And I've tried changing the wifi to various channels, but that worked only temporarily also.

Anyone else notice a connection to wifi loss and TM back-up? Another issue on TM: I have TM set to NOT backup on battery power, yet it always does. A Lion clich I assume.

I have developed the same problem since upgrading to Lion. Prior to that my iMac never dropped the Airport signal. Now it frequently does. Sometimes it seems to briefly drop and then reconnect on its own, and at other times I have to restart. I guess we need to wait for 10.7.1.

My wifi connection seems to have stabilised after I changed the modem channel to 11. Before that it was dropping every few minutes. However, I have the same issue as mjconn75: when my Time Capsule kicks in I can barely load a website. I also tried expanding my network by including an old Airport Express on which I did a hard reset. After the reset it was finally visible in Airport Assistant but when I configured it to join my network, Airport Assistant lost all connection both with my Time Capsule and with my Airport Express. I unplugged the AE, rebooted my iMac and now it's seeing the TC again.

Here's the problem:

1) The wifi connection with Lion drops every few hours or so: I have to researt or shut down wifi and reconnect.

2) Time machine is constantly on and is soooooo slow. It will take 3 hours to save 3MB of info. It never did this with SL.

Conclusion: Something stinks in suburbia and we need an update to fix this.

Yes...I have the same issue.

@jrwhite82 - good to know that the Apple engineers are paying attention to this issue.

I sent them a meesage a few weeks back through the website form, and have heard nothing so far.

Something to add is that this mainly happens when I'm working at some corporate campuses where they do WiFi load balancing (bouncing clients between APs) using Cisco 1131LWAPs and WCS. When I'm at home or coffee shops this does not happen.

@AppleEngineers - Let me know if I can be of help.