Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

Do you have more than one wireless router in the house?  If you do,  have you configured the second one to "cascade" or "bridge" off of the other one?  I had a problem that sounds similar to yours that I thought Lion caused, but in fact it was caused by two competing wireless routers in the same house.

Ditto.  My wifi drops out three to five times a day.  QUite annoying.  I have been able to resolve by launching wifi search several times in a row until it finds it.  FIX THIS, APPLE!

Hi Wouto,

thank you for the tip with the ping `route get default | awk '(/gateway/){print $2}'`

Unfortunately, this does not help.

I get several request timeouts regularly, sometimes for longer times.

So it is more or less a diagnostic tool, not a remedy.

But the diagnose is:

WLAN access is lost - my local LAN printer disappears / reappears.

So, internet access is only one symptom of general WLAN illness in Lion.

WIFI connection can drop every five minutes if Lion feels like it.

Really nice.

The only "remedy" is to close WIFI and then reconnect.

I even installed a second WIFI router to switch between the two to make this task faster.

And this is very tedious.

Funnily enough, Apple Care advised me to boot into recovery partition and reinstall.

But this fails, as internet access is needed

All the best

Martin

Hi All, I ran into this problem on a brand new mbp 15".  Very frustrating.  Wifi was dropping every minute or so, funny thing is that when I boot into my Win 7  bootcamp partition the wifi connection is perfect -- no disconnects at all.

Cleary this is an OSX Lion driver issue that needs to be addressed.

I tried all the recommendations and the only thing that has worked for me is using the ping script (aka keepalive script) as recommended in several previous posts.  As long as that ping is running, my connection stays up.

# ping -i 5 <ip address of wifi AP/router>

My wifi connection hasnt dropped once since I started using the script over a week ago.

Cheers,

--SoCalMBP

I found some solution. Before my imac 2011 can't access internet after 5 mins if no action. But 2 laptop and 1 ipad work fine.

Airport no drop and full signal if turn on/off airport it work again but if no action internet go to down.

I try many fix method but not work for me.

Finaly i try disable WMM mode in wireless router (before is enable). Bingo!! my imac internet no drop again. All device is work great.

I use WPA2 but if set to WEP can enable WMM. I don't why but the internet no drop too.

http://www.wi-fi.org/knowledge_center/wmm

Some router has function this.

Sorry my english not good. Hope it help.

I used your method yesterday and the wifi has not dropped since.  Thanks because I was ready to reinstall Leopard.

I have the EXACT same problem as of upgrading to 10.7.1 as the guy said before. This thing is driving me INSANE!!

I hate to say this, but don't bank on the Ethernet cable working for you either.  When my wireless doesn't work, my Ethernet doesn't work. Both are either working or not simultaneously, but only in Lion.  On the Mac with Windows on it (which connects only wirelessly) I can always get online wirelessly through Windows XP, as is true of an old PC laptop.  The problem is with Lion, and apparently the gurus that be don't have a clue how to solve the problem.  Apple's apparent disregard for the urgency of this matter for some folks and its dogmatic determination to address issues only through dot-digit releases rather through emergent patches is alarming to me as well.

When I'm freeling really brave I will go into my router and change it so that it broadcasts over Channel 3.  That seems to have worked for some folks.  For now, I'm burned out.  I have maintained a connection for two or three hours now, so I'm leaving well enough alone for the time being.

P.S.  I just lost my connection again as I was trying to post the above.  Only spent 4 minutes trying to get back on.

Try this is worked for me after everything else failed.  Have not had a drop since yesterday on my iMac.

I may have fixed this by going into Network in System Preferences, under Wi-Fi, click Advanced, and remove all prefered networks and then reconnect to your desired Wi-Fi. I have not had it drop yet, I will keep you posted.

This was the first thing that worked for me.  Wifi now comes up every time through Sleep, Restart, Shutdown.

Removing the preferred networks and then re-connecting did not work for me. Frequent dropping resumed as usual. Get it together on the bug fix, Apple.

'interference robustness' - checked off

mine is an old domed airport extreme

use 'airport utility'         click through airport/wireless/wireless options

fixed mine,

but then again i've tried all the suggestions,

so maybe the fix was a blend of a few 'fixes'

Hi All ,

same issue here after a couple of days of lion 10.7.1 testing on my macbook pro ( late 2008 ):

No problem to connect to office wifi network (multiple airport extreme network) , but experiencing some sudden drops ( two or three in 9 hours).

Went home, connected to my single airport extreme wifi network: connection seems ok, but browser can't access.

i have checked network config: all seems ok ( DHCP IP ok, router address ok, DNS ok)

apparently what you see is not what you get!

i fired up the terminal and tried to traceroute www.apple.com: no way (to Steve or Tim)

so i checked the default gateway with netstat...

Despite the data shown in the GUI, the gateway is till pointing to my office router.

Changed manually with System Preferences/Network config to my router IP.

bingo!

It sounds like a potential routing issue with stability concerns.

Wifi drop out issues on Lion have been so widely reported now since it was released and so clearly ignored by Apple that it makes one wonder. 10.7.1 was an absolute non event as far as fix was concerned. It fixed none of the critical issues. Are Apple at all interested is solving this problem? If you can't connect to the Internet your Macbook is basically a brick. Don't worry about trying to find a fix though. There ain't one until Apple gets moving on a fix. This smells to me like another Mobile Me mess, except worse.

'It just works' is starting to sound awfully hollow these days because 'it just doesn't.

The only solution to the wifi drop out problem is to open System Preferences, turn the **** thing off, wait for the spinning beachball of death to finish its performance, then reconnect your wi-fi and hope for a hour of uninteruted wifi access. If you're lucky.

I know this is not the forum to complain, but really. Hey Apple! Do something!

Mugendai, do you have more than one wireless router in your house, or are there two wireless routers feeding off the same router within reach of one another?  Your problem sounds similar to the one I had, and it was caused by two wireless routers being used simultaneously without first being properly configured.

Since installing Lion, my entire "fleet" of Apple devices are pretty much useless. I get an hour or so then I have to reboot routers, modems, devices, etc... I've tried just about everything suggested by the great and helpful people in the forums but to no avail.  Apple TV (2nd gen) has especially become a door stop as it won't connect at all.  Streaming music....forget about it.  I've been an Apple disciple since my first 64k Mac in 85 but considering that Apple's entire line of products is built on wifi connectivity these days, this current issue and Apple's lack of response to it is unfathomable.  Apple?  You out there?

I understand how frustrated you are; this kind of situation makes you want to kick the computer.

But Apple is listening and working on it. A couple of weeks ago Apple engineers contacted me about the problem. I had only posted on this forum; I had not contacted AppleCare or anything like that. They asked me to send activity logs, mentioned what 3rd party software might interfere, made various suggestions, and asked me to keep sending any updates. So they are working on it; I am just surprised that it is taking so long to fix. On the other hand, I really don't know anything about software engineering.

At any rate, I hope that this at least reassures you and others they are not ignoring the problem.