Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

Hey, John0Sings--

Hate to sound skeptical, but I have a difficult time with the idea that Geniuses haven't heard about this problem. Maybe there needs to be a "Flash Visit to a Genius Bar" or whatever they call it.  I'm so tired of this problem.

I have just trawled this lengthy thread which is just about ready to enter has entered it's 40th page, spanning a time period of almost a month.

The purpose of writing this is to encourage changes in approach, to issues which are obviously affecting a great deal of Users but seemingly not making any progress toward a solution.

In a User to User Forum the knowledgable amongst us have a hard time extracting information, from folk with issues, which should be presented up-front.

Without information about the problem and the kit involved there cannot be a solution.

Ease the pain of entering your kit details every time you post by creating a ‘signature’ and being sure to use the ‘Advanced’ Post Editor and clicking the appropriate Radio Button. Apple could have made it easier for these Forums to be more useful to more Members, but that is a different story.

I am a fellow sufferer who has tried most of the suggestions-fixes-workarounds-call them whatever, none of which have proved to be a resolution in my case.

Unfortunately those who find a resolution tend not to dwell hereabouts for longer than necessary, so we do not learn much about lasting solutions.

There is a need to bring this problem to the attention of people who can do something about it, and Apple have a set method of doing this.

The Apple route is via this link, I could be wrong but I have not seen anything similar above:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

If everyone who has posted above were to visit this page and be prepared to fill out the required information with the full details of the problems experienced, and describe their steps taken to attempt resolution it will probably have more effect than any post here.

It is little wonder that Apple do not follow these Forums closely, if they did their work would be severly hamppered by lack of information on problem details and the kit involved. It simply is not good enough to say 'Me too', this simply adds a name to a meaningless [as far as Apple are concerned] list.

Trying to follow referrals from a post where the Member has had success but only mentions a Members Name, rather than including a link to the post which has given assistance, is all but impossible.

We collectively need to make the Forums more useful, this means making a little more effort, so if you want to see a solution to this issue please do something positive about it.

My action to achieve a good connection to the Internet has been to cease relying on Wi Fi and switch to Ethernet Connection.

I cannot use an Ethernet Cable direct from the Mac to the Router-Modem so have deployed a system which uses the house wiring to transmit the signals.

This has given me a 100% unbroken connection over the last 3 weeks.

Hoping to buy a MacBook of some variety I would like to see a Wi Fi solution to this problem otherwise the plan will have to put on hold.

Message was edited by: Froggy Grodkin This Thread has now entered it’s 40th Page!

Thoughtful response, Thanks. I'll be going to the feedback link--hope others will, too.

I sent this feedback to Apple a while ago. I should have mentioned it in my original post.

One other experience I failed to mention.  My colleague at work also has a MacBook Pro (a slightly older one). He has the latest version of Lion and all the same network settings for connecting to the wireless networks here at the company. He has no dropping issues at all - never has.  This is also why I went ahead and replaced my airport card last week. 

When I first encountered this problem after installing Lion, I placed a call to Apple Care. This was on August 7. The tech there had only one other person call in with this problem besides me. He had me reset the PRAM and led me through the process. However, this didn't work and he had no other solutions to offer.  He suggested I go the the Genius Bar at the Apple Store.

So,  I have opened up three instances of this issue with Apple, the normal feedback process, an Apple Care case number, and a Genius Bar case number and part replacement service.  Apple knows of my problem.  In addition, I have had other technical colleagues of mine try to debug this issue from many angles, short of rebooting all the WAPs at work.  I have done due diligence and have spent many hours trying to solve this problem on my own.  If any of you discover the true cause and/or have a solution that will definitely work for everyone, I would appreciate your assistance.  Until then, I wait patiently for Apple to come through.

Thanks for listening,

JohnO

Running a 27" iMac with 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 processor and 4GB of memory.

I upgraded to Lion from Snow Leopard (on the first day of the release).  Running 10.7.1 now.  I've tried most of the fixes here.  None of them resolved the issue entirely, including the keep-alive strategies proposed.

When my iMac was across the house from my Airport Extreme, the WiFI dropping issues would peak at times when there appeared to be lots of activity on my neighbors WiFi networks.  In the early morning and late at night I could hold a WiFi connection for much longer.

Coindidently, I moved my iMac to within 10 feet of my Aiport Express, which means my iMac happens to now be further from my neighbors.  The WiFi hasn't dropped now for days!

Makes me think the underlying driver issues have something to do with radio competition, network selection, and roving between networks.  I've not updated the two MacBook Pros in my house to Lion as I can't imagine fighting this issue when I travel.  Looking forward to a sustainable fix in 10.7.2.

It's not interference from other networks or any electrical interference.  My signal drops off to nothing, my wifi says that it is turned off and it won't let me turn it back on unless I reboot sometimes twice. 

Same problem here - I have a late 2009 iMac 27"; since I upgraded to Lion, the WiFi connection drops several times a day. Very annoying because I have a open Citrix session and I need to re-connect it every time. Problem can only be "solved" by switching WiFi off and on.

I called the Apple hotline twice. Standard procedures like rests and so on didn't help. They wanted me to call my internet provider and I told them that for sure I do not do that as it has nothing to do with them.

Not really satisfied with Apple this time...

I had installed Lion in the first day it was released and since then my iMac wifi didn't work for more than 1-2 min at a time. I had to turn on/off wifi dozens of times each day... I've tried every tip on this forum but nothing helped. Last night I thought that I should try to reset the AirPort base station. So, I went and reset it to the factory settings and then reinstalled it. GREAT SUCCESS! Now is 24h w/o any drop in wifi connection. Hope this will help some of you.

Hi. Running a MacBook 15 i7, have iPad, iPhone4 and Vaio laptop. I agree with JScottCarr. Before I upgraded to lion, snow leopard was rock solid wifi anywhere in my house. Since the upgrade I  having dropped wifi connection sometimes straight off from waking the MacBook from sleep, but more often dropping depending where I am in the house - this never happened before. If I keep the MacBook within 15 feet of the router it is rock solid, but move away then from time to time it drops like it is competing for different stronger signals from other networks in my apartment building as the cause. My iPhone iPad and Vaio are still functioning as they were before so I know it's the upgrade to lion that's caused it. I tried all the fixes mentioned in this thread but no joy. I upgraded to 10.7.1 and even though it said that the patch included something for "known wifi issues" 10.7.1 did not help.

I agree with Froggy Grodkin that it seems necessary to get the steam out of this discussion and make it more useful.

Looking through this and the other threads related to the "WiFi stopps working" issues makes me think that we are actually seeing many different causes which lead to this problem.

For one, there is the "WiFi hardware is accidently put asleep" that is said to be considered by some Apple engineers: it seems logical that causing constant traffic like pinging the router could be used as a remedy. But this obviously can't help if the machine is really suspended and the WiFi hardware doesn't wake up on resume...

And then there are the issues which seem to be more related to the negotiation of the WiFi parameters...

And still even more hints which lead to other directions...

So, I also join Froggy Grodkin in keeping in mind that *this* is not a place to tell Apple about some problem, but for users to help each other.

In my case: I'm using a 2007 Mac Mini ("Macmini2,1") as a kind of SOHO server, initially with Leopard Server, last weekend changed (I still hesitate to call this an "update") to Lion Server. I did a fresh install, because there were some issues with the last backup and i had to do a fresh install nevertheless, being it Leopard Server again or Lion. Since some of my original requirements didn't exist anymore, I decided to try it with Lion.

I'm using the ethernet port for the internal access to the server (192.168.x.y address range) and WiFi for the external access (routable/registered IP address, so no NAT).

Although this box is never put asleep, the WiFi becomes once or twice a day unresponsive: WiFi seems to be online (icon in the menubar is "filled", network discovery is updated when clicking on the icon) but no network access via WiFi to or from the box is possible. In my case, ethernet is still working (in contrast to others who reported complete loss of network accessibility!). As the box is stationary, it only does know about it's own network, so fiddling with the "environment" settings didn't help either. Also, the "constant ping" method didn't work for me.

I didn't try the "reset PRAM and SMC" methods because that seems rather far fetched for me to be of any use in my case. If it wouldn't work on startup or in considerable shorter periods (minutes, not hours) as some told here, i would reconsider that. The router itself doesn't show any issues (a Linksys WRT54GL running with OpenWRT Backfire).

I'm now using a little bash script, which checks the network access and does an off/on cycle of the WiFi if the access fails.

For those, who may think they have the same issue, here's the script. I'm assuming for now that you have some minimum knowledge to use the "Terminal" application. I may add some more details in a later post, if it seems necessary.

#!/bin/bash

#

#===  insert your own router IP address here:

ROUTER=192.168.1.1

while [ true ] ; do

  if ping >/dev/null -c 5 $ROUTER ; then

    sleep 60

  else

    echo `date`": trying to reestablish connection..."

    networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled wi-fi off

    sleep 5

    networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled wi-fi on

    sleep 60

  fi

done

Place it in a file in your home directory named may be "keep-wifi-alive", make it executable ("chmod 750 keep-wifi-alive") and run it like:

> sudo keep-wifi-alive

It might be useful to store the output in a log file, so you may call it alternatively via:

> sudo keep-wifi-alive > wifi-alive.log

What does the script do?

It probes the target every minute. (This may be the WiFi router, may be the gateway address as suggested in another post. But as discussed there, it's not nice to use other peoples network equipment for probing if not necessary...). If the trial is unsuccessful, it shuts down WiFi, waits some seconds to let the dust settle and enables it again.

I'm trying 5 pings because I found that sometimes my router is not responsive enough for just one ping. After starting WiFi, I'm waiting another minute before probing again, because it needs some time until WiFi is "up" again.

"sudo" is necessary, because executing the program "networksetup" is only allowed for root users.

You should check first if "wi-fi" is really the name for your WiFi interface, so call networksetup -listallservices and look out if there is a line called wi-fi, airport or similar and change the name in the networksetup call appropriately.

Remember: this will only work for you, if you can get your WiFi to work again by deactivating and activating it manually. This script will just do that for you automatically.

Maybe it is worth to check if a certain type / brand of WiFi router is "causing" the problems. I read a thread on a German Mac forum (http://www.macuser.de/forum/f138/lion-staendige-wlan-595077/) and it seems that most of the German users have problems with routers from AVM (FritzBox). So I am; it is the same brand I use here....

I too was experiencing consistent wireless drop outs on my new iMac running Lion (every few minutes) and resetting the SMC and trying various other recommended fixes did not work.  I finally tried changing the wireless channel on my router (was set at 1 and moved it to 11) and it's now been stable for over 24 hours.   Looks like the wireless on the Mac was competing with another wireless devices (cordless phone maybe) and being too nice and dropping out. 

After a week of excellent performance, Lion is now unable to connect to my WiFi. I have run standard maintenance, and reset the SMC. If I connect to my SSID, it either connects momentarily and then disconnects or just give a "Connection Timeout message.

I have changed the wifi settings on the router. I have tried DCHP, assisted DHCP and manual addressing. I have changed the wifi password. I have restarted the router, a Netgear DGN2000.

My SSID shows at maximum strength, being only a few feet away. There were no changes made to the configuration yesterday that would account for this.

Log of an attempted connection:

19/09/2011 11:57:13.000 kernel: en1: 802.11d country code set to 'X3'.

19/09/2011 11:57:13.000 kernel: en1: Supported channels 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 120 124 128 132 136 140

19/09/2011 11:57:17.000 kernel: Auth result for: 00:24:b2:47:da:30 MAC AUTH succeeded

19/09/2011 11:57:17.000 kernel: Auth result for: 00:24:b2:47:da:30 Unsolicited  Auth

19/09/2011 11:57:17.000 kernel: AirPort: Link Up on en1

19/09/2011 11:57:17.000 kernel: en1: BSSID changed to 00:24:b2:47:da:30

19/09/2011 11:57:21.000 kernel: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 2 (Previous authentication no longer valid).

19/09/2011 11:57:32.652 UserEventAgent: ServermgrdRegistration cannot load config data

19/09/2011 11:57:32.652 UserEventAgent: ServermgrdRegistration oldConfig is nil during net changed notification

19/09/2011 11:57:34.000 kernel: Auth result for: 00:24:b2:47:da:30 MAC AUTH succeeded

19/09/2011 11:57:44.000 kernel: en1: 802.11d country code set to 'GB'.

19/09/2011 11:57:44.000 kernel: en1: Supported channels 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 120 124 128 132 136 140

19/09/2011 11:57:44.000 kernel: Auth result for: 00:24:b2:47:da:30 MAC AUTH succeeded

19/09/2011 11:57:44.000 kernel: AirPort: Link Up on en1

19/09/2011 11:57:44.000 kernel: en1: BSSID changed to 00:24:b2:47:da:30

19/09/2011 11:57:48.000 kernel: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 2 (Previous authentication no longer valid).

19/09/2011 11:57:59.759 UserEventAgent: ServermgrdRegistration cannot load config data

19/09/2011 11:57:59.759 UserEventAgent: ServermgrdRegistration oldConfig is nil during net changed notification

19/09/2011 11:58:12.000 kernel: Auth result for: 00:24:b2:47:da:30 MAC AUTH succeeded

19/09/2011 11:58:12.000 kernel: AirPort: Link Up on en1

19/09/2011 11:58:12.000 kernel: en1: BSSID changed to 00:24:b2:47:da:30

19/09/2011 11:58:17.000 kernel: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving).

19/09/2011 11:58:24.000 kernel: Auth result for: 00:24:b2:47:da:30 No Ack

19/09/2011 11:58:27.220 UserEventAgent: ServermgrdRegistration cannot load config data

19/09/2011 11:58:27.220 UserEventAgent: ServermgrdRegistration oldConfig is nil during net changed notification

19/09/2011 11:58:28.000 kernel: directed SSID scan fail

I'm at a loss.

It is time I write a post on my blog regarding this problem! Enough is Enough!!!  I never had this problem with Snow Leopard.

webbasan wrote:

 

Although this box is never put asleep, the WiFi becomes once or twice a day unresponsive: WiFi seems to be online (icon in the menubar is "filled", network discovery is updated when clicking on the icon) but no network access via WiFi to or from the box is possible. In my case, ethernet is still working (in contrast to others who reported complete loss of network accessibility!).

I've had a similar issue as you have with wireless although I'm still on 10.6.8, with my 2011 MacBook Pro.

It first shows up after I replaced my old 802.11g only router with a new 802.11n capable one. At the moment the new device take over the wireless, iTunes or Video streams starts to drop out in a ten minutes to twice a day rhythm.

So I did some troubleshoot and research in my wireless infrastructure.

The findings on my network was quite correlating also (on some points) with the "Daniel Ebeck" post (a bit above here)

My findings where:

Any time DUP ACK shows up in my WireShark log it corresponds with "Daniel Ebeck's" findings:

Disassociated because station leaving

Auth result for: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx No Ack

ServermgrdRegistration oldConfig is nil during net changed notification

I had also found that:

• One or even all units vanished from the Airport Utility at the time the drop shows up.
• On that moment I could not even ping them with success.
• Stop/Start WiFi by clicking icon resolves the problem till next drop

For that I've additionally monitored the network with a WiFi radio monitoring tool.

On my infrastructure (Base Station Airport Extreme 5th Gen.) that tool shows:

• "Guest Network" periodically switch the radio band and with that change the channel from 2.4GHz #6 to 5GHz #100, what was causing radio interferences.
• The Mac also switched from time to time (just before drop out occur) the radio band. This happened most likely cause the Router uses (by default) the same SSID and Key for 2.4 and 5 GHz; the Router itself have two different MAC-Addresses for the two bands though.

For me, all the wireless problems definitively where solved by:

• Setting a different SSID for the 5GHz 802.11n on the router
• Forcing the Extreme to 802.11n only (2.4GHz) - 802.11n only (5GHz)
• Forcing the Mac to use ONLY one SSID by deleting the other SSID from the "known network" list
• Uncheck "Ask to join known networks" in system settings. (the small printed text there gives the glue)
• Disable the "Guest Network" as my rare guests in network all have 802.11n capable systems.

Also, there may be a problem with the 802.11 a/b/g/n compatibility mode in actual routers, causing "unwanted" network traffic as well, that leads clients to drop connection.

webbasan wrote:

 

I'm now using a little bash script, which checks the network access and does an off/on cycle of the WiFi if the access fails.

This may work, I think, but does not solve the underlying problem(s). In wireless networks is by design a periodically "beacon" packet send out to keep the line alive.

There is a big problem left in all working solutions by altering router or client settings at your own network.

You can't force a company, a hotel chain or McBurger to change the router settings matching the needs of your Mac.

They all want to provide their customers or guests a maximum convenience with WiFi, regardless what hardware or "stoneage" protocol they use.

Lupunus