Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

Have you tried the Snow Leopard driver?

http://rys.pixeltards.com/2011/09/04/osx-lion-wifi.html

Also, make sure to contact Apple about it and let them know how you feel. Either use the feedback form on their site or try emailing someone high up the chain. Tim Cook's email address is not that hard to guess.,

Remember that trying different drivers is inherently dangerous, from both the point of view that interfaces may not sync between versions and that fixed security holes may be reopened.

I've had a couple of weeks of relative stability with Wifi only dropping once or twice a day usually shortly after connecting to either Itunes, email or safari. It doesn't happen straight away, my 2010 iMac 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running Mac OS X 10.7.2 will allow a few transactions then cuts off taking 2 to 5 minutes to reconnect. If I use the diagnostic assistant I get so far in the reconnection process and then the Mac tells me it does not recognise my routers password. Fortunately it always reconnects of its own accord. This makes no sense as all my other devices an HP Envy printer, 2 Iphone 4 and Apple TV do recognise the password and never lose connection with the wifi.

I have the Inventel Livebox from Orange which is an old peice of kit, but Orange ensure me it's as robust as anything out there, has received all it's firmware updates and working correctly. I've taken my Mac to a Genius who again ensures me that its wifi reception is working perfectly and there is nothing they can do to assist further.

Today my wifi connection started working very slowly and repeatedly dropped. This appeared to cause other problems with applications such as mail and system preferences meaning a series of forced quits and a restart. I've forwarded all the issue reports to Apple. The restart failed with the Mac just showing a silver coloured screen and the cursor, so I had to disconnect at the power. The Mac then started very slowly, and initially lost wifi again. Everything working now although wifi still very slow to load each page.

Only different usage recently has been a software update for quicktime and I introduced a Fujifilm F550EXRs SD card to the Mac along with Fujifilms CD, but purely to download the camera's manual, no new applications.

I have tried some of the suggestions in this conversation changing the routers settings and channel. Not experimented further as users appear to report as many warnings and problems with the suggestions as benefits. Through lack of technical skills I'm afraid I'm one of those hoping Apple will fix the issues, but todays experience was a further dissappointment.

If anyone has a solution relevant to my individual set up, I'd appreciate the solution breaking down into basic terms I can follow. Thank you.

This is incredibly disappointing.

I can't believe I'm even thinking about using an old HP laptop.

APPLE, FIX THIS.

This is very frustrating - am sitting typing this on my iPhone4 whilst my MacBookPro, recently upgraded to Lion from SL, is here and unable to connect. Have tried all manner of connection settings - I'm no computer geek and have loved Macs because they are so plug and play. What is more bizzare is that although every other wifi device works fine the Lion based Mac does not. I've managed to get it working on my office router - netgear - finally - not sure how I achieved it - in desperation just changed everything possible! But home router - BTHomeHub - is still unable to connect beyond the initial wifi stage. It fails at ISP onwards - I suppose I'm gonna have to do the same fiddling as I did with the works router settings and hope for the best but it really shouldn't be necessary - shame on you Apple - I feel like I'm back in the PC days again!

I have the same problem and not getting any closer to resolving. I noticed that it's not just my WiFi - it's also ethernet. Can you connect via ethernet?

I down graded the driver last week, the wireless is more stable but I have to manually join networks and there are still drop outs both major and minor.  That being said, it's gone from unuasable to usable.

I am stunned that Apple haven't fixed this and from what I can see, have a pedegree for causing wireless problems with new OS versions.  This is my first Mac (MPB) and had SL for a couple of days before upgrading so that I din't have to go through the pain of learning natural scrol - so far I love the Mac but hate the fact this hasn't been fixed.  In my view, this bug makes Lion unfit for purpose.

And the good news is, at least it's secure.  I'm hardly going to suffer a remote hack when I'm not on the network!

goobervision wrote:

 

I down graded the driver last week, the wireless is more stable but I have to manually join networks and there are still drop outs both major and minor.  That being said, it's gone from unuasable to usable.

What do the Wi-Fi Diagnostics in Lion have to say about things, if anything?

Is your modem running the latest firmware update?

I haven't looked at the logs for a while so I can't comment, as the downgrade of the driver make the problem go from frequent to the odd ping with only one total loss in the last couple of weeks (on/off fix) I have been living with it without too much concern.

Yes, one of the first things I did was to upgrade the firmware and hopefully not cause problems for every other device in the network.

However I have tested on three other wireless routers and two mobile hot spots, all the same problem with Lion. Should I see anything like this on a new MPB (Feb 2011), I would think not as I would have expected the current models to be extensively tested.

SL - was rock solid.

i have a 2010 macbook (the crappy plastic one) and i have recently updated to Lion, it has been working good for the first 4-5 weeks of having it, and i like it a lot. however, yesterday, my internet has recently started cutting out every 5 mins. its so bad, i can not even just turn my wifi back on, and have it run again. i have to restart my computer and hope for the best. but not every time the internet decides to come back on... does anyone  have anything i can do to fix this?

Isaac-

Sounds like it could be a hardware issue; you may want to have it checked out by your local Genius Bar.

Do you notice whether it starts working again after every reboot, or just upon a cold boot?

Hi to all,

This is an other try at explaining the wifi drop that is the same in lion 10.7.2 as it was in 10.7.1.

Using or Airport Express or Apple TV to transmit iTunes from the computer to the amplifier is working to a certain level, but it drops 2 to 5 times a night (about 3 to 5 h of transmission).

So what happens is like even if the sound blocks, the computer is oK, which is far from the reality.  When you try to force iTunes to quit and you return in, there is no way the wifi works.

Even worse, all activities using wifi, like Mail of Safari (i use this), is stoppes.

Turning of the session does not do it either.

The only solution is to restart ! WOW, what a progress from 10.5.8 or 10.6.8 !

So, is Apple going to make any patch about wifi ?

Thanks

ym

Well I have had the same problem on my MacBook with OS X Lion and it virtually drove me crazy. I tried all solutions suggested here as well as in other forums but without success. Even tweaking the router proved useless.

However, I found out what caused the problem for me...TOTALLY weird and no wonder its so hard to detect and fix.

I realized I had problems mon-fri frequently more or less every 5 mins or so....nothing on weekends. My disconnections are caused by a website... I work as an investor and I have a swedish website up 24/7 that updates itself with financial data once every second minute or similar. On weekends (after closing in US/Can friday evening swedish time) it does not update more than once per day. So..... having this website up, alone or together with other windows it crashes the network mon to fri every 5-10 mins but not on weekends!

I have several computers and tried this on an iMac with Snow Leopard.....same thing!

Does not solve the problem but I can avoid it by not using this specific website. I would suspect many websites with the same type of functionality would cause this.

Try it out yourself....the site I have problems with is www.di.se  (a Financial Times type of site but swedish).

Active in a window =>crash. Then try with a non-updating website => total stability for me.

This was detected in OS X 10.7.2 and OS X 10.6.7 using Chrome as browser.

I will try it out in Safari and Firefox on monday when the site is starting to refresh itself again.

GLTA....weird but true