Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

Eureka! - for me anyway - after days with my laptop sat languising and unable to conect to the internet at all via wifi at home and having to use my iPhone-  although through the same router perfectly well, I've finally sorted my wifi on the Mac Book Pro - after trying almost every permutation it would seem that Lion does not like WEP security on the router. Now on WPA and it's working fine. Hope this might help out at least a few of you - and relax....!

Turn off bluetooth. It has to work. If so, set channel 13 for your wifi from AirPort and turn bluetooth on. It helps to me. Bluetooth and wifi have some channels together and may be in colision.

My WiFi used to drop all the time, a few updates ago it started working fine.  After an update today my WiFi drops every 5 minutes or so.  Here is the log from the last reboot (after which WiFi didn't catch and had to run a Network Diagnostic, after which it connected automatically):

11/21/11 10:22:19.460 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501: (com.apple.NetworkDiagnostics) The following job tried to hijack the service "com.apple.NetworkDiagnostic.agent" from this job: [0x0-0x17017].com.apple.NetworkDiagnostics

11/21/11 10:22:34.000 PM kernel: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving).

11/21/11 10:22:34.000 PM kernel: 221.183296: setDISASSOCIATE ****STA SYNC DISASSOC SUCCESS 

11/21/11 10:22:34.000 PM kernel: en1: BSSID changed to 00:24:c9:6a:4b:00

11/21/11 10:22:34.000 PM kernel: AirPort: Link Up on en1

11/21/11 10:22:34.000 PM kernel: en1: BSSID changed to 00:24:c9:6a:4b:00

11/21/11 10:22:34.000 PM kernel: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1

11/21/11 10:22:34.368 PM airportd: _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “WiFiNetwork34”. Bailing on auto-join.

11/21/11 10:22:37.065 PM configd: network configuration changed.

11/21/11 10:22:37.066 PM netbiosd: network address or mask changed for en1

11/21/11 10:22:37.088 PM configd: setting hostname to "unknown045453001cd8.home"

Needless to say I tried countless fixes, solutions, scripts, clean-ups, etc.  This is a brand new iMac 21.5" with i7...not 2 months old.  I'm rather hopeless already...

This seems to be a problem for many people. I have it too. Ive been looking around and have not found anyone who had a solution. Very frustrating. The whole pretext of apple these days is the network. This problem makes everything  difficult.

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.

Unfortunately I have no idea what the last paragraph of that article means. I have no idea if I have Atheros. But I may take a bash at it. Will contact Tim Cook. Will give feed back.

This thread is supposed to be branched to a new discussion. The link is here:discussion

I can not access that link. I am told I am denied access. Apple is getting quite wierd. Reminds me of the bad old days with Ameral, before Steve got back.

You can easily find out if your iMac has an Atheros Wi-Fi chipset by running System Information and looking in the Wireless (or Wi-Fi) section. It will either mention "Atheros" or "Broadcom".

Try to set up different channel for wifi. I have set channel 13. Because my bluetooth devices are on the same channel as wifi was. That solves the problem and wifi is all right now.

TeeTw0 wrote:

 

Have you tried the Snow Leopard driver?

 

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

 

Once again, note that by doing so you may not only reopen your system to significant security issues, you're completely lucky if it works at all.

It's like dropping an engine from a model year 2002 car into a 2011 and expecting all the electrical connectors and bolt holes to match up perfectly.

William Kucharski wrote:

 

TeeTw0 wrote:

 

Have you tried the Snow Leopard driver?

 

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

 

 

Once again, note that by doing so you may not only reopen your system to significant security issues, you're completely lucky if it works at all.

 

It's like dropping an engine from a model year 2002 car into a 2011 and expecting all the electrical connectors and bolt holes to match up perfectly.

It's the latest Snow Leopard driver for the Atheros Wi-Fi chipset published by Apple, so I don't necessarily agree with the engine comparison. It's an older driver, yes, but it's not that old.

I don't fully see why this would pose a security risk, but I don't know enough about that to say one way or another.

For me the bottom line is that this is the only solution that actually fixed my problem - other than reverting back to Snow Leopard. I have spent countless hours on the phone with Apple Care and Apple's Executive Office and dropped my iMac off at the Apple Store twice - all to no avail.

For whatever reason Apple has been unable to fix this problem so far, so personally I am going with a solution that works fine for me. Ever since I reverted back to the Snow Leopard driver all has been fine. I have had no other problems either, so in my mind this is a perfectly acceptable workaround until an official solution arrives.

Also, it's easy to revert back to the Lion driver after installation, so in case this fix doesn't work, there's really nothing to lose.

I just turned my Bluetooth off all togehther.  I'lll be very curious to see how this works out.  With fingers crossed....

A. Jay

I would try the Bluetooth, but my issue is on an iMac, which means I would need to get a wired keyboard and mouse.

Can anyone access the discussion John Zuill pointed out ?  I still get the "It appears you're not allowed to view what you requested. You might contact your administrator if you think this is a mistake." error

Hi anders102

I visited the site you mentioned last Sunday and experienced nil problems, this was to be expected reference your report. There was initially a noticeable pause when clicking on the first randomly chosen link but after that it seems to be what one would expect of a sophisticated web site.

To complete the exercise I visited again just a few minutes ago and from the off it performed with the smoothness of oiled silk, please understand not that I have never oiled silk to test it. But I trust you get my drift?

Perhaps there is a specific link that causes you issues? Provide the link and I will check it out.

Hi there,

Perhaps allready mentioned but nevertheless:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/06/lion-wi-fi-problems-solution-mac/

HAPPY MACcing!

Cheers, Berend

Berend de Meyer wrote:

 

Hi there,

 

Perhaps allready mentioned but nevertheless:

 

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/06/lion-wi-fi-problems-solution-mac/

 

HAPPY MACcing!

 

Cheers, Berend

This tip (creating a new network location) is one of the many things I tried - unfortunately didn't do anything. It's also one of the first things that Apple Care had me try.

Also tried resetting SMC, resetting PRAM, changing Router settings and deleting Preferences. All to no avail. Even did a fresh re-install of Lion - same problem.

The only solution to the problem was to install the Snow Leopard driver for the Atheros Wi-Fi Chipset. To me, that's clear evidence that Apple shipped a buggy driver in Lion and up until now (10.7.2) has still not figured out how to fix that driver. Still makes me mad/sad, especially with so much emphasis on network and connectivity.