Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

When people say they have tried all the fixes are they being honest?

I blamed Lion straight away but was still willing to look into my network, I found that 6 other networks were on channel 11 on wifi, I also got brave with the router and set up a static IP then set from scratch the network on my iMac dhcp with manual address.

On one page back I listed the sequence of actions which I used including repairing disk permissions using disk utility.

If you have tried all this then maybe you have a different problem, if you haven't then you should as I don't think there is going to be a miracle fix from apple.

Ben

After 10.7.2 my wireless just quits working every 2-3 minutes. Wi-fi icon stays at full bars and my signal strength stays steady. The problem is it's like my connection is just lost; webpages stop loading and Mail Inbox just pinwheels forever. If I turn off wi-fi and turn it back on my connection works just fine. My Dell laptop maintains it's connection during these episodes. My wi-fi worked without any issues with 10.7.1.

Same as what I had, have you tried the steps I posted on page 73 ?

Here's what I think is going on.  Overall, the problem is that people are starting to experience more issues related to interfence on the 2.4ghz spectrum.  Practically, Lions WiFi implementation maybe trying harder to make Airplay work well by failing and restarting connections "faster" than it used to.  It may be, that in previous releases, the WiFi stack would ignore RF interference from other traffic for a little longer, and traffic would come and go often enough that you would not see a "disconnect", but just a slight pause.  But, I am guessing that Apple engineers shortened some timers either explicitly, or some testing changes went into production that are causing the already existing, degraded, WiFi network to be much more apparent to the users.

If your router has "automatic frequency selection", that may be happening over and over and causing some loss of service, try changing the use of this from on to off or off to on depending on where it's currently set.

If you are only using 2.4Ghz, and you see more than a couple of other routers within range of your computer, you must be careful about frequency selection to stay away from problems created when too many routers are all using the same frequencies at the same time, in spaces where lots of reflections can cause problems.  If you have a dual antenna router, that can sometimes help eliminate issues with really harsh environments.

Finally, think about switching to using 5ghz or other appropriate frequency radios to increase the number of frequencies available as well as increase your network throughput for better streaming.

I think that there is a software change that has made something happen more often.  Whether that is a bug, or a feature, or a discussion topic is for you to decide.  But, certainly discussing it here, has not 'fixed' the problem, overall, but many people have in fact posted solutions here, which often are related to how they access their router.

BenM77, changed MTU from 1500 to 1490 and it didn't lose connectivity for the rest of the day (about 9 hours now). We'll see how it performs over the next week or so to see if that was a long-term fix. Now, if I could just get it to auto-sleep with Mail running like it did pre-Lion...

I've been having a problem with my Macbook pro where I can't connect to the modem at my house, but I can connect everywhere else. I bought it my Macbook a few weeks ago and it connected fine at first, but now when I try to connect, it keeps saying the network configuration has changed. I don't know if there is some kind of incapadability between the OS X Lion and Verizon DSL, but I hope they fix it soon.

Like everyone I was having these problems as well starting the day after I installed Lion.  Here's what I did tonight that seemed to work:

1) Change the channel on the router (went from 1 to 7).  I decided on 7 after looking in the 'Wi-Fi' section of System Report (in the About This Mac) for the channels the other wireless networks were using.  7 was the least used. 

2) Change the wireless security from WPA2 Personal to WPA/WPA2 Personal (Mixed mode).  Then I restarted the router.

3) After things were working again, I changed the wireless security back to WPA2 Personal and things continued to work. 

Not sure if that did anything magical, but thought I'd share.

-Dave

hull3 wrote:

 

BenM77, changed MTU from 1500 to 1490 and it didn't lose connectivity for the rest of the day (about 9 hours now).

If you change the MTU (maximum transfer unit) size, you should do it to the right values according to the used network to prevent unnecessary packet fragmentation.

For that you should at least use the pppoe MTU of 1492 instead of 1490.

Lupunus

troswim wrote:

 

1) Change the channel on the router (went from 1 to 7).  I decided on 7 after looking in the 'Wi-Fi' section of System Report (in the About This Mac) for the channels the other wireless networks were using.  7 was the least used.

If possible, you should use one of the overlapping free channels and keep a 5 channel gap to the strongest wireless in the neighborhood (up and down).

If transmitters are closer together than channels 1, 6, and 11 (for example, 1, 4, 7, and 10), overlap between the channels may cause unacceptable degradation of signal quality and throughput.

The overlapping free channels in the 2.4GHz wireless are:

For USA: 1, 6 and 11

For Europe and South Africa: 1, 5, 9 and 13

Lupunus

Hi,

I have a 2009 MBP that I updated to Lion when it was released in the summer. I didnt have wifi problems, however due to summer vacation I wasnt using my wifi as often as usual. For about the past week, I have had intermittent problems with the wifi connection at school (ie. it would work for a couple minutes then nothing, turing the airport off/on fixed that, though). However as of yesterday midday, it doesnt work at all. Everyone in the library using Lion is having the same problem. I called the university help desk, they are aware of the lion problem. They suggested I open keychain and do the osct thing explained in an earlier post. The only problem is that keychain access wont open! The application just beachballs me so that I have to force quit it. Four other laptops, all running OS X 10.7.2 are having the same problem with keychain (and their internet).

Apple, do SOMETHING! As for any oter suggestions: I've tried all the ones on these pages and nothing works. Please help!

Just thought I would add a reply to let Apple know I'm also experiencing extremely frustrating problems with Lion and the internet.

However, I'm not sure if it's already been mentioned, but my problem only seems to be with BROWSING the world wide web.

All other connections work. I receive emails, I can listen to Spotify etc.

My problem seems to be the same as everybody elses. I'll be browsing the web and then all of a sudden, I'll click a link, or enter a new web address, and.....nothing. Just the spinning animation as though Safari is trying to connect but can't. I have to then switch off my Wifi and switch it back on again and this usally does the trick.

It's very frustrating, and it's got to the point where I can't stand browsing the web on my iMac anymore. I just don't. I quickly go to the website I need to go to and that's it.

I can't believe Apple hasn't acknowledged this issue and fixed it yet!! Reports of this go back months!

Just an update for everyone. After changing the MTU from 1500 to 1490 my iMac maintained trouble-free connection for 12 hours yesterday and an hour-and-a-half today so far. I'm cautiously optimistic.

@sonjacalisunshine If the Keychain Access app won't open, you usually need to use Disk Utility to repair disk permissions.  http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh17.html  Frequently that is the issue.

hull3 wrote:

 

Just an update for everyone. After changing the MTU from 1500 to 1490 my iMac maintained trouble-free connection for 12 hours yesterday and an hour-and-a-half today so far. I'm cautiously optimistic.

To prevent unnecessary packet fragmentation you should change the MTU to the pppoe standard of 1492 instead of 1490

Lupunus

Hi,

@jugoretz: I tried that, no luck...my Keychain Access still just beachballs.....

@vialli25: Unfortunately for me, nothing works with wireless.... Mail, iTunes Store, Safari, Skype etc. is all down.

@lupunus: I tried that too....even with 1492 and nothing.....

APPLE: you need to seriously get behind this problem! Please!