Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

Gastei R$ 3.000,00 numa porcaira de MacBook Pro que o wifi não funciona, não conecta. A Apple é uma bosta que vende o OSX Lion que é uma merda.

I have just bought my imac and i have the same problem, i am very disapointment of this situation, and it seems that is an old problem an it dosn`t matter for apple. I hope i can find a solution because the actualization(10.7.2) doesn`t work.

This is huge issue.  I am experiencing the same thing, intermittent outage for wifi.  I have been searching the web and discussions, and this problem goes back to 2009; I cannot believe there is no fix for this.  I have begun the switch over to apple in my office, but I am holding off now, as I cannot use my mac book with a wifi, only with a wired connection.  My windows 7 machine, although as much as I don't like windows, I at least have a sustained wifi that I can use.  I have gone back to my old laptop using windows just to be able to move from room to room.  I have read where people have gone to the genius bar and they have heard nothing about this problem... Has anyone gone back to apple?

Someone earlier on in the posts suggested changing your location. I went into System Preferences > Network and creaed a new location and hooked into that. Its helped - I still disconnect but not as often.

Reboot.

Hope this helps some of you.

Okay, I think we need to be a bitmore scientific than this.  Someone added a post re chipset theory that Ibelieve is a likely problem.  However, I also read somewhere today thatthe earlier MacBooks only were designed for Draft n speeds so this is what Idid this evening and it would be helpful if a few others could try. Having no result from changing the settings on the MacBook under LION Iused my iPhone to set the router to remove all the security and the MacBookconnected straight away.  I then changed to mixed mode WPA/WPA2 andAES/TKIP.  Then I added a network manually on the MacBook and selectedWPA/WPA2 security and the network came back up.  I also changed the routerto broadcast b/g/n (It was set to n, though it had bee set to all before). Thus, given Windows 7 seems to be able to negotiate the correct securityI am minded to disagree that the problem is a chipset issue - but I am noexpert and have no real understanding around this area.  Thus, I suspectit is a Lion (and possibly previous versions) issue where whatever negotiatesthe connection may sense one type of connection speed or security but then theconnection app is bugged and does not apply all the correct standards. Thisproblem may also be worse in a highly contended environment.  I can see about 15 relatively good signals with a tool I have on windows.  I'll lookfor one for Lion.   I will, and if others could too, try to find out if itis possible to see what the wireless card is actually picking up I think thatwould be interesting.  But I suggest those having the problems start byremoving all security from the router and establishing a connection.  Ifsuccessful then with one and only one, change at a time apply a higher level ofsecurity and establish when/if the problem re-occurs. 

Personally, I believe it is a general network issue and not specific to the wifi chipset.

Since upgrading to Lion, I am unable to transfer files over either WIFI or Ethernet which are larger than  5mb with any consistancy.

Disaster

Tim Power wrote:

 

Personally, I believe it is a general network issue and not specific to the wifi chipset.

Since upgrading to Lion, I am unable to transfer files over either WIFI or Ethernet which are larger than  5mb with any consistancy.

Disaster

Which sounds like an issue with your network configuration somewhere along the line as I regularly transfer multi-GB files with Lion with no difficulty whatsoever on several different machines.

If you have a router that serves your network for both wired and wireless transfers, an error in that router could be your issue.

Hi William

We have a dual-band Airport Extreme n (second generation) with about 10 difrerent computers dialouging perfectly in both Wi-Fi and Ethernet --- the OS's are Panther, Tiger, Windows XP, Vista and about 5 with Snow Leopard, all in perfect dialouge.

The one singular workstation we upgraded to Lion as a test is the only one with any problems, and the problems are similar to thousands of others I have seen here on this Discussion page, so ... dare I say? Lion is the culprit.

There have been 86 pages of this discussion over 5 months. Is there nothing from Apple yet? I've tried new channels, manually setting the DCHP and a bunch of other things. The only consistency is a problem with the one device running Lion.

Have anyone heard anything constructive from Apple themselves? Unbelievable lack of support for a new product.....especially since you have to have it for iCloud to work properly.

Tim, 

I really do think you should try and run the router without any security orconnect to a router without any security to test a simple connection first. I would set the router to broadcast b/g/n and not n only.  If this works then you know the basic wifi works.  Then apply security but useWPA/WPA2 with AES + TKIP together - if you can.  I sense that however Lion detects the signal, it seems to use the wrong settings if only n/WPA2 is used. You can use the Wifi tool in /System/Library/CoreServices and the Networktool under utilities.  In the later select the inteface and you will seethe connection details.  The basis for my thinking is that I have a 300n router but the network app only sees 130mbps.  You can also just check inthe network preferences what security the network connection defaults to. I suspect if it sees WPA2 it will select that but I don't think it works with WPA2 but rather WPA only and TKIP - just my view from experimenting. Since changing this yesterday both my old MacBook and the newer version have work without a hicup.  The other thing I thought of today is to tryand put a larger gain antenna on the router.  No reason other than something to try.  Might upset the neighbors though.

Short of an exorcism I have tried opening the terminal and pinging yahoo.com and all kinds of other crap but the one thing that is working so far is this...

I upgraded the firmware on my linksys WRT54G and I changed the channel to 11 and it has been holding a connection since this morning...

Best of luck to all of you in your quest for a fix

Anyone who is having this problem should be calling Apple support, or taking there problems to the Genius bar in the stores.  This forum is not a "help desk".  It's a discussion area.  If you are having product problems, I know this seems odd, given all the lack of support one gets for a Windows Machine, you need to call the product vendor and complain.  Apple's telephone support is very capable of helping you look at this issue.  The more cases of this issue which are actually documented in that way, the more likely engineers will be to look at and work on this particular problem.

Also, for those who haven't tried this, try toggling the setting for Home Sharing in iTunes.  If it's on, turn it off, if off, turn it on.  See if that causes the network to behave differently.

I personally beleive that this problem is related to recent work in the area of Home Sharing and AirPlay.  I think that they tweeked the parameters for how fast a broken network connection is reported, and are now taking intermittent RF issues on WiFi, which used to be silently ignored, and just manifested as laggy responses to be hard failures, and breaking TCP connections in the Kernel, instead of letting routing and timeouts control how fast network path failures were reported.

I actually did call Apple support, and this is how it went. I had a guy on the line who was obviously running down a troubleshoot checklist, asking me to do all kinds of basic things I had told him I had already done. Things like "Restart your router", "Disconnect & Reconnect to the Wifi", "Reset SMC" etc. After the basic stuff did not work, he put me on hold on three several occasions to check with a colleague (he literally said this to me). After each time, we tried something new out but his colleague's advice did not help. So after more than an hour of randomly trying things out (I kid you not), he told me he was going to write down what we had done so far, and he would then transfer me to 'an expert'.

So another 10min of holding, and then a friendly lady responded on the other line. She had understood my problem, and first asked questions about my modem and router again. After quickly seeing it was not my modem's issue, she said she knew about the problem because her sister and father were experiencing similar issues. She suggested I should try out every wifi channel, because that helped her relatives. I told her I had already done that, and no single wifi channel solved the issue for more than an hour. Unfortunately, there was nothing else she could do to help, and a reimbursement for not wanting Lion anymore was not possible.

Conclusion: while I'm sure Apple Support is a very effective way to get help on certain issues, they definitely don't know how to solve the Lion / wifi issue described in this now 86 page long thread. So good luck to all of you, and let's hope Apple comes with an update soon that resolves the issue. Until then, I'm reinstalling Snow Leopard and wasting another day doing so.

I understand that calling support may not immediately solve the problem.  But it does document it for them, so that they can prioritize working on it.  Again people, this website is called "discussion.apple.com", not "support.apple.com".  Apple support is available on the phone or in the stores.  You really need to use those support paths to document this issue fully.

I still content that this issue is a bug in the network stack attributable to how Apple are handling network layer issues.  I believe that the WiFi stack is now reporting lack of connectivity over shorter term failures.  I believe that most people having this problem, just have a lot of WiFi going on around them, or other wireless devices such as phones, thermostats, TV extendenders (VCR Rabbits) etc.  The WiFi comms are failing off and on, as they always have, but because of changes needed to make AirPlay work well, I think that the WiFi stack is failing the interface, which causes TCP to see "no route to host", and then reset the connection.

You might try using "netstat -rn", "ifconfig -a" and "ping" (on your router) when things fail to see what the state of you network actually is, and post that information here.  Note, that if you are not using a NAT router, you might be posting the network address of your computer which could open the door for DOS traffic, so pay attention to addresses that aren't 192.168.X.Y or 10.X.Y.Z.

this accords with my experience and thinking.

Probably Apple should and do, use forums a a measure of customer satisfaction and problems with their beta level Lion system instead of the bureaucratic insistence on using their manualised and overgeneralised "support"  (which has been very helpful to me on one other issue I must say)

i had no dropouts for several days after setting IPv6 to Local in network preferences.

Then I set up and used my iphone as a router for a short time (30 mins) while travelling, and it started again for time-wasting, and commercially embarrasssing, days. (class action?)

Tried all the old tricks untill I got to:

changing router security from WPA to WPA2.

So far so good now for 24 hrs, no dropouts have stuck.