Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

First, Lion is a great OS with a lot of very bad bugs.  This is one of them.  Very very bad and needs to be fixed.  These problems simply do not exist in Windows 7 from my experience on that OS.

So.......

I have one admin account and three standard accounts on my 2010 iMac with Lion 10.7.2 whcih has been installed for many months.

About a week ago I go the first internet drop out on my daughter's account.  It has just happened again.

My admin account in both cases has continued to operate fine.  All the standard accounts are broken.

We have logged out of all the standard accounts, to no avail.  Restarted the browsers, ditto.  Turned off then back on the wifi connection.  Reset the router.  Tested the internet connection on a standard account using the Apple diagnostics in Network in the pref panel, and it says the internet is working fine.  It isn't.

Last time we had to reboot the iMac to get the internet restarted.  Useless.  Terrible.  C'mon Apple.  Spend some of the 80 billion and employ some more testers, or do what Microsoft did and use a public beta.  This is pathetic.

Here is a tutorial that helped me with that annoying problem for my 2010 21.5" iMac and Netgear router.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtxRfFAh8Pg

Oxygen70 ...I watched the video and did what he said and it has worked like a charm !!!!!!! I no longer have erratic signal changes or wifi looking for connection............That guy is a genious! U need to spread this around the web...there are over 54000 people who have been looking for an answer to this and u would think it would have been found by the idiots at Apple!

Well I'm just glad it's over..it was getting very frustrating to go into network settings and re input all of my info for a few moments of internet ..then have it drop all over again. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!!!

Well, he does waffle on a bit...you can take the shortcut here, which is where he got his info from:

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

But before you dash off to download the driver, check that you have an Atheros 4.0 firmware and not Broadcom by looking for the Network / Wifi info in 'About this Mac'. If you have Broadcom firmware this fix won't help.

Tried this one a while back. No luck. Same old problem.

@softwater, are you sure about Atheros 4.0? Here's my firmware version:

Firmware Version:          Atheros 9280: 2.1.14.6

This looks nothing like 4.0

Sorry, I'm only reporting what the guy said on the link I posted, (not the one Oxygen posted), I won't pretend to know anymore about it than that.

However, he has provided an email address at the very bottom of that page, so I guess he won't mind you emailing him and asking him..

Sorry everyone...disregard what I said!! It was temporary bliss........it worked well for about 2 hours...went to sleep and now it's still dropping my service!

I am surely going to screw up my computer with all these suggestions..I am just so willing to have a fix that I am trying every alternative(hoping each one will do the trick).I am growing very wary of Apple and this f----ng Lion. Maybe they want us to screw up our machines to get us to buy new ones....lol

Just checked and yes I have Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.42.4)

K back to square 1...........anybody.....Bueller?

Some people here wonder if the problem only occurs when upgrading from Leopard to Lion. I can tell you that it's a general problem: I bought a brand new iMac 21" with Lion installed. Wifi drops regularly.

As you can read in my earlier post: 'Roy' from Apple care told me that they are very much aware of this problem but they won't communicate anything about it before they have a solution. Apparently it is either very difficult to solve OR they just don't care about it and don't spend time on it.

This problem is however starting to deteriorate Apple's reputation: in a Dutch magazine 'iCreate' this problem is mentioned as one of 'Lion's child deseases'... with no good solution so far.

I also read that some people get the problem resolved by buying a router... well: I have a router (Belkin) which I used previously on my PC. It worked wireless without any problem on the PC/Windows, with my iMac I cannot use the wifi and have to connect it with cable in order to get a trustworthy connection.

Jeeeez... I moved to Apple because I believed it was having such a good reputation, but the way they deal with this problem clearly *****. This is really a shame....

This helped with the decision whether or not to try this fix.  I have Broadcom so it will not help my MB Pro.

Thanks for the heads up.

Ed

Good morning. I just sent a brief note about this problem, or perhaps better stated, "these" problems, to some well known newspapers. Yes, I know, this story may not make the last page of the Technology section, let alone the cover, but I felt it was time to take action beyond reporting this to support (done that, as should you), and checking back here everyday, only to see the same old "I tried this and it worked, oops, no it didn't" dialogue.

So, before you comment, or think me the fool, please know that I fully expect to get little or no response from these papers. That said, for me, this was the right thing to do. A little press coverage can go a long way.

jliv

Guys, what worked for me without a doubt, was putting on the DNS numbers 8.8.8.8 on both fields (DNS Servers and Search Domains).

In my case I am using WIFI connection with a Static IP.

Hope it helps!

The fact that many people are finding different solutions speaks to the complexity of Apple "simply" solving the problem.  I don't have any idea how much Apple is doing or not doing to solve this issue.  But, as you did, I hope others are talking to Apple Care about their problems, and even telling them when something works to "fix" the problem.  Either you care to have the problem fixed, or you don't.  If you want it fixed, be a part of the solution by reporting your case/issue/problems, and then updating Apple when something better/different happens.   If it was easy to fix, I think it would be fixed.  The fact that there are a wide rage of "solutions", and the fact that the problem persists, without Apple providing any "fixes", says to me anyways, that the problems are related to specific machines/drivers, and how they interact with the stack.  I still contend that it's how the stack deals with errors occuring in the WiFi driver, either recognized by the hardware, or manifested as a software disconnecting event.

I haven't seen any more updates on people using "ping <router-address>" to see if that stops the problem from recurring.

A DHCP renewal failure could make things look like a network problem, when it's just something very basic.  When the problem occurs, what does "netstat -an" and "netstat -rn" tell you about network activities?

My brand new macbook pro (13 inch OS X Lion 10.7.2, purchased in Nov, 2011) was dropping its wifi connection every few minutes since day one, and I tried troubleshooting the problem myself (zapping PRAM, etc etc) for the first 2 weeks. Gave up when nothing seemed to work.

But then I started to occasionally have smooth connection for a few hours and then BAM connection dropped like crazy again. I figured out my wifi runs smoothly when I have uTorrent turned on. I just have to have at least one file seeding. Not a 'technical solution' but it works and I'm happy.

My sister was experiencing the same problem with her macbook pro (15 inch, OS X 10.6.8) wireless connection and was also solved by leaving the uTorrent on with at least one file seeding.

Long story short, my simple solution:

1. Turn on uTorrent

2. Leave it runniing in the background with at least one file seeding/ downloading

3. That's it.

Has worked on 2 macbook pros. Hope it works for you guys too.