Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

Rico1111 wrote:

 

Does anyone know hoew to revert back to leopard with the disc? please anything is better than this!

Of course, many of us know how to do it because we've already done it. The instructions for this are all over the internet; just about every single Mac blog (including my own) has instructions on how to do it. Here's a google search results page listing some of the main ones. Read a couple till you find one that makes the most sense to you:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=how+to+revert+to+snow+leopar d&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Carl Eberling1 wrote:

 

Most people just want them to acknowledge there is a problem here either with the OS, or the Airport firmware update that just came out.

For better or worse, 99% of the time Apple only acknowledges an issue by mentioning it's fixed when they release the fix.

I think it's great that you are having a conversation with Apple Care.  I also understand that it's frustrating that it's not fixed.  Being in Apple's Face is part of what needs to happen though.  Sure, you can do as much publicity as you want, but in the end, I am not sure that make Apple go any faster.  If there is a hardware problem, then they have to figure out how to work around it, or decide to fix it.  Guess what everyone in Apple managment is going to want?  A software fix, not a bunch of "returned for repair" equipment.  So, it will take longer to fix if they have to develop a software work around for broken hardware.

There's plenty of reasons to be mad and disappointed at where things are at.  But still, all those emotions, thrown out and spread around the internet don't help fix the problem, they just create more problems.

I'm here just trying to get people to post what they've tryed, and what's worked and not worked, and to try some different things, and provide some information that might help all of us figure out what might work for work arounds or fixes.  But, instead of trying to do that, and be helpful, we have people just on here whining like a bunch of babies and firing off at Apple.  If you want Apple to fix it, and you don't want anything to do with fixing it youself, then why are you on here posting stuff?

It's possible to do a lot of debugging on issues like this if you are willing to be methodical and timely in your testing and analysis.  If you don't know enough about how the network stacks work, then it can seem like it doesn't make much sense.  My two macs don't have this problem on Lion.  My daughter just finished her first semester at college, and only today, when she got home, did she say that something wasn't working right with the wifi on her MBP.  So, maybe I'll have a chance to look at this problem first hand.

this may sound completely crazy but, I changed my wireless setting to only transmit in 802.11g only and it has fixed all my problems with lion and my WI-FI. It also fixed a problem i was having with airplay and my apple tv.

Not sure if this will work for anyone else but it has fixed all my problems. Just thought I would throw it out there.

I know this is not a permanent fix but some where I read to ping yahoo in terminal and another post suggested adding 8.8.8.8 in the advaced section of the network under DNS.

I'm doing both and I have not experienced an excessive amount of wifi drop offs.  I still have them but not every 2 or 3 minutes as before.  Now I can go 30 minutes to a couple of hours before I drop off.

Good luck.

Not all of us are as computer savy as you are sir.  I do not have the time to do exstensive diagnosing of a problem that should have never happened.  When I went to mac I did so because I was tired of all the windows issues.  Win ME sent me over the edge and to mac.  Since I have been using mac I rarely had issues I could not solve myself.  Now I find that what ever I do and what ever I find on the forums is of little help.  Not because people don't want to help it's that they are as clueless as I am about this problem.  I could have bought a cheap win 7 system like my wifes computer ( she needs win for work ) and never lose the wifi connection.  But I believe mac is a superior product. 

So Apple can keep pushing their collective heads deeper into the sand and deny there is a problem but that will not make the 97 pages and counting on this forum of people with Lion wifi issuses go away.

I will always be an Apple fan, however this issue has tarnished Apples image in my opinion.  I used to say macs just work, I can no longer say that.  Mine seems to work when it wants to and I'm powerless to fix the problem.

gphonei wrote:

... But, instead of trying to do that, and be helpful, we have people just on here whining like a bunch of babies and firing off at Apple.  If you want Apple to fix it, and you don't want anything to do with fixing it youself, then why are you on here posting stuff? ...

There's a lot of people here who do post their experiences and who do contact Apple Care: the thing is that Apple is pretending these feedbacks do not exist. And on the base, of course the problem is that Apple is unable to meet it's contractual promisses: I have paid for a quite expensive Apple Care programme which promisses help from 'experts' ... but they are telling me on he the pone litterally: 'listen, we know about the problem and I could take you through some steps that have been tried in the past and did help very occasionnally but chances are biggest that they will not help you...we do not have a solution for the problem and we will only communicate about it whan we have a fix... sorry...'

I honestly believe that bringing this more in the open and shout about it where ever we can is going to give the best chance of bringing Apple to spend enough time on solving this problem. Sending them extra information is apparently not doing any good...I think all different cases and circumstances under which the problem occurs are already well documented.

Why even outsource when they can get customers to test their products for free?  Here you go, dude . . .
http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJob&RID=65007&Current Page=1

gphonei wrote:

 

I think it's great that you are having a conversation with Apple Care.  I also understand that it's frustrating that it's not fixed.  Being in Apple's Face is part of what needs to happen though.  Sure, you can do as much publicity as you want, but in the end, I am not sure that make Apple go any faster.  If there is a hardware problem, then they have to figure out how to work around it, or decide to fix it.  Guess what everyone in Apple managment is going to want?  A software fix, not a bunch of "returned for repair" equipment.  So, it will take longer to fix if they have to develop a software work around for broken hardware.

 

There's plenty of reasons to be mad and disappointed at where things are at.  But still, all those emotions, thrown out and spread around the internet don't help fix the problem, they just create more problems.

 

I'm here just trying to get people to post what they've tryed, and what's worked and not worked, and to try some different things, and provide some information that might help all of us figure out what might work for work arounds or fixes.  But, instead of trying to do that, and be helpful, we have people just on here whining like a bunch of babies and firing off at Apple.  If you want Apple to fix it, and you don't want anything to do with fixing it youself, then why are you on here posting stuff?

 

It's possible to do a lot of debugging on issues like this if you are willing to be methodical and timely in your testing and analysis.  If you don't know enough about how the network stacks work, then it can seem like it doesn't make much sense.  My two macs don't have this problem on Lion.  My daughter just finished her first semester at college, and only today, when she got home, did she say that something wasn't working right with the wifi on her MBP.  So, maybe I'll have a chance to look at this problem first hand.

I've being trying the ping solution for more then two days without any drops but one, but it was a power failure for a fraction of a second that block both the router and the MAC, during these two days the connection was acceptable, I noticed some erratic behavior using skype, the voice was slowing down till disappered, it seemed to have lost the connection but after few seconds it was back. This morning I left the MBP on and simply closed the lid as I did yesterday, coming back home I found the router blocked, (but the ping was not on and I don't know why). As you suggested I've done the command if config -a before and after the block. I executed the diff command but it doesn't show anything, maybe it means that there is no difference. I'm copying here the nonworking.txt. Sorry but I forgot to do the last command before resetting the router. Hope you can understand something. I don't. Thank you

lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384

          options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>

          inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1

          inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000

          inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128

gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280

stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280

en0: flags=8822<BROADCAST,SMART,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

          options=2b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4>

          ether 00:1f:5b:ec:34:fe

          media: autoselect

          status: inactive

en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

          ether 00:1e:c2:bd:e7:aa

          inet6 fe80::21e:c2ff:febd:e7aa%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5

          inet 192.168.1.27 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

          media: autoselect

          status: active

fw0: flags=8822<BROADCAST,SMART,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 4078

          lladdr 00:1f:f3:ff:fe:0e:3e:5e

          media: autoselect <full-duplex>

          status: inactive

Okay, the section:

en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

          ether 00:1e:c2:bd:e7:aa

          inet6 fe80::21e:c2ff:febd:e7aa%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5

          inet 192.168.1.27 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

          media: autoselect

          status: active

shows that this network interface has been assigned an address, "inet 192.168.1.27", so we know that at this point, the "wireless communications" was established between your laptop and the router to create the level-1 network path.  Your laptop then successfully sent out a broadcast DHCP request with it's 'ether 00:1e:c2:bd:e7:aa' address which the router received, and then replied with the '192.168.1.27' address for your laptop to use.

That means that the "wireless" communications path is "functioning" to some degree at this point.  Also handed back in the DHCP reply, from the router to your computer, is the information about "default route" and "DNS lookup entries".  If you do a

netstat -rn

you'll see the assigned "routes", and you'd be interested in seeing a

default     192.168.1.1

kind of line in that output.  The value next to default will depend on your router, but generally it will end in .1 or .254.  If there is no "default" entry, that will keep your computer from connecting through the router, to places out on the internet.

When there is no connectivity, do you have a home server or other computer on your home network that you can connect to, or ping?  The command

arp -an

will show you computers, on your local network that are visible to your computer.  If you use the ping command to ping any of those (the addresses are in parenthesis on the left of the list), does that work, or can you connect to them in some other appropriate way (web, file sharing etc)?

Okay, the section:

en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

          ether 00:1e:c2:bd:e7:aa

          inet6 fe80::21e:c2ff:febd:e7aa%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5

          inet 192.168.1.27 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

          media: autoselect

          status: active

shows that this network interface has been assigned an address, "inet 192.168.1.27", so we know that at this point, the "wireless communications" was established between your laptop and the router to create the level-1 network path.  Your laptop then successfully sent out a broadcast DHCP request with it's 'ether 00:1e:c2:bd:e7:aa' address which the router received, and then replied with the '192.168.1.27' address for your laptop to use.

That means that the "wireless" communications path is "functioning" to some degree at this point.  Also handed back in the DHCP reply, from the router to your computer, is the information about "default route" and "DNS lookup entries".

I disabled DHCP and set static IP address; 27 is the number I assigned to my MBP. The communication between my MBP and the router is always on, MAC always shows all the icon bars at the top of the screen in black; even when there is no communication I can ping the router, also most of the time (but not always) skype is functioning but I cannot navigate and when the router blocks I get the error "cannot resolve dns name"; this for sure because skype uses a protocol that works while tcpip doesn't.

If you do a

netstat -rn

you'll see the assigned "routes", and you'd be interested in seeing a

default     192.168.1.1

kind of line in that output.  The value next to default will depend on your router, but generally it will end in .1 or .254.  If there is no "default" entry, that will keep your computer from connecting through the router, to places out on the internet.

this is it; yes my default gateway is 192.168.1.1 (my echolife huawei BM626 router) I don't know much about routing tables (I only know what they are), so I don't know if the 6th and 7th lines are normal, 4:c0:6f:fb:20:60 is the mc-address of my router

Last login: Fri Dec 16 18:07:32 on ttys001

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ netstat -rn

Routing tables

Internet:

Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire

default            192.168.1.1        UGSc           12       72     en1

127                127.0.0.1          UCS             0        0     lo0

127.0.0.1          127.0.0.1          UH              4    23685     lo0

169.254            link#5             UCS             0        0     en1

192.168.1          link#5             UC              2        0     en1

192.168.1.1        4:c0:6f:fb:20:60   UHLWIi         12      500     en1   1188

192.168.1.27       127.0.0.1          UHS             0        0     lo0

192.168.1.104      link#5             UHLWIi          0        2     en1

Internet6:

Destination                             Gateway                         Flags         Netif Expire

::1                                     link#1                          UHL             lo0

fe80::%lo0/64                           fe80::1%lo0                     UcI             lo0

fe80::1%lo0                             link#1                          UHLI            lo0

fe80::%en1/64                           link#5                          UCI             en1

fe80::21e:c2ff:febd:e7aa%en1            0:1e:c2:bd:e7:aa                UHLI            lo0

ff01::%lo0/32                           fe80::1%lo0                     UmCI            lo0

ff01::%en1/32                           link#5                          UmCI            en1

ff02::%lo0/32                           fe80::1%lo0                     UmCI            lo0

ff02::%en1/32                           link#5                          UmCI            en1

When there is no connectivity, do you have a home server or other computer on your home network that you can connect to, or ping?  The command

arp -an

will show you computers, on your local network that are visible to your computer.  If you use the ping command to ping any of those (the addresses are in parenthesis on the left of the list), does that work, or can you connect to them in some other appropriate way (web, file sharing etc)?

I do not have any server, only my MBP. It happens though that I have, since four days, an old Toshiba laptop with win XP that I'm cleaning and using to test the connection with windows. While I'm writing, it happens something strange for me. From the windows pc I can ping the Mac but from the mac I cannot ping the windows machine, Lion gives me a time-out and windows never answer.

More, the previous netstat command and the following arp, both  were issue while the pc was off, and I can see an IP address of 104 on both commands ....

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ arp -an

? (192.168.1.1) at 4:c0:6f:fb:20:60 on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

? (192.168.1.104) at (incomplete) on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

Now the windows machine is on, working and connected with IP number 88, the previous IP 104 has been replaced with 88. Is it normal? I didn't try yet to ping from both machine when there is no connectivity. I'll do it and report to you.

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ netstat -rn

Routing tables

Internet:

Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire

default            192.168.1.1        UGSc           20       72     en1

127                127.0.0.1          UCS             0        0     lo0

127.0.0.1          127.0.0.1          UH              4    23801     lo0

169.254            link#5             UCS             0        0     en1

192.168.1          link#5             UC              2        0     en1

192.168.1.1        4:c0:6f:fb:20:60   UHLWIi         20     1243     en1   1186

192.168.1.27       127.0.0.1          UHS             0        0     lo0

192.168.1.88       0:13:ce:ca:48:4b   UHLWIi          0        0     en1   1152

Internet6:

Destination                             Gateway                         Flags         Netif Expire

::1                                     link#1                          UHL             lo0

fe80::%lo0/64                           fe80::1%lo0                     UcI             lo0

fe80::1%lo0                             link#1                          UHLI            lo0

fe80::%en1/64                           link#5                          UCI             en1

fe80::21e:c2ff:febd:e7aa%en1            0:1e:c2:bd:e7:aa                UHLI            lo0

ff01::%lo0/32                           fe80::1%lo0                     UmCI            lo0

ff01::%en1/32                           link#5                          UmCI            en1

ff02::%lo0/32                           fe80::1%lo0                     UmCI            lo0

ff02::%en1/32                           link#5                          UmCI            en1

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ arp -an

? (192.168.1.1) at 4:c0:6f:fb:20:60 on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

? (192.168.1.88) at 0:13:ce:ca:48:4b on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

localhost:~ MacBookPro$

I disabled DHCP and set static IP address; 27 is the number I assigned to my MBP. The communication between my MBP and the router is always on, MAC always shows all the icon bars at the top of the screen in black; even when there is no communication I can ping the router, also most of the time (but not always) skype is functioning but I cannot navigate and when the router blocks I get the error "cannot resolve dns name"; this for sure because skype uses a protocol that works while tcpip doesn't.

Both DHCP, and ARP operate at the "ethernet" or lowest level (physical layer-2) of the network.  If they are operating in an "iffy" way, that indicates that the "WiFi" signal between your MBP and the router is not working consistantly.  This is what we've all suspected is the case since other equipment is working, but the output here is revealing

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ arp -an

? (192.168.1.1) at 4:c0:6f:fb:20:60 on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

? (192.168.1.104) at (incomplete) on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

The (incomplete) on 192.168.1.104 means that the "Who Has" ARP request packet was never replied to with the appropriate MAC address, and since that would of been a layer-2 ethernet level packet, we can be more suspect of poor WiFi performance.

DNS operates at layer-3 (UDP) or layer-4 (TCP) depending on how it is configured to operate.  At that layer, you are relying on the physical layer working, routes being in place at layer 3, and usable DNS information either manually configured, or that returned from the DHCP request that would of gone out on the ethernet level, as a layer-2 broadcast request.

Now the windows machine is on, working and connected with IP number 88, the previous IP 104 has been replaced with 88. Is it normal? I didn't try yet to ping from both machine when there is no connectivity. I'll do it and report to you.

Okay, I'd be interested in knowing how both directions of ping are functioning.  That is, from PC to Mac and from Mac to PC as well as the arp information for both at that time.  It might be the ARP processing that is having problems, but it's hard to tell.  The ARP cache can be flushed using

arp -da

so that you can see if ARP can be stimuated to work when you see (incomplete) in an entry.   I you turn off a computer, the ARP entry won't "disappear" immediately, you can see (incomplete) for several different situations.  Just try "arp -da" when you can't ping/connect and see if that somehow removes the problem.

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ netstat -rn

Routing tables

 

 

Internet:

Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire

default            192.168.1.1        UGSc           20       72     en1

127                127.0.0.1          UCS             0        0     lo0

127.0.0.1          127.0.0.1          UH              4    23801     lo0

169.254            link#5             UCS             0        0     en1

192.168.1          link#5             UC              2        0     en1

192.168.1.1        4:c0:6f:fb:20:60   UHLWIi         20     1243     en1   1186

192.168.1.27       127.0.0.1          UHS             0        0     lo0

192.168.1.88       0:13:ce:ca:48:4b   UHLWIi          0        0     en1   1152

 

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ arp -an

? (192.168.1.1) at 4:c0:6f:fb:20:60 on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

? (192.168.1.88) at 0:13:ce:ca:48:4b on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

localhost:~ MacBookPro$

Seeing the .88 address with the correct MAC address in both the netstat and ARP cache is what we expect.  That should consistantly happen for you, if you are trying to "use" that address in a ping or to connect to it.  It looks like it is a problem that is very close to, if not in the WiFi layer.  But, there are still countless variations of issues that can occur in the WiFi layer because of protocol features. 

Can you turn DHCP back on to see if there is something that will manifest in DHCP failures as well?  I'd like to see if there is a loss of IP address assignment at the time that everything stops working.  If the WiFi layer is spotty, and the DHCP renew fails, I'd like to see that happening to make sure that what some others see can be resolved to that particular problem too.

Now the windows machine is on, working and connected with IP number 88, the previous IP 104 has been replaced with 88. Is it normal? I didn't try yet to ping from both machine when there is no connectivity. I'll do it and report to you.

Okay, I'd be interested in knowing how both directions of ping are functioning.  That is, from PC to Mac and from Mac to PC as well as the arp information for both at that time.

Yesterday night I decide to witch off the Mac and windows. This morning there was no connectivity or my mac just blocked at first attempt. I tried to ping from both machines, from the windows pc I can ping the router, my mac but not 8.8.8.8 while from the mac I an only ping the router.

Yesterday night I switched off both machines. This morning I turned on only the mac and it was already blocked or it blocked at the first attempt of connection.

while there was no connectivity I pinged from both: the windows pc pings both the mac and the router but not 8.8.8.8 ; the  mac pings only the router which is 192.168.1.1

Then I did the ifconfig again comparing with the previous working.txt and nonworking.txt and this is the result:

DiffNotWorkNotOn

15,18c15,16

< inet6 fe80::21e:c2ff:febd:e7aa%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5

< inet 192.168.1.27 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

< media: autoselect

< status: active

---

> media: autoselect (<unknown type>)

> status: inactive

DiffWorkNotOn

15,18c15,16

< inet6 fe80::21e:c2ff:febd:e7aa%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5

< inet 192.168.1.27 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

< media: autoselect

< status: active

---

> media: autoselect (<unknown type>)

> status: inactive

  It might be the ARP processing that is having problems, but it's hard to tell.  The ARP cache can be flushed using

 

arp -da

 

so that you can see if ARP can be stimuated to work when you see (incomplete) in an entry.   I you turn off a computer, the ARP entry won't "disappear" immediately, you can see (incomplete) for several different situations.  Just try "arp -da" when you can't ping/connect and see if that somehow removes the problem.

this is what I got with the arp command on the Mac, sorry but I don't know if there is a permission to be changed somewhere and how to do it;

instead, on the windows pc, with the same command  I get a line with the IP address of the router, his mac-address and type "dynamic"

localhost:~ MacBookPro$ arp -da

arp: writing to routing socket: Operation not permitted

arp: writing to routing socket: Operation not permitted

arp: writing to routing socket: Operation not permitted

arp: writing to routing socket: Operation not permitted

localhost:~ MacBookPro$

 

Can you turn DHCP back on to see if there is something that will manifest in DHCP failures as well?  I'd like to see if there is a loss of IP address assignment at the time that everything stops working.  If the WiFi layer is spotty, and the DHCP renew fails, I'd like to see that happening to make sure that what some others see can be resolved to that particular problem too.

done

now I have 192.168.1.2  What should I do when it will block again?

sorry but since I reset the router this morning it took 5 hours to block again.

I'll continue doing my home-work, thank you again.

Same problems........deterioration in speed and connectivity after installing Lion. Put up with it for a while. Tried a couple of the ideas from here - no real difference. Three days ago installed EDIMAX 300Mbps Wireless 802.1 ib/g/n High Gain USB Adapter. Has been working like a dream at about 30Mbps since and no drop off.

Using a 2011 MBP with Lion at work, I connected to our company wifi only once successfully, did everything suggested from different forums here, nothing worked.  I thought hardware is the problem, but when I use windows 7 bootcamp, wifi connection is OK, no problem.  When I use Lion, it wont connect at all.  So everytime I need to use our companys wifi connection, I have to use windows on my Macbook Pro.  WTFun Apple, eh?