Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

Same issue here. I have to physically come close to the router to get a connection. Sure it's wireless, but you have to transport your router with you. Was it one of the 250 new Lion features ?

Just to follow up my post of several days ago, following the upgrade to Lion I was experiencing the dropped wifi problems, in my very non technical way I followed the simple suggestions first, I moved my wifi connection to the top of the available list and performed the SMC reset, it all worked straight after and I am pleased to report that over the last 4 days ( fingers crossed ! ) everything has worked just as it did before the upgrade, I have also tried taking the computer to a local coffee shop, again no problems there or on my return home when I reconnected to my home connection.

This SMC reset solution did absolutely NOT work for me. I saw the LED changing color and so on, but still I need to be 3 m away from the router to work!!

Double Post

I have observed behavior with wi-fi vis-a-vis Time Machine backups. If I open my MBA from sleep and it does not immediately back up, then I have no trouble getting a good wi-fi connection. If my laptop begins to back up to Time Machine, I will not be able to get a wi-fi link until I stop the backup. As soon as the backup is stopped, I get an immediate wi-fi connection. (I have not had the patience to sit and wait for the backup to complete and see what happens.)

I never noticed this behavior in Snow Lion. Anyone have the same experience, or ideas about this?

I do agree to some degree the situation is made worse by doing a lot of tasks or extra bandwidth, this was never an issue on SL, but since moving to Lion, I get extremely long hangs/no loads/delays to load any page when anything using a few resources are occuring. I also notice that Safari 5.1 seems to be the worse affected, if you get a no internet connection with Safari, try loading Firefox for example to access a default web page (yahoo etc). If you are using a N router, flip it to B&G mode first, load a page to yahoo or google for example then leave it for a while minimised, come back and reload the page, if you get a page not found, and keep trying, chances are you will get the error page to keep re-occuring or even display a local drive mapping. However if you try and go to the same Page using Firefox, it tends to wake up the wifi-card and display the page, once its done, Safari then tends to reload fine (although slower initially). Well that is what is happening in my instance

I am having a simir robl MBP wich was until last night happily working with a wifi connex to iphone personal hotspot. Out of the blue it decided it could no longer see the connex. I enabled the connex via Bletooth and it works again. Yes m in Lion!!

not sure what has happened

It's weird. After the initial release of Lion and I ran into these Wi-Fi issues I was told by a Genius to switch my Airport Express to G-Only and to one specific Channel. That worked well up until a few days ago. Now I'm forced to try out various variants of B/G, G-Only, Broadcast Strength, Multicast Rate and Channel.

Right now....it's weirdly acting okay. I'm 24 on the Multcast Rate, 100% output. Channel Automatic and G-Only. But as others have noticed...this problem seems to appear when bandwidth is high. I've noticed it when on YouTube or NetFlix.

Out of curiosity I ran an "automatic test" on Testmy.net. When the test got the 15MB download the Wi-Fi Dropped.

Sure hope they fix this soon.

Problem: 

------------

My problem is that the wifi does connect to the access point and gets a legitimate IP address but I am not able to get onto the internet.  Safari, itune etc don't allow me to access internet based locations.

Observations: 

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    (1) Connecting via ethernet fixes access to internet... including wifi connectivity (even when ethernet is disconnected)

    (2) once systen is restarted / rebooted, the original wifi issue comes back

Solution: (with help of Apple's trial and error).

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            System Preference -> Network -> Change Location (from whatever is current) to any other or newly defined location...  Wifi back to operational state (until next reboot)

as i explained on page 12 of this thread, i have the same problem with waking from sleep and time machine backups. i've let it back up two times since lion. it took well over 20 hours each time... it deosn't get any faster (it never took that long with snow leopard) and it still causes the internet to not connect if you wake from sleep with a time machine backup in progress.

Although I wanted to wait for some time until trying Lion again I just formated MacintoshHD yesterday and did a clean installation (fucxxxx inpatience ).

After the installation I connected to my wi-fi-network and wanted to do a java-update as recommended in some of the replies here. When I started the java-settings via spotlight I was asked if the installed java-version should be updated and of course permitted that.

Then I got pictures, movies, music and documents back via TimeMachine (but no user-setting or -preferences etc. !!!).

Then I installed:

• Mozilla Firefox (via download)
• Google Chrome (via download)
• Adobe Flash Player (via download)
• iWork 09 (from dvd + software-update)
• iLife 11 (fromd dvd + software-update)
• Sophos Antivirus (via download)
• CleanMyMac (via download)
• iStatMenus (via download)
• LittleSnitch (via download)
• Skype (via download)

I didn`t change anything about the configuration of the router and have the same (actual) firmware as before...

And guess what: Since then - which is for almost 24 hours now - I have an absolutely stable wi-fi-connection without any drop-outs (including several reboots of the system and several times the machine went to sleep-mode).

Software which was installed before but hasn`t been installed again so far (because there is no official Lion-support yet):

• Adobe Photoshop Elements 9
• Hear

I still think it`s a bug in Lion but now I am quite sure that it must come from messed up settings/preferences resulting from going to Lion via upgrade instead of a realy clean installation (which of course is a mess as the upgrade is the default provided by Apple...).

If I'm not mistaken we are mostly in agreement: wifi worked better (properly) with Snow Leopard, it does not work as well with Lion, and in most cases the only "variable" is the OS upgrade. Apple needs to sort this, various hokus-pokus may help some lucky people in some specific situations, but the clear truth is Apple screwed up the wireless networking with Lion.

This is exactly the situation for me. We have a bog-standard Netgear home router. Doesn't matter if it's G, N, or Z - it's bog-standard and it worked, the Macbook Pro was fine with it, my PC laptops always were fine with it (and still are). At home, the MBP always sits on the kitchen table in the same place (it hasn't moved); the router sits on a bookshelf in the sitting room (it too hasn't moved); my PC laptops (we have 2) both worked before, both still work, anywhere in the house. And previously if we DID move the MBP to another room, it too worked.

I am no computer technician, but I am capable of basic logic. Prior to the upgrade to Lion the wireless worked flawlessly on the MBP. From the first time I ever used Lion, and ever since, the wireless has not worked properly (not to mention printer drivers which don't work, Time Machine-compatible drives which are no longer compatible, and a multitude of other things which used to work find but now don't). Like others I was sucked-in by the snazzy marketing promo video (gestures, full screen, etc) and now have a machine that is verging on unusable, not to mention a seriously p****d-off wife (it's her MBP!!).

I can only echo the comments of others. We expect this from Microsoft. We are used to MUCH better from Apple. I presume the commercial imperative to get this out to sell new MBAs is what drove a clearly poorly-tested, seriously-flawed OS to be launched by a Company from whom we do not expect such behaviour. Hopefully (a) salutory lesson learned by Apple, although may be wishful thinking on my part, and (b) more important hope they launch upgrade soon which resolves these issues.

Meanwhile I will check out of this conversation since, after 22 pages, I think it's time to acknowledge this is not something users can fix for ourselves.

oh yes sorry and one other thing.

if i'm not mistaken "Airdrop" is new in Lion. since this is not defined functionality of the 802.xx standard, so far as i know, my guess is Apple have needed to create a completely-bespoke set of new wireless drivers for the pre-existing standard wireless hardware. again, i cannot really believe these faces are unrelated - before: no airdrop, no problem, after: airdrop, problem.

or have i just lapsed from the analytical into the cynical

This seems common. My experience suggest my Iphone 4 wont connect wirelessly via hotspot - but will via bluetooth (on my MBP)  the Imac on the other hand is behaving very nicely. Both Lion and more or less a miror of each other.

Lion has no prob talking to the wireless Mac airport extreme so perhaps its the Apple work with apple syndrome (but not with IOS 4?)

As a test tomorrow I will use a fresh out of the box router which I will borrow from work and try on that to replicate the problem.

For this test I will use a buffalo N class router.

I will post the results.

There is a facebook community page dedicated to this issue here

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Apple-LION-WIFI-Problems/239806982720544

also check out this guys video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkSN9ky6sL8