Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

I was on with Cupertino this week. They seemed unaware of an issue with wifi connectivity and Lion. They recommended that EVERYONE with a wifi issue, in addition to posting to this forum, send them feedback.

You can get to feedback here http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Some at Apple believe customers come here before calling tech support, which I explained was NOT the case. Many come here after tech support was unable to resolve their issue.

Good luck.

I removed Lion and am back on SL until they fix this issue.

Must make a living.

I am having this problem with wifi and wired connection. I submitted feedback also. They have to fix this!  I cannot use the Internet on my CPU at all

Unaware?  UNAWARE?  They saw you coming surely?  It would mean that they do not monitor threads like this.   And we know they do because at least one poster here had his post edited.  So they do know, of course they know.  The reason they don't admit to knowing we have to guess at.  Perhaps they are so sure their products are bulletproof that it's a Hear No Evil position.  Or it could be that they themselves haven't yet figured out what is causing all the mayhem.  Certainly wouldn't want to admit to that.  After all, they're all Super Geniuses, aren't they?

I have an ancient (5+ years) Orange Livebox router and having the same problems as other people.

Any idea what chipset this has?

J

I'm only getting about 10% of my capable bandwidth while using WiFi.  Bought a brand new Macbook Pro laptop, ported everything over with Snowleopard and noticed the problem. I only upgraded to Lion to try and solve the issue.

Ethernet and other devices on the same wifi network work perfectly fine.

Went to Apple store, where they booted the machine with their OSX Lion hard drive and tested again. Everything worked fine. (Not apparent hardware issue) 

They recommended I reinstall OS X Lion. Did that, no luck.  Backed everything up, wiped machine, reinstalled Snow Leopard from scratch.

WiFi seemed to be working fine now (12-15mbps), so I proceeded to upgrade to Lion.

WiFi throughput is suffering again. 2mbps vs. 12-25mbps.  I'm convinced there's a bug with the WiFi service in Lion.. 

Need to wipe the machine and go back to Snow Leopard I guess.

I've got a pretty new Orange Livebox router made by SAGEM and have the same problems, currently connected by Ethernet cable, thank god I did not upgrade other machines in the building to Lion, I at least am close to the router. Of course, all was perfect with the Wifi on SL!

I think the mundane fact is that of course Apple techs are keeping an eye on this and other forums and that they expect a range of issues whenever they have a major release like an OS - irritating as it is to all of us, I can imagine why they don't respond, in truth if I was running Apple, I would take the same decision : far better to ride to the rescue shortly with an upgrade along the lines of " a small number of users have reported Wifi connectivity problems apparently caused by the chipset configuration with certain types of routers...blah, blah which this latest version overcomes" - of course there will be a list of another 12 other different "minor" issues that are also now solved.

With more available cash than the US Government, I suspect my demand for my $30 back is not going to upset Big Steve very much!

My commiserations to all of you who don't have the Ethernet cable option to keep them going while this gets sorted.

The bottom line is WHY should there be any wifi connectivity issues?

Is one supposed to find out what chipset a router is everywhere to try and connect only to find they cannot?

It is absurd, and borderline criminal they released this os with these issues, and have not made any attempt to fix it or assure customers it needs fixing.

4 words will work if enough people ask it.....I WANT A REFUND.

Yep there is certainly someone at apple watching this thread because they deleted my links to a facebook community page I setup to discuss the issue and share ideas and possible solutions.

Pathetic behaviour if you ask me because what are they afraid of? people grouping together to discuss a problem with their O.S?

I guess that old apple advert based on 1984 has been reversed with steve now being the big brother on the screen.

Anyway its easy to find if you go to facebook and search "apple lion wifi problems" should have no problem finding the community if you want to chip in your comments and share possible fixes and suggestions.

I would say to anyone here wondering what chipset they use to post the FULL make and model of router and I will do my best to try to identify what chipset you are using.

from speaking with others on the facebook page I have more broadcom based routers working fine and nearly every single atheros based chipset NOT working!

there is certainly a pattern forming that obviously apple would prefer hushed up for image sake.

They didnt mind taking the 2 and half grand though recently for the new Imac we purchased so on that basis I like many other should have the right to discuss this problem here or anywhere else we choose without fear of censorship.

They would argue that with the sheer number of possible configurations that an OS has to run under, that after making a major design change, many new features, etc., there is no amount of lab testing and even pre-launch testing that can cover every base and detect every possible problem that could occur and this, in fairness, would be much the same line that most product manufacturers would take whether it be software, hardware, tools or automobiles.

As nbooradley says below, the real irritation for sufferers is the total lack of response and rather than trying to hush up the existence of a Facebook page, they really should be grasping the nettle at this stage and claming things down with a "we are working hard to fix this" statement - it seems bizarre that a user like nbooradley is making more apparent effort to solve the problem for Apples customers thasn Apple themselves!

How about it boys and girls at Apple?

"Wi-Fi: No Hardware installed" here on my new macbook pro from early 2011. Tried different things like resetting SMC or PRAM. Got a kernel panic after reseting the SMC I Also cleared all Caches with Onyx and deleted the "SystemConfigration"-directory in /Libary/Preferences... nothing helped

on my way to work lion recognized the wi-fi (airport) but at work and at home it is gone... strange!!!

Apple, please release a fix for this!

Not to promising start, initially I just exchanged the cables from the mk 2 to the mk 3 and it seemed stable but then the stop starts appeared, my primary telephone socket is in a room in my garage which was a sort of refuse from a TV addicted family :-) my son uses this room now as I have been allowed back into the house ! to ensure a strong signal throughout the house I have run a network cable to a central point and added a wireless access box.

I know you probably should not rely to much on a graphical display on a speed testing site but when I run a test from the mk 3 the needle swings about wildly and sometimes stops altogether,  using the wireless access point connected by the network the display is stable throughout the test, the interesting point is that the final speed results are very similar even if the one takes longer to complete. So  it  would seem to be a problem between the mk 3 box and the wifi in my MBP as the access point is working fine. Tomorrow I will move the computer nearer to the mk 3 and test extensivelyt to be fair to it just in case the distance/walls etc are causing the problem.

I have the same problem, that smarty airport keep searching for networks, even for networks outside my country. I found a solution that may be annoying, all you have to add an IP in DCHP for your connection then switch it automatically. To get an IP, connect your iPhone to the network, then take the IP and put inside that little smart airport.

BS

hi everyone. just wanted to add something.

i own a 2010 mba which i have updated to lion and i have been having wifi issues since day one. i tried everything in this forum and nothing worked. but today, i'm currently outstation in taipei and using my hotel room's wifi connection and everything is working so well. so i'm guessing the router chipset problem might be true.

but unfortunately, back at home, i'm using unifi, malaysia's fiber provider, which they've set up with their own firmware on the router making it impossible for me to change to  a different router. i mean i could actually, disable the wireless of that router and hook up another wireless router to it's lan port. but that is so inefficient and i bet there would be performance issue there.

what can i do? any other malaysians having this problem?

I bought a new iMac and right away upgraded with Mac OS X Lion. Everytime I turn on my computer, I cannot access Internet and get a message that "WIFI card is not installed". I looked everywhere on the System Preferences but was unable to access my network. iPad was working fine so it is not my internet connection. What I need to do each time I want to use my iMac is turn on, click Restart and then Wifi is on.

Seems like many people are experiencing this issue and it just take a while cause you have to turn on your computer twice. Will this be fix soon? Otherwise, I might re-installed previous OS. Thanks!

Just t add to the numbers:

I recently bought a 15" MBP i7 cpu 8Gb ram SSD drive.   Its a very powerful beast and was perfect until I upgraded to Lion.  

Since the upgrade my wifi has been troublesome.  

I have a 50Mb down 5Mb up internet connection.    I test the speed using http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/

I have a Dell E6400 laptop running next to my MBP which reports 49989 (basically the full 50Mb) over wifi connected to my wifi router 5ghz N network.   The MBP running the same tests hovers around the 3-4Mb mark sometimes jumping to approx 10Mb.   sometimes web browsing pauses for a few seconds and sometimes the paue is long enough to cause a timeout.  Very very frustrating.  Snow leopard was fine.  APPLE SORT IT OUT PLEASE.