Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

Your comments about sleep mode powering off various connectivity and ports are in regards to portable macs. I happen to experience this issue on an iMac - random disconnection of network connectivity (and when this happens, half the time the signal strength meter is at max, but no network is even selected anymore.)

Either way, while your troubleshooting is pretty standard fare, and you're stating the obvious in the most general of terms, it has not been of any value here. At first, your explanation was poor reception, an attempt at explaining the technical background of 802.11x and how packets are lost, but that's clearly not what is happening. I see that your "diagnosis" has changed a bit, and might even be helpful to SOME people. However, when you present it in a way that is condescending to others while also making it clear that you haven't even read the details of the problem (or maybe you just don't have the tech background to understand them) it becomes annoying at best.

mauryr wrote:

 

Your comments about sleep mode powering off various connectivity and ports are in regards to portable macs. I happen to experience this issue on an iMac - random disconnection of network connectivity (and when this happens, half the time the signal strength meter is at max, but no network is even selected anymore.)

Note that desktop Macs also sleep unused devices and/or switch devices into power saving mode in order to reduce overall energy usage by the system.

Note also that newer Macs support Wake on Wireless, which means wifi is not completely powered off.

wackerow wrote:

 

All I know for sure is that I installed Lion and now have wifi problems and am not about to spend my days working on a fix for a problem Apple is responsible for, and you sir have not helped me in the slightest.

First to say is that this is not a user forum. This is a tech support forum.

You, Sir, for sure, have trouble with your machine. And what is clear too: Apple is not responsible for the wireless problems you have since Lion install.

You Sir, instead of asking questions, giving all information you think it would be useful and start a serious attempt to fix your problems, decide to join the "Lion is evil" choir.

You have made only 3 contributions to the whole community so far, starting with a "me too" post, followed only by rant and rave.

If you seriously want help on your issue:

1. Ask first instead of rant later.
2. Ask your own questions instead of responding with "me too" on what you think is a similar problem, but is most likely completely different to your problems.
3. Actively seek to correct problems instead of rant and hoping that some future Apple "fix" will magically do it.

The problem with your wireless since updated to Lion, you described in only one sentence, is definitely not a Lion issue. Even as it first come up after you installed Lion.

Your one sentence description leads at first to the fact, that you made no attempt to clean up your system before or after updating. It leads also to the conclusion, that you may have unwanted traffic in your network on witch your system or the router cut off the connection. Taking a look on the logfiles will confirm that for sure. This may come from router or other network participants, but most likely your machine produce this on mismatching, crumbled or timed out response to incoming traffic.

I'm pretty sure, that your wireless will run, even at school, as never before, if you perform the common steps after doing major upgrades since Panther came out.

• Cut off all network connections
• Close all running applications
• Clear all caches
• Clear former (and now mixed up) wireless network settings in your system settings by deleting the networks that may not run properly (if on the way, delete also all obsolete ones).
• Eventually remove the corresponding entry's in keychain, if not automatically removed.
• Perform a permissions repair on your system disk
• Reboot (power off and restart) your system.

If you not want to perform the steps manually, you may use a 3rd party tool like Onyx for that.

And at last. Don't became rude here, even if you are really upset from your network trouble.

Lupunus

Well, and there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to it, but a friend insisted I install Lion on her mbpro.

It is nearly identical to mine.

I did a clean install for her.

The os is running, for now, just fine.

needed to install java and flash (oh did i expect that to mess things up.

Staying away from Safari.

So far all browsers are working fine.

This is in direct contrast to other machines that were a disaster.

there is no rhyme or reason to this.

i did not update to 7.1

it is working, for now, and i told her to enjoy that because should it decide not to work, yikes.

no wifi disconnects in 6 hours.

office 2011 works.

ps cs4 works.

oh well.

the Lion mystery continues. I hope this stays one of the success stories.

It's a drama, unlike any drama seen before. In my opinion Apple is responsible, since software and hardware are from the same vendor. 54 pages and 82500+ views of this tread illustrate that there is a problem.

Anyway, I too am in WiFi-limbo. My laptop is a 15" 2010 MacBook Pro, 2.66 Ghz Core i7. I'm on Lion 10.7.1 and did a clean Install on a freshly formatted disk. The WiFI signal-strength says 100%, but packets frequently get lost / delayed. This happens on my home-network (Airport Extreme) as well as on my mobile setup (Huawai E5). When connected by ethernet (eth0 - wire) everything works fine. A ping to my default gateway illustrates the problem:

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=6.516 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=1.200 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=64 time=1.820 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=64 time=1.476 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=64 time=1.230 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 21

Request timeout for icmp_seq 22

Request timeout for icmp_seq 23

Request timeout for icmp_seq 24

Request timeout for icmp_seq 25

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=5179.828 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 27

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=6163.453 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 29

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=23 ttl=64 time=7058.523 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=24 ttl=64 time=6179.983 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=5202.363 ms

and...

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=134 ttl=64 time=19130.931 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 157

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=138 ttl=64 time=20913.822 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 159

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=139 ttl=64 time=21230.165 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=140 ttl=64 time=20362.524 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=141 ttl=64 time=21223.690 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=142 ttl=64 time=21281.860 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 164

^[[ARequest timeout for icmp_seq 165

Request timeout for icmp_seq 166

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=144 ttl=64 time=23457.397 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 168

Request timeout for icmp_seq 169

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=145 ttl=64 time=25353.232 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=146 ttl=64 time=25363.258 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=147 ttl=64 time=25928.365 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 173

Request timeout for icmp_seq 174

Request timeout for icmp_seq 175

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=149 ttl=64 time=27458.006 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=150 ttl=64 time=27059.424 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=151 ttl=64 time=26869.670 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 179

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=152 ttl=64 time=28218.510 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=153 ttl=64 time=28085.888 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=154 ttl=64 time=27543.842 ms

I've performed the following steps sofar:

1. Reset PRam and NVRam
2. Removed all network-configurations
3. Removed all files under /Library/Caches and /System/Library/Caches
4. Removed all network and browser related entries from KeyChain
5. Clicked "Repair Disk Permissions" in DiskUtility (not much happened, saw Progressbar for maybe 1/10 of a second, that's it)
6. Reboot
7. Set up the network-configuration again

Nothing works. I also tried a fixed DNS-Server (like Google's 8.8.8.8) and kept up the traffic by having a ping in the background. All to no result.

Any more suggestions?

This is going to sound just too simple but after weeks of being disconnected and just total frustration . I replaced my old Netgear router with a new Engenius one at a fraction of the cost. I know its  hard to believe but I stay connected now. This morning I opened my Mac pro and saw the bars scanning and within 5 seconds I'm connected. I don't know how long this will last but just having a computer that works for two days makes me realize just how awful it was for the past month. I think I was getting used to the connection problems and now I feel free from it.

SvdH wrote:

 

In my opinion Apple is responsible, since software and hardware are from the same vendor.

Hello SvdH,

maybe Apple have to fix something either on the Extreme, the modern "all band all frequencies every client coffee cocking" thing called Extreme N or the way the client decides which wireless it will use. But, I'm afraid thats not on Apple alone as the actual WiFi technology trend have glitches too.

But maybe we find a working or workaround solution for you too by comparing and sorting out.

SvdH wrote:

 

The WiFI signal-strength says 100%, but packets frequently get lost / delayed. This happens on my home-network (Airport Extreme)

Had a similar issue on my home network when a Extreme became the main router to replace an older wireless "g" unit.

I will give a report now of what happened, so you may compare and see what seems similar and what may different to your situation. I hope that's eventually eases the troubleshoot and solution finding for you.

At the wireless are at now: 2008 MBook (10.6.8); 2011 MBpro (10.6.8); 4 x Express (7.5.2). Base is a Extreme 5th Gen (7.5.2).

I had drop outs with the old "g" router before, but only sometimes once a day and decided to ignore that.

The real trouble starts, when I noticed that from 10 minutes to twice an hour Audio or Video streaming drop out, while signal strength says always 100% and e.g. Internet was still reachable.

What I did first was quite similar to your attempts to solve the problem. Resetting this and that, removing network, clear plist's and so on.

Nothing really solved the issue for me.

I decided to work it out.

First tryed the simplest by ping the clients and the base. Outcome was, that ping worked, but not every time and not ever to the same clients.

On that time, trying to monitor the logfiles of the base and (what I thought was) the affected client I noticed, that every time the connection drop's either the base, one or more of the clients (Expresses) or ALL units, vanished from Airport utility.

The only way to bring them (and the stream) back was to switch off (regardless on which client) the wireless, wait for a few seconds and switch on again.

At this point i fired up WireShark to monitor the network traffic.

Finding was, that there where (in my case) DUP ACK events every time the connection dropped. No single client could be identified as source as it happened randomly from and to any client or the base.

I set up a new location in System Settings -> Network -> WiFi with only my network on list, trying to isolate the MBPro from neighborhood networks to prevent interferences and so on.

Nothing went really better. OK, the drop out's and bad packets changed from twice an hour to every 90 min. But that was not the expected result.

I decided to use a WiFi hacking tool to monitor the radio conditions in my surrounding at the time the drop out's occur.

It shows me, that the GUEST NETWORK periodically changed the band and channel from 2,4 GHz #6 to 5 GHz #100. And every time a drop out occur and the clients vanished from Airport Utility there was a correlation with that Guest Network behavior and the DUP ACK packets.

A look on the Extreme setup shows then, that the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz "n" as well as the 2.4 GHz "g" (compatibility mode) share the same SSID, the SSID of the Guest Network was different though.

So I decided to switch off the Guest Network and set a different SSID for the 5GHz.

After that, the situation went a lot better but not perfect. Bad packets and drop out goes from 90 min to 2 1/2 h rhythm.

On this stage I realized, that the MacBook as well as the MBPro sometimes switches automatically between 2.4 n and 5 Ghz n and then the drop occurs too.

So I thought, OK, let's delete the 2.4 n SSID from the network list in the System Settings.

From than on things start driving me quite mad.

Even if I delete the 2.4 GHz SSID from the "known network" list on the newly setup location, oddly it reappears on the list after a while.

Indeed there was now a different SSID for each band, but both share the same password on the Extreme by default.

I think this happened cause in the System Settings (by default) was checked "Ask to join new networks" and "Remember Networks this computer has joined" and there may be a glitch in the Keychain too, as I had to remove the Keychain entry for the 2.4 GHz n/g SSID manually before the "reappearing" stop definitively.

At the very end of the way, the working solution for me, as my situation allows such settings, was:

• Set a different network name (SSID) for the 5 GHz band
• Set up a new location with unchecked "Remember Networks this computer has joined" and only one SSID (network) in.
• Set the Extreme Radio Mode to "802.n only (5GHz) - 802.n only (2.4 GHz)"

From that point on i had:

• no more bad packets
• no more vanishing items from Airport Utility
• no more Video or Audio drop out
• no more network cut off

What I think about it:

• Problem may be that the password for the 2.4 GHz n/g and 5GHz n is the same even if the SSID is different to provide a n/g compatibility mode for supporting older clients and grant them access to n-clients in the same net.
• It may there in fact a bug within the "Ask to join new networks" and "Remember Networks this computer has joined" wireless settings and the Keychain, for that the network reappears automatically in the list if the password is known or there is a open network (no password) from the same base station.
• The compatibilty mode (n/g) may causes trouble
• "Extreme N" capable Apple systems have problems with multiband g/n wireless, regardless if Lion or SL is installed, as with the good old 2008 MB alone as client in the network, the symptoms where the same once the brand new "Extreme N 2.4 and 5 with G compatibility" became the active network.

For all that I still think that Lion is not really the reason, as same things happens to non Lion systems too. Just check Windows community's for "wireless problem" threads.

A point that I dit not really understand right now, is that the "Automatic" location with the "Remember networks this computer has joined" setting active works well when in a Company, a Hotel or at one of the public hotspots I sometimes use.

Maybe because there are no "Multiprotocol + Multiband + MIMO + Compatibilitymode" Units in use. *shrug*

Hope that this may help a bit to you or others to find a solution or workaround.

Lupunus

I'm only responsible for what I say and NOT for what you understand.

Hi lupunus,

I think that your point of not being Lion causing wifi issues is well understood, is also well understood your way of dealing with the matters, including your test case, which are useless by now, because they have already been considered an applied with no success. Guess what, I am using my MBpro where I still have no Lion, so that I can ignore my wifi problems. I am an experienced IT professional too, but first of all I am a customer, and if I buy a things which is said to do some things and I have also been charged much more for a quality product, I expect that machine to do such things.

I remember endless night in the past days, fighting for configuring my Linux box and client, what a days back then. And what a satisfaction to go deeper in the kernel to adjust and make things works.

But now I have a Mac...and I expect to do almost nothing on the tech side.

The wifi is not the only Lion issue, there are much more issues, some of them are annoying. I am sure SL had some, Tiger also...even if I remember none, because they were been patched by Apple in the meantime. And I am sure Apple will make some upgrade available in the nearest future.

In earlier post you mentioned the emotional aspect of the question. I think that by keeping your point of view, regardless of what other are saying, you are well deep on the emotional side now. Much more than the others.

Thanks

Same problem here after upgrade to Lion 10.7. updated to 10.7.1 still doesn't fix the wifi problem

I have a new MacBook Pro which has had no problem with Lion and wifi. My old iMac is connected to my Airport. My ipod touch hasn't been able to connect to WIFI at all tonight and yesterday kept dropping the connection. After trying many things on this forum, I finally tried changing the channel that someone said Apple Support had recommended. I tried a different 4 then 11, and presto, my ipod came to life. Magic.

kickassss wrote:

 

updated to 10.7.1 still doesn't fix the wifi problem

No update ever will fix it. You have to do it.

Cindy/G5 iMac wrote:

 

I tried a different 4 then 11, and presto, my ipod came to life. Magic.

No magic at all.

Changing the channel have reduced or ended radio interferences from other wireless networks on the same channel in your surroundings or even from your own network.

lupunus wrote:

 

Cindy/G5 iMac wrote:

 

I tried a different 4 then 11, and presto, my ipod came to life. Magic.

No magic at all.

 

Changing the channel have reduced or ended radio interferences from other wireless networks on the same channel in your surroundings or even from your own network.

It was magic to me.

pretty easy fix, you need to delete the fle "com.apple.alf.plist" which is located in: Hard Drive/Library/Preferences/

delete it, empty trash and restart, ur mac will create an updated file once you restart and ur mac will connect to your wifi network automatically after sleep mode or closing lid ,etc...

Mau.