Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

putnik wrote:

 

Fot those  of you using the latest BT Hub3 routers (British Telecom), here is a forum thread about issues with Mac OSX. It seems the router makes names for devices connected to it and this means the computer can't find DNS information.

Very interesting point, indeed.

Thank you for that essential information. It will bring a bit more light in the dark of WiFi trouble with the Mac's

Even it you remember that a lot of ISP's uses the same equipment, only with a different brand on it.

For that it would be very interesting which router model resides in reality inside the BT Hub3 box.

A very important point (I read just now on a tech review) with the BT-Box is the following:

The BT Home Hub 3 router has a solution: as well as picking the least crowded wireless channel at boot, it monitors general RF interference and can switch channels on the fly.

As I've learnd on my own WiFi trouble, the newer Mac's wifi is very difficult with Channel switching on the fly.

For that I had to disable the "Guest Network" on my Airport Extreme which was constantly channel switching between 6 on 2.4GHz and 100 on 5GHz band.

Cheers - Lupunus

Addendum

Found the following:

BT Home Hub 2.0. The A and the B model hardware is electronically identical to the Thomson Speedtouch TG797n.

The BT Home Hub3 contains a 2.4 GHz only Atheros AR9227 WiFi Chipset.

hormelmeatcompany wrote:

 

One possible cause (I think at this point, given the number of solutions to fixing it, there are multiple underlying, independent problems) for random disconnects and reconnects might be Lion thinking that the BSSID of the router you are connected to has changed.

Interesting info.

Now set "WiFi Stack" for Lion, cause it's not Lion that handles the connection.

But, regardeles of the wording, that make sense. Even if I remember my own steps to stop the wifi problems.

hormelmeatcompany wrote:

I think the root problem may be that Lion thinks the BSSID of the router it is connected to has changed, even when it actually hasn't. I presume that it thinks it's changed because it scans periodically and sees different BSSIDs with the same SSID and instead of realizing that there are multiple BSSIDs with the same SSID, it thinks that there's only 1 BSSID/SSID pair where the BSSID keeps changing. Confusing, I know…

... but make also sense to me. If I take a look on my Extreme Base, its the same (2 BSSID 1 SSID) and that will explain why my wifi problems stops immediately after I forced the stations (Mac's) to use only 5GHz 802.11n.

That will also explain why the DUP ACK occur, causing the stations to drop. Changed BSSID (radio band) while the SSID remains the same but the station reject the Packet cause the BSSID will not match the actual connection.

Finaly we got even more brightness in the dark of the WiFi dungeon.

That all let me think again that the all-in-one-multiband-multichannel-all-protocol-everyplace-best-connection attempt of the actual WiFi-AccessPoint's (routers) and the we-will-work-in-every-wifi-enviroment-regadeless-of-used-protocol attempt of the actual Mac's and actual OS-Lion (better to say: WiFi drivers/chipsets) create some of the trouble.

Your findings match also on the "BT Box" thing with the channel switching reported actually.

Finally, as said often, it's not the Lion we have to blame as such. WiFi is indeed a complicated f****** piece of technology.

Thanks for your work and posting this!

Cheers - Lupunus

Great to know this is getting traction. I sent the following message to Apple support after talking to them on the phone:

________________________________________________________________________________ _____

to ###@apple.com date Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 3:13 PM subject WiFi Logs mailed-by gmail.com

hide details Sep 17 (5 days ago)

Crossing fingers that they'll be able to figure it out soon. This is not a new feature of WiFi, and it's been supported by a long time by most OSs.

I don't actually think it's the hardware. All of what I described is on a 2011 13" MacBook Pro that I got in May that came with Snow Leopard. The wifi under Snow Leopard worked perfectly. The only disconnects I noticed were once every 1 or 2 hours but that's common on WPA2 enterprise networks as they rekey everything every hour or so. I sent what I described here to Apple Support but haven't heard anything back from them yet. I'll try giving them a call later today.

SvdH wrote:

 

This problem has been up in the air since July 20. Apple does an awefull lot of damage by ignoring this. 

That's not true. It's even worse, as this this problem has been up in the air for years now. The problem of AirPort dropping it's connection also exists in Snow Leopard and as far as I know even in Leopard. The problem has never been solved in these operating systems, so I wonder if Apple will ever be able to fix the problem of Wi-Fi dropping its connection in Lion for all users. Maybe it'll get a little bit better over time, but I don't think they'll ever solve this problem completely.

For those having troubles connecting to their network after waking from sleep: Mac OS X 10.7.2 should fix this problem, according to the release notes of the latest build.

Address an issue that causes a delay in accessing the network after waking from sleep.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/22/os-x-10-7-2-build-11c62-seeded-to-developers /

Hi lupunus, I don't know if it is relevant (or anything else for that matter) but it appears that the BT router makes a name for my computer of XYZ.home whereas the computer is using XYZ.local

I see in the system log instances of authentication failure because of the name and a following re-configuration, back and forth. I am a simple user but can't help thinking things like this can't be helpful.

togume wrote:

 

Under certain wireless network conditions the wifi connection will remain active, but network connectivity will completely drop

• Even pinging the gateway ceases to work, nslookup, everything

Discovered the same here, but interestingly I found on my wireless (don't like the term wifi) that the Internet connection remain stable at that time. Browser works perfectly but not a iTunes or Video stream.

Found (as you did) also, that there is no response to ping or lookup. Found also that from the time the connection stop, one or more units vanished from Airport Utility and could not longer rediscovered by "rescan".

togume wrote:

 

Wifi is stable when there is a single BSSID in a Wifi network

Bingo, as found on my own wireless.

togume wrote:

 

Connectivity was stable under the latest version of Snow Leopard in the environments

Nope, that's not complete correct. In my situation, there was no "Lion" present the time trouble starts.

The OS used was 10.6.8 and the dance begun at the moment the all-in-one-wonder Airport Extreme replaces the former 802.11g Router.

What will be a work around on your place for now may be to fix the stations (clients) to a single frequency (protocol), delete the other (known network) from the list and disable the "Automatically join..." option in the WiFi setting. The glue is the slightly changing small printed text beneath the option.

Cheers - Lupunus

putnik wrote:

 

Hi lupunus, I don't know if it is relevant (or anything else for that matter) but it appears that the BT router makes a name for my computer of XYZ.home whereas the computer is using XYZ.local

Thanks, that makes sense.

Systems working together in the same network have to use the same local domain (workgroup on windows) especially for (DNS) name resolving.

If you can't change the " .home " on the router, you may change the setting on the stations (Mac's) in your network from "local" to "home". This requires a reboot after the change to take place.

Lupunus

hormelmeatcompany wrote:

 

The only disconnects I noticed were once every 1 or 2 hours but that's common on WPA2 enterprise networks as they rekey everything every hour or so.

That's ridiculous nonsense.

True: There is a regularly CCMP Key exchange. For good reasons.

Wrong: This CCMP Key exchange does not force a station (client) to drop connection in a well configured wireless network.

Lupunus

Just to clear up any confusion if you don't know what me, lupunus and togume are referring to:

Every wireless router will broadcast an SSID, which is the text name you see when you scan for networks.

Attached to each SSID from each router is a BSSID, which is basically the MAC address of the router that is broadcasting that SSID. Different routers broadcasting the same SSID will each be broadcasting their instance of that SSID with a different BSSID. It's like a bunch of guys named John all saying "John" but in different voices.

SSID stands for Service Set IDentifier. BSSID stands for Basic Service Set IDentifer. A BSSID is a smaller unit of wireless service (a smaller service set) than an SSID, since an SSID can be broadcast by several routers but each BSSID will only be broadcast by one physical router.

It happens every hour, on the hour. It probably isn't well-configured.

I've sent a lot of information in a BR, so shall wait for 10.7.2 .

Changing anything to fix the issue is really up to Apple and Router designers, because this forum is only inhabited by a minute fraction of the user population, and most people don't want to be diving into the works with a monkey wrench.

I spoke to an Apple advisor over the phone a few weeks ago and sent them a bunch of log files but that was before I figured out the BSSID thing. I scheduled a call later today with one and will let them know about the BSSID thing.

I suggest writing a BR is the way to get the information to those who can do something

This starts to become really annoying...

• after updating to lion my internet-connection dropped permanently
• then I tried all the different solutions described here and elsewhere without any durable success
• then I did a clean installation of lion and didn`t have any problems any more for about two month
• AND NOW the problems have come back again although I didn`t install any new software and nothing changed about my router!!!

Having a look at the X-log in my case it`s exactly what you described:

Sep 24 07:44:00 Olafs-iMac kernel[0]: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1

Sep 24 08:12:41 Olafs-iMac kernel[0]: en1: BSSID changed to bc:05:43:52:2f:b6 >>> here the connection went away

The problem is: I have a unique SSID...

Anyone has an idea?