Q: upgraded to mountain lion and wifi keeps dropping

So it's all well and good that people are discovering work-arounds, but folks like me who are stuck at work, where WiFi routers and their settings are under the control of corporate IT drones, still have no recourse. This IS an Apple problem - it all worked in Lion and even as of 10.8.2 the WiFi integrity is still a disaster that needs fixing. It's so painful for me because I work in a Windows-centric office environment and my WiFi crippled MacBook Pro is the butt of endless jokes and jabs. Despite being an avid Mac user, I really must say that Apple is bad corporate citizen. WiFi bugs, Samba bugs, NFS bugs, DDNS bugs, Exchange bugs ... just shoot me :-(.

update to my post/fix of sept 28 10;02 am

after a few days, it all went bad again

so today i tried a couple of things on my DIR-628 router for a wireless fix

1.  increased lease time from 1440 to 2440

2.  reserved an IP address for my laptop (the router just asks u input computer name, which IP adddres u want and u can clone your MAC address using a button )

3.  turned off advanced routing

pretty good so far..... ( but i said that the last time)

2 minutes after i posted this i got a message that my IP address was being released and renewed....

i use a program called HardwareGrowler (app store) that alerts me to any changes to my mac's hardware config - it's pretty cool

Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, I become more and more disillusioned and regrettful that I installed Mountain Lion. Internet connection intermittent, programmes freeze programmes open at start up for no reason , and then I can't close them without switching off my iMac 27.

All programmes I use regularly are showing negative actions. Powerpoint and word....no scroll ability. Mouse works erratically, scroll up, scroll down, sometimes one way, sometimes the other. Email is ****, illogical counter-intuitive no where near as foos as the previous version. I can't save emailed photos direct to iPhot...despite having spent hours upgrading and wasting my time fixing things. This is my first negative experience with Apple. You can only break trust once!

Lasserre

Just bought my first Mac ever! Got a 21.5" iMac. Was really excited and couldn't wait to get this thing up and running. And I have to say this wifi issue has been extremely frustrating. Been a Windows user my whole life and I have to say this constant dropping of the internet via wifi is more frustrating than any problem I had on any of my PCs. Mainly because there doesn't seem to be a permanent fix.

I have tried the Keychain fix, tried setting up a new network in system preferences... nothing's worked. It's been a week so far and I don't think I have had a continuous connection for more than a couple of hours.

I hate to say it, but my first week with a Mac has left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. I don't want to regret this purchase. Hopefully Apple releases a fix soon.

Oh and the weird thing is, our two iPads never lose the connection... This makes no sense to me.

Well this stinks

Well into 2 months after release and ML still hasn't been fix. 

The willingness to pay the "apple premium" for superior products is diminishing fairly rapidly.

My only recourse, Parallels to Windows and use IE (Bleh !).  Guess what......not one issue with connecting and staying connected.

certainly makes me think that extended applecare isn't worth it as the extra tech support isn't helping fix the wifi issue

nor the battery drain on laptops issue

nor the apple maps issue, even though cook apologized

if appple isn going to present a premium product then time to cut prices by 10-15%

and cook can tell us that's because maps and wifi and battery drain won't be fixed soon

I have the same problem but with OS X 10.6.8 Snow-Leopard on my old MacBook Pro 15 1.8Ghz but I do not have the problem with the Powerbook Titaum G4. The problem seems to have started from the last update to mail 4.6(1085). 

Online for 30mins then mail stops connecting to yahoo and Safari stop, I turn the wifi off and backon and it all starts working again.

Any pointers the where I might start looking.

Steve

Same thing here but I upgraded to ML the day is was available to the public, but this problem only happened to me today, not since it came out. It's happening on both my Macbook Pro(late 2011) and my iMac(late2012). I know it isn't my internet connection though because if i quit Safari and open it back, the internet works fine for another 15 minutes and then i have to quit and reopen Safari again.

I had the same problem like GVR53. My WLAN router is a Siemens Gigaset SE551. Upgrading to 10.8.2 the problem occur on my both MacBook Pro (13" 2012 and 15" 2010). With WPA2 after waking up after sleep mode or turn off and on WiFi the MacBooks can not reconnect.

I have to restart my WLAN router, then it works again.

So what can I do to solve it?

@GYR53: Did you find a solution?

No solution. Got so tired of it that i have plugged directly into wired ethernet connection and bypassed wifi. only use wifi on ipad and iphones. very boring, very disappointed, and like so many, completely astonished that Apple seem incapable of responding to, or fixing this major issue. Never had a problem on Lion. Immediately started after upgrade to ML. Have considered buying new router, but seems other makes experiencing same issues so reluctantly to throw money at new wireless router for now. will give until christmas for apple to release upgrade with fix, then consider more drastic hardware options.

Such a basic functionality to get right....

Thanks for reply. Okay, if I can find a solution, I will reply you. And yes, with a 10.7.5 MacBook Pro, it works fine, also with Windows XP and 7 and with my iPhone and iPad. The only problem is 10.8.x.

RRenewing your DHCP lease just worked for me.  Here are the instructions:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/06/lion-wi-fi-problems-solution-mac/

I am going to put my feet through this thing soon. I have two computers running ML, my 2011 iMac 27" and my 2009 aluminium MacBook. The MacBook is OK, it never drops the signal but this iMac is driving me nuts. This evening it is dropping the connection every 5 minutes. I have tried renewing the DHCP lease and it makes no difference. My router is old but has the latest firmware. Besides, if the Macbook can hold the signal why can't the iMac?

I am getting really sick of the way Apple are running things in the last 12 months. If I wanted this sort of hassle I would run Windows Vista and save 50% on the costs. I have an iPhone 4 that crashed upgrading to iOS 6 losing all my data, a mapping system that doesn't know where my town of 40,000 people is on the planet and a state of the art desktop computer that can't be used for longer than 4 minutes without restarting airport.

COME ON APPLE!

I have a new MacBook Pro Retina that came preinstalled with Mountain Lion at work (corporate WiFi infrastructure that I know noting about) and I also have and several MacBook Pros at home for various family members (all serviced by an Airport Extreme). All machines run Mountain Lion but only my machine at work suffers from the dropping WiFi issue, and it's totally crippling me there. Interestingly, the dropping WiFi at work, as near as I can tell, is only happening within 30-40 feet of my office area - I can pick up my laptop and go to a different corner or floor of the building or to a different building altogether and I seem to get a reliable connection. Now up to this point, I'm on my 3rd MacBook Pro at work over the years - my office being in the same place all that time without dropping WiFi issues. I used the Migration Assistant to import my older Lion MacBook Pro into the new MacBook Pro Retina and have had dropping WiFi ever since. Note that my signal strength at work is always full bars (even between WiFi drops i.e. I do not believe I have a signal strength issue). I called AppleCare a few times and was eventually escalated to a WiFi specialist who politely but very firmly told me that it is not an Apple problem because there exist places within the building I can get a reliable connection. The options he gave me were to contact the manufacturers of the WiFi unit servicing my office area (although I see I have several WiFi access points at any given time) or that I could pay Apple $695 and they would provide me engineering assistance to debug the problem!!

I explained that I have had several MacBook Pros running several generations of OS X over the years and everything worked flawlessly in my office until the very day I started using Mountain Lion and he dismissed that at coincidence and reiterated the new laptop was operating perfectly. The conversation was very short and sweet (for him I suppose) - I believe he was under instructions to just close the ticket and move on. I was eagerly looking forward to the survey email I always get afterwards, but strangely I didn't get one for this incident...

I haven't run the experiment yet of down-grading my MacBook Pro Retina to Lion - I just don't have the time for that :-(.

Well, at least I take comfort in the fact that I gave Apple $350 for Apple Care. I hope that donation is tax deductible...

at least tim cook got his $355 million dollar payout

what apple is NOT doing with this issue is abysmal

not to mention the ongoing issue with volume on iphones

so much for being a 700 billion $ company

i've been an apple supporter since 1984

and am starting to get ****** about all this