Q: upgraded to mountain lion and wifi keeps dropping

@NCBrad:

I haven't followed the whole thread here, I just started thinking about upgrading my 1.5 yr old MBPro from SL to ML recently--but, rather than going "postal" why don't you ask Apple to "downgrade" you to Lion or even SL until such time that Apple gets this glitch figured out.  Over the years with the new OS's there have been "issues" and that was when the OS cost $130 rather than whatever 29 or what have you it is now.  No matter which system you pick it will still be better, more stable than whatever else you might look at . . . .  I've been chasing after a substitute OS for my two PPC computers, as Apple has totally dropped support, but 10.4.11 is still running the computers better than the Linux options . . . .  Fire up the bong . . . relax, and in awhile Apple will have 10.8.3 or whatever, and it won't mention any problems with wifi being fixed with the update . . . it'll just be fixed and ten yrs from now you'll still be able to use yr Mac . . . and like me, you'll be trying to get Linux to run on it and you'll be thinking how good the "old" OSX system is.  Up to you . . . .  : - ))))

e.e.p.

This helped my conectivity http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/06/lion-wi-fi-problems-solution-mac/ add new network > renew DHCP lease

This did not resolved my problem, but for e MTU parameter reduction that reduced its frequency provided that I also disable the power saving, which is not a sustainable option imho.. :(

I noticed thaton a regular base the OS X ML is sometime  keeping a DHCP it had obtained despite the fact that the lease was meanwhile terminated and that the same address had been given to another device (hence an IP conflict adrdress tha MAC OS X was not detecting explicitly but was for sure not helping). Therefore, another advise is to go on your router and to make sure the DHCP address is a "reserved" one that is never given to other devices even aft DHCP lease termination.

Okay, I spent most of the day yesterday trying to resolve my problem on the phone with Apple.  Still no joy.

Weird but wonderful idiosyncracies of my connectivity issues:

- will work fine on my home network (connect via a time machine)

- does not maintain connectivity on work network

- spent two hours on the internet yesterday in "recovery mode" at work without a drop out, as soon as went out of recovery mode dropped out regularly again

- wifi conncetion maintains full signal strength, if I go to network preference and run diagnostics it will fix my connection every time

Anyone got a solution yet?

I'm in the same boat, as is *everybody* else at work who migrated to ML. In our case, it's a secured corporate WiFi world where we all have certificates installed on our machines and we use WPA-Enterprise settings & EAP-TLS (the Location is set to Automatic). All is fine for those not on ML, otherwise the rest of us have have random connection problems whereby the signal strength meter randomly starts hunting because it lost its connection (it seems there are no DNS entries when that happens). Other times the signal strength continues to show at full, but it is unable to connect. And to think I moved to ML because I thought nothing could be worse than Lion...

These tips worked for me.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/22/wifi-dropping-in-os-x-lion-fixes/

Hi Steven

It would be good to know if those tips have worked for you for say a week or so.

In most cases, any of these tips seem to bring relief of the wifi issue for around a day or so, but then it all starts happening again...

Cheers,
Patrick

Hi, Patrick.

These tips, and all the others, I've tried and worked fine for a week. Tops.

The last thing I've tried was one bright idea from my brother, who's a ti geek.

I said to him: That's it. I'll downgrade this bad boy (MacBook white unibody late 09) to snow leopard and see what I do from there.

And he told me to do one last thing: shorten the password to the wifi - which was huge - and change the channel to a less used one.

Well, it's been running smoothly since then, and it was two weeks ago.

Let's see it through the whole month.

Cheers,

Claudio

Still going strong - 4 more days later?

After installing 10.8.2 an hour ago I still haven't got a connection. It's terrible!! I can't make and support my websites for over a week. I have tried so many suggestions but nothing worked for me.

I've tried most of these. Still, the issue remains. I'm hesitant to spend any money upgrading to ML because this issue apparently is no better for people with it. Is anyone at Apple taking this seriously? My imac will soon be occupying landfill space while I work seamlessly on a Windows PC. And the thing is, I hate Windows and PCs.

I am on Lion 10.7.5 and my issues were resolved by the following

What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday I took my Macbook Pro 17 2011 with Lion 10.7.5 into the Apple store to see what could be done. They ran a full diagnostic and found everything okay. They said to check the problems I would need to solve it on the phone at home where the problem was. Since my support had expired they gave me a one call freebie to solve the problem. I went home and made the call. The tech ran me through about 5 resets and here are my results. My connection is stable. The speed of my connection has increased by 20%. My Icloud uploads which were taking days or sometimes not at all to update to my Mac and Ipad was resolved. My faith has been restored.

As best I can remember here are the steps.

1) Rest SMC - Shut down computer. Hold down control - option - shift - power button at the same time for 1 second. You will see nothing happen.

2) Unplug router and wiFi for 1 minute

3)Turn on Computer and go to System preferences

4) Go to network

5) On the left side on the bottom is a gear. Click and click on set service order. Pull wiFi up to the top

6) At top of the page go to location pull down and go to edit. Delete all locations.

7) Add new location and call home or business or whatever

8) Click on the advanced tab on the bottom of page

9) Click on the WiFi tab

10) Delete the preferred network. Click okay

11) Go to the network name pull down and click on your WiFi network

12) Click apply

I hope this works for yo because it sure worked for me

Ok, things looking better for my wifi connection now - for over a day (1500 yesterday to 2300 today) and I've not had one wifi issue.

Full story here http://bit.ly/S8OWcX but cutting to the chase, I went back to basics and changed settings on my broadband router. I changed the security settings to use WPA+WPA2 then deleted the existing network/wifi settings on my iMac and recreated them. Since then, all ok.

Of course, any more probs and I'll be back on here!

OK. I've been experience connection dropouts since upgrading to ML. Signal always showed as full but internet connection would die for periods inexplicably. I tried everything I've read and nothing fixed the problem.

One week ago I tried something different and I have not experience a dropout since. After a week I'm assuming it's not a coincidence.

Here's what I did.

I changed the DFS frequency of my router (Airport Extreme) from 2 GHz to 5 GHz.

You can see what you are currently using by Alt-clicking on the wifi icon in your toolbar.

If you're set on 2 Ghz I suggest opening your router settings and changing to 5 GHz.

It worked for me.

have dlink router dir-628 which was set for WPA and WPA2 and i was constantly dropping and getting back IP address about every 2 minutes or so

auto channel select on router

2.4 ghz selected

MBP 17" 2.53 i5 8 GB RAM, 10.8.2

set the router to WPA2 ONLY

ip address kept for about 20 minutes

not great, but way better than being released and renwed every 2 minutes

router firmware was already set to latest

thanks for that tip