Of those who've spoken to Apple technicians to address the matter, at least some report recognition of a more widespread problem, though none have said how soon Apple may fix the intermittent wireless behavior. Users are regardless told they may have to wait awhile for more thorough software updates: the most recent AirPort Extreme patches update the firmware for the Wi-Fi chipset itself and so prevent an easy rollback if it's the patch itself that sets the glitch in motion.
Never, ever, be the first one to test an update from Apple!!!
I bought my wife a 2008 iMac 24 and we had wifi problems from day one. this lasted several months. I took it to a local dealer here in Malaysia. After chasing a few geese, one of their techs tried booting the iMac from a showroom Mac via Firewire Target Disk Mode and the problem disappeared. He suggested a clean install of Leopard. I did this and then reloaded the 10.5.5 update and (damn it to hell) her iMac now accesses the net about 40% faster than my MPB. After 2 months, no further problems.
Never had a problem with the Extreme base station and it works like a charm. Haven't had to restart it or anything since I bought it 18 months ago.
This is very likely an OS X problem, not a hardware issue. I have a four-year-old iBook G4 and this problem happens with me too. It also happens with a 2002 iMac and my new 2008 iMac. When I boot the latter into Windows, the wireless is flawless.
For those of you more technically inclined, here's a fix. I discovered in my experimentation with this problem that deleting the entry for your router from the arp cache brings your connection back. No idea why, but it works for me.
The workaround is to add an entry to your system cron that runs every five minutes (*/5). It has to be the system cron not your user account cron which doesn't have the privileges to run this command. (Download Cronnix and you can add entries to the system cron easily enough.)
Here the command. You'll have to replace the IP with your router's IP address.
/usr/sbin/arp -d 192.168.0.1
I did that on all three machines in question and the wireless has been perfect ever since.
For those of you more technically inclined, here's a fix. I discovered in my experimentation with this problem that deleting the entry for your router from the arp cache brings your connection back. No idea why, but it works for me.
How on earth did you think of doing that?
How long ago did you implement this "fix"? Is it still working for you?
For those of you more technically inclined, here's a fix. I discovered in my experimentation with this problem that deleting the entry for your router from the arp cache brings your connection back. No idea why, but it works for me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. H
How on earth did you think of doing that?
How long ago did you implement this "fix"? Is it still working for you?
If it is anything like when it happened to me, that fixes it for 5mins to an hour until it decides to drop again. Annoying.
I have a MBP from Oct 07, I had the problem in two forms. For one it would drop wifi connection with the router often but randomly. Second it would keep wifi to the router and home network but drop internet.
Both problems were non existant by booting to windows on the same computer, with the same settings and the same network. Dont have parallels or vmware to test windows within OSX.
BUT, WIFI and internet were fine on 95% of networks, and I didnt come across the problem in the first 12 months of having the MBP. Pity my new home network was in the other 5%.
Fixed it by doing 4 things:
1) Changing DNS servers to OpenDNS. You need to replicate your Airport wireless device in the networking settings window, otherwise you cant get rid of the original router DNS servers, and it will continue to try and use these.
2) Deleting all trace of previously connected wifi networks, from both the networking settings window and from my keychains (but wrote down passwords etc so I could add them again later). Apparently corrupted keychain entries can cause the problem, and for one network in particular this seemed to be the case.
3) Resetted PRAM. Probably not related but its fun.
4) Changed the WIFI channel of the router (from 6 to 3, not that this matters unless you also have SKY broadband in London with the new black modem and are getting the problem).
and its been solid for a good few weeks. Pretty certain its fixed for good.
But a few notes:
a) None of these alone fixed the problem. Only all 4 at once. I reckon the changing of the channel of the router and the DNS servers fixed the "wifi with no internet problem", and all combined fixed the "wifi dropping out" problem. But I have no evidence or proof.
b) These will likely not fix your problem, because everyones case seems to be different. But why not give it a go.
c) No one seems to have problems with unencrypted networks - why cant we all just open up and share the wifi love?
There was an interesting article on xlr8yourmac.com at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/...08.html#S24836 where Real Player seems to at least contribute to many of that connection problems. May be worth a try.
I have had every powerbook, macbook that has come out since the PB 12inch. During that time I have had linksys and airports as my routers. My 12inch never had problems, my white macbook never has had a connection issue, my 1st MBP 15 aluminum has had flawless reception, and my current late 2008 MBP has better connection than any of the rest. I use WPA2 AES and have 3 windows boxes, a ubuntu laptop, and two iphones on the same network and have had nothing but great success with wireless on all three floors of the house.
I am about to create a dual network for the systems in the house that can use .11n 5ghz, and use a secondary airport express to handle the .11g traffic.
airdisk has never given me grief such as disconnecting, etc, etc. I use it as my media server
So, have I just been 100% lucky ALL the time, or are you folks doing something extraneous to cause the issues?
I thought it was basically known as a leopard issue?
my wireless reliability has definitely gone down over the time I've had my Macbook Pro (core 1 Duo, 6.12Ghz) and I always attributed it to 10.5.x because that's when it got real dodgy . . .
Not a leopard issue, I have a GEN 1 macbook pro (core 1 duo, 2ghz) with tiger on it.
My guess is a dodgy airport security update which seemed to only affect the core 1 duo's.
It is a fact that the plastic macbooks have much better reception than a aluminium macbook pro.
If I move 10 meters from my base station I get problems, the macbook from my dad goes up to 100 meters.
I have checked the internal antennas connected to the airport card, seemed fine.
However, there was a loose(broken) ribbon cable which goes to the left light sensor to get the keyboard backlighting on. It is such a flimsy ribbon cabe and it was probably broken when technicians swapped out the motherboard because the video card fried after just 2 months.
Maybe I damaged it myself but that doesn't matter anymore because I decided to take the ribbon cable thus disableing the left sensor.(there's one on the right too)
Since then I have much better airport reception, maybe the sensor which may not have been working properly was distorting the wireless signal. The sensor is right next to the airport card.
Still 10meters isn't much, before I took out the cable I was unable to keep a wireless connection.
There was an interesting article on xlr8yourmac.com at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/...08.html#S24836 where Real Player seems to at least contribute to many of that connection problems. May be worth a try.
I know that this will not solve everyone's problems but it solved mine!!!! My connectivity would only be active for 10-30 seconds at a time.....airport would show full signal strength, but no internet or local networking.
Realplayer has this internet monitoring thingy where it looks for web clips to download. Once I cleared out realplayer and the downloader agent....eureka!
Details: Intel iMac 1 year old. Running 10.5.5 ; newest Airport update installed (-0004); connected to Airport Extreme, only computer on network with the problem, no router or airport changes affected problem or performance (went through permutations of all of them).
I was experiencing this with my brand new late '08 Macbook too.
I fixed the drop outs by changing my WiFi encryption from WPA2 using AES to WPA2 using TKIP. Seems the Macbook has an issue with AES as the encryption. Works perfectly with TKIP.
(Router is a Linksys WRT-54GL running Tomato 1.21)
UPDATE:
Just to clarify, I'm a Sys admin and have several wireless computers at home. The Macbook is the first and ONLY one that drops out like this on my network. It definitely has a problem with using AES, which is a shame as AES has less overhead than TKIP.
My AirPort Extreme loses connection to the Internet randomly and needs to be restarted about 2-3 times a day... This never used to be the case so I suspect something in the AirPort Extreme? My iMac is connected directly to AEX with a cable/
I am I.T. Manager here and we have several new iMacs and MacBooks, the FIRST thing I do is replace the Apple mouse with a $10 Logitech or HP wheel mouse. We do not have time to deal with the poorly designed trackball on the Apple mouse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gastroboy
Thanks I found that out too when I went into the Apple Store and they had exactly the same problem with some of their mice.
Seems stupid to have to do it, rubbish Apple design!
My $5 HP scroll mouse never misses a beat.
tekstud
Mine is the white sided mouse, so don't hold out any hope there.
I've noticed this very issue only just recently on my Mac Mini. I've also got an Intel iMac, but it is hard wired, so no issue there. I haven't seen anybody else mention having issues on the Mini. Anybody?
Yes! Thank you! Constant issues on my Mac Mini. We use the mini as our entertainment center / tv and can't get through half-hour programon Hulu without the connection dropping. Ive gone through 2 linksys routers and just bought the airport extreme and now im realizing it is the mac mini. I have been considering swapping the aiport card for the sonnet wireless N upgrade. It is very frustrating. My white macbook has the same issue but not nearly as frequent.
My new macbook pro is the only machine that actually maintains a connection.
I have a PowerBook and it still constantly drops the WiFi for no reason, even though I sit less than 20 feet away from the transmitter. (I am one floor up, but sitting directly over it.) The only way I can get the signal back is to open the window for about thirty seconds. Then once the machine finds the signal again I can close the window and it will work fine for another 20 min or so before dropping out again. It's a huge pain in the ass now that's it's winter, I should really send Steve Jobs an invoice for my heating bills.
I've got the same problems with my core duo. It had been working fine, but an update somewhere or something made it go all buggy. I've got lots of problems with it now. Makes me angry.
I am having the same issue with the original white macbook (2ghz core duo) for the past few months. It turns out that after I finally gave up on my Airport Express (Original) and got a new netgear router, it solved my problem and have not had another issue since. I am a huge mac fan and apple's inability to get wifi going for everyone is very disappointing. This is something that should have been resolved and a non-issue years ago. They have plenty of experience and resources for a fix like this. I know this because Windoze has figured it out, which means if they can do it anyone can.
My daughter and I both have Intel MacBooks - plastic bodies.
I had this problem many weeks ago and I don't recall how I fixed it, although it did entail considerable telephone time with my friendly AppleCare tech. Actually, it escalated to a second-level specialist.
Now my daughter's MacBook is hitting the same thing.
We use a d-link dir-655 router, and I recently patched its firmware.
I also have had some wireless problems with iPod Touches on the same router, which mostly cleared up after I disabled the auto wireless config.
Two iPhones have never had a problem on the wireless at all. An old iBook G3 happily purrs on the wireless, plus a PowerBook G4 and a Wii. (Yes, call it an iHouse, ya wanna make something of it?)
There's definitely something funny going on, and I bet the code base for wireless in OSX is developing first on the iPhone and then going to the other new devices on the silly assumption that once they get things fixed or working on the iPhone, they don't need to pay attention when they run the same code elsewhere.
Comments
Of those who've spoken to Apple technicians to address the matter, at least some report recognition of a more widespread problem, though none have said how soon Apple may fix the intermittent wireless behavior. Users are regardless told they may have to wait awhile for more thorough software updates: the most recent AirPort Extreme patches update the firmware for the Wi-Fi chipset itself and so prevent an easy rollback if it's the patch itself that sets the glitch in motion.
Never, ever, be the first one to test an update from Apple!!!
I bought my wife a 2008 iMac 24 and we had wifi problems from day one. this lasted several months. I took it to a local dealer here in Malaysia. After chasing a few geese, one of their techs tried booting the iMac from a showroom Mac via Firewire Target Disk Mode and the problem disappeared. He suggested a clean install of Leopard. I did this and then reloaded the 10.5.5 update and (damn it to hell) her iMac now accesses the net about 40% faster than my MPB. After 2 months, no further problems.
Never had a problem with the Extreme base station and it works like a charm. Haven't had to restart it or anything since I bought it 18 months ago.
chano
For those of you more technically inclined, here's a fix. I discovered in my experimentation with this problem that deleting the entry for your router from the arp cache brings your connection back. No idea why, but it works for me.
The workaround is to add an entry to your system cron that runs every five minutes (*/5). It has to be the system cron not your user account cron which doesn't have the privileges to run this command. (Download Cronnix and you can add entries to the system cron easily enough.)
Here the command. You'll have to replace the IP with your router's IP address.
/usr/sbin/arp -d 192.168.0.1
I did that on all three machines in question and the wireless has been perfect ever since.
For those of you more technically inclined, here's a fix. I discovered in my experimentation with this problem that deleting the entry for your router from the arp cache brings your connection back. No idea why, but it works for me.
How on earth did you think of doing that?
How long ago did you implement this "fix"? Is it still working for you?
For those of you more technically inclined, here's a fix. I discovered in my experimentation with this problem that deleting the entry for your router from the arp cache brings your connection back. No idea why, but it works for me.
How on earth did you think of doing that?
How long ago did you implement this "fix"? Is it still working for you?
If it is anything like when it happened to me, that fixes it for 5mins to an hour until it decides to drop again. Annoying.
I have a MBP from Oct 07, I had the problem in two forms. For one it would drop wifi connection with the router often but randomly. Second it would keep wifi to the router and home network but drop internet.
Both problems were non existant by booting to windows on the same computer, with the same settings and the same network. Dont have parallels or vmware to test windows within OSX.
BUT, WIFI and internet were fine on 95% of networks, and I didnt come across the problem in the first 12 months of having the MBP. Pity my new home network was in the other 5%.
Fixed it by doing 4 things:
1) Changing DNS servers to OpenDNS. You need to replicate your Airport wireless device in the networking settings window, otherwise you cant get rid of the original router DNS servers, and it will continue to try and use these.
2) Deleting all trace of previously connected wifi networks, from both the networking settings window and from my keychains (but wrote down passwords etc so I could add them again later). Apparently corrupted keychain entries can cause the problem, and for one network in particular this seemed to be the case.
3) Resetted PRAM. Probably not related but its fun.
4) Changed the WIFI channel of the router (from 6 to 3, not that this matters unless you also have SKY broadband in London with the new black modem and are getting the problem).
and its been solid for a good few weeks. Pretty certain its fixed for good.
But a few notes:
a) None of these alone fixed the problem. Only all 4 at once. I reckon the changing of the channel of the router and the DNS servers fixed the "wifi with no internet problem", and all combined fixed the "wifi dropping out" problem. But I have no evidence or proof.
b) These will likely not fix your problem, because everyones case seems to be different. But why not give it a go.
c) No one seems to have problems with unencrypted networks - why cant we all just open up and share the wifi love?
I am about to create a dual network for the systems in the house that can use .11n 5ghz, and use a secondary airport express to handle the .11g traffic.
airdisk has never given me grief such as disconnecting, etc, etc. I use it as my media server
So, have I just been 100% lucky ALL the time, or are you folks doing something extraneous to cause the issues?
LP
I thought it was basically known as a leopard issue?
my wireless reliability has definitely gone down over the time I've had my Macbook Pro (core 1 Duo, 6.12Ghz) and I always attributed it to 10.5.x because that's when it got real dodgy . . .
Not a leopard issue, I have a GEN 1 macbook pro (core 1 duo, 2ghz) with tiger on it.
My guess is a dodgy airport security update which seemed to only affect the core 1 duo's.
It is a fact that the plastic macbooks have much better reception than a aluminium macbook pro.
If I move 10 meters from my base station I get problems, the macbook from my dad goes up to 100 meters.
I have checked the internal antennas connected to the airport card, seemed fine.
However, there was a loose(broken) ribbon cable which goes to the left light sensor to get the keyboard backlighting on. It is such a flimsy ribbon cabe and it was probably broken when technicians swapped out the motherboard because the video card fried after just 2 months.
Maybe I damaged it myself but that doesn't matter anymore because I decided to take the ribbon cable thus disableing the left sensor.(there's one on the right too)
Since then I have much better airport reception, maybe the sensor which may not have been working properly was distorting the wireless signal. The sensor is right next to the airport card.
Still 10meters isn't much, before I took out the cable I was unable to keep a wireless connection.
I thought it was basically known as a leopard issue?.
Nope - had it on a Tiger imac and no one ever believed me
Nope - had it on a Tiger imac and no one ever believed me
Same here. MBP Tiger...
There was an interesting article on xlr8yourmac.com at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/...08.html#S24836 where Real Player seems to at least contribute to many of that connection problems. May be worth a try.
I know that this will not solve everyone's problems but it solved mine!!!! My connectivity would only be active for 10-30 seconds at a time.....airport would show full signal strength, but no internet or local networking.
Realplayer has this internet monitoring thingy where it looks for web clips to download. Once I cleared out realplayer and the downloader agent....eureka!
Details: Intel iMac 1 year old. Running 10.5.5 ; newest Airport update installed (-0004); connected to Airport Extreme, only computer on network with the problem, no router or airport changes affected problem or performance (went through permutations of all of them).
I was experiencing this with my brand new late '08 Macbook too.
I fixed the drop outs by changing my WiFi encryption from WPA2 using AES to WPA2 using TKIP. Seems the Macbook has an issue with AES as the encryption. Works perfectly with TKIP.
(Router is a Linksys WRT-54GL running Tomato 1.21)
UPDATE:
Just to clarify, I'm a Sys admin and have several wireless computers at home. The Macbook is the first and ONLY one that drops out like this on my network. It definitely has a problem with using AES, which is a shame as AES has less overhead than TKIP.
Apple, please fix!
Thank you - THAT was helpful!
I am I.T. Manager here and we have several new iMacs and MacBooks, the FIRST thing I do is replace the Apple mouse with a $10 Logitech or HP wheel mouse. We do not have time to deal with the poorly designed trackball on the Apple mouse.
Thanks I found that out too when I went into the Apple Store and they had exactly the same problem with some of their mice.
Seems stupid to have to do it, rubbish Apple design!
My $5 HP scroll mouse never misses a beat.
tekstud
Mine is the white sided mouse, so don't hold out any hope there.
I've noticed this very issue only just recently on my Mac Mini. I've also got an Intel iMac, but it is hard wired, so no issue there. I haven't seen anybody else mention having issues on the Mini. Anybody?
Yes! Thank you! Constant issues on my Mac Mini. We use the mini as our entertainment center / tv and can't get through half-hour programon Hulu without the connection dropping. Ive gone through 2 linksys routers and just bought the airport extreme and now im realizing it is the mac mini. I have been considering swapping the aiport card for the sonnet wireless N upgrade. It is very frustrating. My white macbook has the same issue but not nearly as frequent.
My new macbook pro is the only machine that actually maintains a connection.
I had this problem many weeks ago and I don't recall how I fixed it, although it did entail considerable telephone time with my friendly AppleCare tech. Actually, it escalated to a second-level specialist.
Now my daughter's MacBook is hitting the same thing.
We use a d-link dir-655 router, and I recently patched its firmware.
I also have had some wireless problems with iPod Touches on the same router, which mostly cleared up after I disabled the auto wireless config.
Two iPhones have never had a problem on the wireless at all. An old iBook G3 happily purrs on the wireless, plus a PowerBook G4 and a Wii. (Yes, call it an iHouse, ya wanna make something of it?)
There's definitely something funny going on, and I bet the code base for wireless in OSX is developing first on the iPhone and then going to the other new devices on the silly assumption that once they get things fixed or working on the iPhone, they don't need to pay attention when they run the same code elsewhere.