I don't know, if I had the same problem as described by you. My wifi connection was still active, but no packets went over the air anymore - it looked like wifi has been stalled. Turning wifi off and on made it work again for the next few minutes (iMac 2011, Snow Leopard and Lion).
The solution that worked for me, was to turn off the WPA2 CCMP option at my router and switch back to normal WPA2.
Note that I also have a MacBook late 2008 and an iPhone, that worked fine for years with these router settings. Only the new iMac made trouble.
Hope that helps,
Maruu