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Airport dropping wifi connection in Snow Leopard?

Same problem here. I teach, so it's really frustrating when I've entered in 165 grades and they get deleted when I hit "save"!

I haven't been able to find any reliable workaround (restarting Airport, restarting Safari, switching between wireless and ethernet), though restarting my Macbook usually works. Sometimes I just get the sense that it's random and just some set delay (usually up to one-two minutes). It happens about 20 times a day. Interestingly, it only happens at work, not at home, and it seems to occur with some sites much more frequently than others.

When I went to the SF Apple store and mentioned that the discussion forums are filled with this same complaint, I got the same 'genius' dismissal of the forums as a bunch of amateurs.
 
Slow Snow Leopard and dropped connections

As I posted in another thread this is definitely a Snow Leopard problem. I can run Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP in Parallels and wifi is FAST and STABLE. I can do a firewire boot from an external Leopard 10.5 hard drive and wifi is fast and stable. I can get fast, stable wifi from Windows XP in Boot Camp. I have turned off the AirPort connector and accessed wifi using a Hawking usb stick and again wifi is fast and stable in all of the above except Snow Leopard.

On my MacBook Pro 15" unibody Snow Leopard wifi is useless. Apple needs to get it's head out of the sand and fix this problem!

Note: I have tried the above using two different routers, a Linksys and a Novatel MiFi.
 
After I upgraded to SL, my MB couldn't "see" my router 3 feet away. In fact my computer couldn't pick up ANY router (usually around 8-10 networks I see).
I had to set up my router again in the airport utility. Since then its been
perfect and rarely drops the connection.
 
so i did a clean reinstall thinking that fixed the problem, but the stupid macbook continues to drop my connection. obviously after all this time there's still no fix for this major problem.
 
Unstable Airport wifi since SL

Guess I'm in the club. Wifi drops out often from every 3-5 minutes to a couple of times every half hour, totally unpredictable. 9 month old 20" iMac. Two other brand new Vista laptops work fine off same router. My iPhone works fine off same router - at&t 2Wire Gateway 2701HG-B purchased 20 months ago. (I'll literally sit here in front of "No Internet Access" iMac screen with my iPhone in hand accessing exact website which I can't get on the iMac.) Runaround phone calls from at&t/AppleCare blaming each other. Reset router, reset router security from WEP to WPA, reset router channels, reordered internet access list in Airport preferences. Nothing helps. Solid connection via ethernet cable to router does work OK, but I didn't pay $1500 to have a clunky 25ft cord snaking thru the house. Almost no problems during 1st 7 months of iMac with 10.5. One Apple agent insisted the at&t router has been obsolete since 2006, that I need a type 'n' instead of type 'g'. Went back to at&t store: they still sell the exact same router for new DSL accounts. I purchased $179 Airport Extreme router as final attempt, called Apple when setting it up, got bumped up to Produce Specialist who now thinks it may be an Airport card problem in the iMac, "in which case Airport Extreme won't help." Two solid 8+ hr days on phone/at Apple store about this, scheduled to call Product Specialist again tomorrow to do a"ping test". This same issue can be found in Apple Discussions: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10394827
 
Follow up to my previous post

Apple sent 2 engineers (from Cupertino, in my area by fortunate coincidence) to my house yesterday! They spent 3 hours troubleshooting, determined that the at&t 2Wire Gateway 2701HG-B router was dropping out. I don't know why the other Vista users here didn't notice, maybe because they use internet less than I do. And I still don't get why I never had the issue w/ my iPhone. But the engineers were very professional, showed me data capture images on screen clearly indicating excellent DSL coming into the router, but recurrent drops going out of it. Said they've heard lots of other users having trouble due to aging/defects in their 2701HG-Bs. Suggested I disable the router portion (it's a modem/router) & hook it up with the new Airport Extreme router. Which I did last night, & so far no wifi instability! They think the Snow Leopard timing was just coincidental.Whatever. The Airport Extreme works great w/ the Vista laptops here, too, even tho they're type 'g' versus my iMac being type 'n'. AE kicks out separate signals for both.
 
for me it's not a router issue

I too have the "airport seizing up, requiring airport off/on toggle, and sometimes reboot" problem.

I never had this problem with Leopard. My other computer that is Tiger does not have this problem. I only started having this problem upon upgrading to Snow Leopard.

Incidentally, at my work there are 3 of us with Snow Leopard laptops sitting beside each other using the same wifi, and today we had an incident where all of us in succession had to restart our airport interfaces. Too weird.

I'm hoping that 10.6.2 includes a fix for this issue even though it is not explicitly stated.
 
I was also suffering from this on my MBP, although the iMac has never suffered. So far today since updating to 10.6.2 I've not had a dropout but it's early days yet. I'll report back if another drop occurs.
 
just fixed it...
this is what i have done:
1. set the wireless router's mode to Wireless-G Only
2. security mode from WPA2-Mixed to WPA2-Personal
3. set the channel to channel 9 = 2.452GHZ

my specs are macbook pro running snow leopard + linksys wireless router...

Regards,
iYYYYY
 
I have had no problems whatsoever in this regard. However, upon
updating to SL it was necessary to completely redo my airport
setup in the airport utility.
 
Queso said:
I was also suffering from this on my MBP, although the iMac has never suffered. So far today since updating to 10.6.2 I've not had a dropout but it's early days yet. I'll report back if another drop occurs.
Click to expand...
No drops yet today or yesterday BTW. Looking good :)
 
I have 2 uniboby mb that are having this issue. Has anyone found a fix other than going to a slower wifi setting? I bought an airport extreme from ebay the other day in hopes this will stop. Is anyone having trouble with the airport extremes?
 
omerbaker said:
I have 2 uniboby mb that are having this issue. Has anyone found a fix other than going to a slower wifi setting? I bought an airport extreme from ebay the other day in hopes this will stop. Is anyone having trouble with the airport extremes?
Click to expand...

Have you installed the recent updates? They are supposed to address these kinds of issues. That being said, I had no problems before the update and now all of a sudden my wifi drops out and I even had to re-enter my wep password.
 
I updated everything a few hours before before I posted. The irony is that my wife's macbook just got back from "being repaired" for this issue under warranty. The receipt read something like $300 in repair work. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay it. And I just sent in the survey for the service visit.
 
I hate to thread bump, but this is a really annoying problem and I'm trying to find out if it's wide spread or I just have an isolated case.
 
I had an update last night on my MB, and haven't had any wireless drop outs today

Since the problem became really apparent (after snow leopard install) it's got better over time with more updates. So I hope this is the end of the problem!
 
i already had that update and I was still having problems. The problem has been band-aided by me having to buy an Airport Extreme (it arrived yesterday). I was thinking about getting one anyways, to hookup my external drive to the network.
 
I pretty much gave up. I use my mac now only for work. I use my other computer whenever I want to browse the internet. My next install, I'll probably revert back to 10.5.

This is so ridiculous. I've had my Macbook Pro for 2.5 years and it's nothing but problems.
 
I haven't had a problem since the airport extreme. And I hooked up my 2 TB external HD to my network.

So from my research and exerience, these are your options:

1. Go back to 10.5
2. Get Airport Extreme for your router
3. Complain about Apple becoming more like Microsoft now and suppress your anger about dropped connections.


I wish this issue had more coverage before I bought SL. I would have waited until an actual fix was worked out instead of denial and finger pointing.
 
Does this problem affect the router as well? My roommates Thinkpad is also experiencing the disconnections. Does Snow Leopard screw up the router as well? I have tried two different routers and the problem persists. Comcast is coming out tomorrow. Is his answer going to be "it's your POS mac operating system that is crashing the network."

ETA: When I turn Airport off on my Macbook and connect through my iPhone as a modem, she is then able to connect to our wireless network again with the PC. I can't believe this POS operating system can crap out the router as well...
 
Well I think I posted on this thread a while back. I had a Linksys router at the time. An Apple Rep friend of mine said the reason for the dropped connection is because Snow Leopard tries to connect only on certain frequencies. I decided to replace my Linksys with the Time Capsule and have not had an issue since. I'm not saying that is the only fix or that it's fair or anything but if you are thinking about getting a TC and are having connection issues...it worked for me.
 
I have had this problem since I upgraded to SL - I just installed the update to get to 10.6.2 and I'm hoping this will fix the problem. I've got an Airport as the router.
 
Does Snow Leopard affect the router, disrupting connections of other computers on the network?
 
I can't say if it effects the router. Everything I've read points to no.

Dcmike- did you have this problem with the airport router? I was under the impression that this wasn't a problem with the airport extreme. Or maybe there was a problem with connectivity in general but the SL updates only fixed certain routers, one of which is the airport.
 
omerbaker said:
Dcmike- did you have this problem with the airport router? I was under the impression that this wasn't a problem with the airport extreme. Or maybe there was a problem with connectivity in general but the SL updates only fixed certain routers, one of which is the airport.
Click to expand...

Yes, I am having the problem with the airport router (not extreme). I've upgraded to 10.6.2 but I am still having the problem.
 
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