Does 10.6.3 fix the wireless issues?

[SSpiro]

I had upgraded to SL a few months back, but had the dreaded wireless issue (extremely slow speeds, bad connections, etc) and downgraded back to leopard.

I still want to go back, but wont until the wireless issue is resolved. Does anyone know if 10.6.3 fixed it?

 

[The ArchAngel]

I had upgraded to SL a few months back, but had the dreaded wireless issue (extremely slow speeds, bad connections, etc) and downgraded back to leopard.

I still want to go back, but wont until the wireless issue is resolved. Does anyone know if 10.6.3 fixed it?

So I think it's too early for me to say anything meaningful about 10.6.3 since I just upgraded about 3 hours ago, but I can say for certain I had no wireless issues on my iMac or on my MBP under 10.6 through 10.6.2.

 

[SSpiro]

Well then that's no help..lol..

I had severe issues, and after spending hours on google and confirming thousands of others with the same issue, and post after post on Apple support forums with no fix in sight, I downgraded.

 

[dammitjanet@gma]

SSpiro? WPA Encryption Wifi?

There was an issue with some chipsets and early Pre-N wifi routers, whereby the symptoms you are experiencing above would result from the router not accurately supporting WPA encryption. I had this issue and had to replace my Belkin Mimo Pre-N router as it was the issue not the Mac or the wireless drivers.

i believe most Pre-N routers all used the same chipset Linksys WRT's used with the same underlying problem.

There was no fix because the router manufacturer's were **** and said "we don't care, buy another router"

You can try running with WEP/no encryption (same thing really) for a short time to see if you're issues are alleviated. If so, you know what you need to do.

 

[Winni]

SSpiro? WPA Encryption Wifi?

There was an issue with some chipsets and early Pre-N wifi routers, whereby the symptoms you are experiencing above would result from the router not accurately supporting WPA encryption. I had this issue and had to replace my Belkin Mimo Pre-N router as it was the issue not the Mac or the wireless drivers.

i believe most Pre-N routers all used the same chipset Linksys WRT's used with the same underlying problem.

There was no fix because the router manufacturer's were **** and said "we don't care, buy another router"

You can try running with WEP/no encryption (same thing really) for a short time to see if you're issues are alleviated. If so, you know what you need to do.

Sorry, but the truth is that this is solely Apple's problem. If you install Windows or Linux on your Apple hardware, you will see that the Apple Airport card will "just work" with all those routers that you are mentioning. But as soon as you use Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the very same Airport card in the very same computer will become an unreliable piece of trash. Switch back to Linux or Windows, and the card will work again. Very easy to reproduce.

So no, this is NOT a problem of the router manufacturers. Apple screwed this up big time.

You know what's even more annoying? When you buy a cheap USB stick with a Ralink chipset and install their third party drivers, wireless will also work in Mac OS X, fast and reliable.

So you basically just need third party hard- and software to get a working WLAN with Mac OS X. Just don't use Apple's buggy software which they obviously do not want to fix.

The only people who do not seem to have problems with Airport cards are those who are also using Airport base stations. If those two were Microsoft products, everybody would be speculating that Microsoft, evil as they are, had implemented it like this on purpose to sabotage third party vendors. But since this is Apple, of course, naturally, it's everybody else's fault, but not Apple's.

To answer the OP's question: I haven't tried it and honestly, I no longer care. The USB stick solution works perfectly for me and I no longer waste my time on trying to fix Apple's problems.

 

[SSpiro]

Thanks for chiming in. Every time I bring this up, no one knows what im talking about, even though thousands are dealing with it.

Agreed. Everything worked great under leopard, and then worked great again once I downgraded back to leopard the second time. The proof is right there in the fact that worked just fine with Leopard, but not natively in SL.

It's a SL issue. NEEDS to be fixed.

As a side note, i only use the airport extreme.

 

[mysterytramp]

I've had the issue since 10.6.2. Although I had occasional issues with 10.5, they were very rare. Never noticed any issues with 10.6 or 10.6.1.

10.6.2 was strange. I could go three weeks and it was perfect, then it would be a real hassle. Luckily, I have a partition handy with Leopard so I could switch -- and I'd stay that way until it became too much trouble to find my SL Documents folder, so I'd switch back. Then SL would work just fine ... for about three weeks.

I've been on Leopard for most of the past month. Saw 10.6.3 and crossed my fingers. So far, it's working great, but that's not really a strong indicator because I've been on Leopard for so long, I would be in good shape with SL at any rate.

But so far, so good.

mt

EDIT: 48 hours, still no problem

 

[robert05au]

SSpiro few questions

How old is your Airport Extreme?

Is it the first one that had the wireless N capability?

What type of encryption for the network are you using?

Do you use settuing that stops interferance?

Any other info about what happened and roughly how long after starting to use your mac the problems started would help as I have a few suggestions. Which could help depending on your answers as I would like to suggest the best options to try

I had the first gen airport extreme with wireless N capability and had nothing but the same issues after approx 6 to 7 months. It then not long after decided to die.

I now have a current airport extreme which was made november 2009 and running 10.6.2 until today didn't see any slow downs and or dropouts using it. Since the last few hours of 10.6.3 everything thus far is working as it should and without issues so far.

 

[SSpiro]

SSpiro few questions

How old is your Airport Extreme?

Is it the first one that had the wireless N capability?

What type of encryption for the network are you using?

Do you use settuing that stops interferance?

Any other info about what happened and roughly how long after starting to use your mac the problems started would help as I have a few suggestions. Which could help depending on your answers as I would like to suggest the best options to try.

I now have a current airport extreme which was made november 2009 and running 10.6.2 until today didn't see any slow downs and or dropouts using it. Since the last few hours of 10.6.3 everything thus far is working as it should and without issues so far.

Hmm.. How do I tell the age? It is a few years old, and it does have N capabilities. Very possible it falls in to that area you speak of. Running v 7.4.2, WPA/WPA2 Personal security.

I've had my MBP since 05 or 06. This just happened a few months ago.. Had no issues with Leopard (or Windows or other OS's under VMware, in addition to the other 4 connections on the network), but decided i wanted to see what SL was about and took the plunge. Formatted, installed fresh, and it was instant. VERY VERY slow network speeds (only on the laptop, not on any other device on the network). I ran speed tests on all the PCs and laptops on the network and all performed perfect, minus my MBP. I started a thread or two on here with test results. Everyone blew it off. After tons of research, found out i wasn't the only one. Formatted, went back to Leopard, and everything went back to normal.

Due to all the clues above, SL is the culprit in my opinion. I guess it could be the base station, but only in how it works with SL.. because otherwise its fine?

 

[inkswamp]

Sorry, but the truth is that this is solely Apple's problem. If you install Windows or Linux on your Apple hardware, you will see that the Apple Airport card will "just work" with all those routers that you are mentioning. But as soon as you use Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the very same Airport card in the very same computer will become an unreliable piece of trash. Switch back to Linux or Windows, and the card will work again. Very easy to reproduce.

It's not just limited to Snow Leopard, btw. I've experienced the same with Leopard and Tiger. Boot into Windows, the wireless is solid. Boot into Mac OS X Leopard--constant disconnects.

After hours of tinkering a couple years ago, I figured out that I could force the WiFi connection to reset by deleting the entry for my router from the arp cache. No idea why that works, but I set it up in cron to run every 5 minutes as root and it works. Needless to say, nobody using a Mac should have to do that.

For the technically inclined, I'd recommend setting it up. Here's the command to put in the cron. Has to be your system's cron table as a regular user lacks privileges to do this. Set it to run every five minutes (*/5).

/usr/sbin/arp -d 192.168.0.1

Obviously, replace the IP with the IP of your router.

It's a kludge, that's for sure, but it works, and deleting entries from your ARP cache is harmless. Your computer re-caches it the next time it needs to talk to the router. It's a basic function of TCP/IP.

 

[robert05au]

Ok now this info you posted really helps

Running v 7.4.2

This means your Airport Extreme is one prior to November 09 as the ones after that date has v. 7.5.*

I know this will cause some problems but write down your settings for the airport extreme. Now do a hard reset with a paperclip and the small hole at the back it will reset back to factory settings.

Now resetup the airport extreme and see if anything changes

Also make sure the IPV6 is set to link local only

Do some tests and lets know if anything changes.

This has helped me before and sorted out the slowness.

Also does the net run slow if you plug the ethernet cable from the modem directly into your mac?

 

[SSpiro]

Ok now this info you posted really helps

Running v 7.4.2

This means your Airport Extreme is one prior to November 09 as the ones after that date has v. 7.5.*

I know this will cause some problems but write down your settings for the airport extreme. Now do a hard reset with a paperclip and the small hole at the back it will reset back to factory settings.

Now resetup the airport extreme and see if anything changes

Also make sure the IPV6 is set to link local only

Do some tests and lets know if anything changes.

This has helped me before and sorted out the slowness.

Also does the net run slow if you plug the ethernet cable from the modem directly into your mac?

No, net did not run slow directly plugged in to the airport..

In order to test above, i'd have to format and reinstall SL..

 

[poena]

I didn't have much trouble with 10.6.2 but now that I updated to 10.6.3 the problems started. I have Airport Express and listen a lot of music via Airtunes. Since the update the connection drops and the music cuts outs once or more in a minute. Great stuff Apple.

edit: I closed Firefox and the wireless dropouts went away. Opened Firefox again and they came back. Re-installed Firefox and everything is running smoothly. Hopefully the -15006 error when waking the computer has been fixed.

 

[ecapdeville]

I have the same problems with my Macbook Pro, the wireless can fail at random time...upgraded yesterday to 10.6.3 and all the time I used the laptop it didnt fail...maybe, just maybe its fixed.

More testing today.

 

[stevemiller]

my fingers are also crossed on this one. haven't had any issues yet since upgrading, but only time will tell!

 

[mysterytramp]

/usr/sbin/arp -d 192.168.0.1

I lost wireless for the first time under 10.6.3 this morning and tried this bit of voodoo.

IT WORKED!

Terminal replied with:

arp: writing to routing socket: No such process
arp: 192.168.1.1: No such process

Which made me think this was another pipe dream, but in just a few seconds, I re-established contact with the outside world.

Thanks!

mt

 

[CJConline]

WiFi drop out observations

Winni, SSpiro,

I agree totally with you guys that all the evidence points to a SL introduced instability. I have read pretty much all the posts on the net related to this problem and from my 25+ years system software and hardware engineering background and my own experience, it seems like it is almost definitely something in SL that compromises the stability of the WiFi connection with some Macs. My own suspicion, a guess really, is that it might be a software/hardware latency issues associated with the WiFi due to the improved performance of the kernel.

I have a late 2006 C2D MBP (MBP2,2) and only experienced the issue when I upgraded to SL from Tiger. Between SL 10.6.0 and 10.6.1, I never experience drop-outs while accessing the internet - however if I tried to transfer files between my MBP and our MacPro, the connection would hang typically after about 512KB had been transferred. After upgrading to 10.6.2, I started to also notice that the WiFi link would occasionally hang while using the internet even though the display still showed full strength (4 bars). The only remedy, other than re-booting, would be to turn the WiFi (Airport) on the MBP off and then on again.

I then tried all the suggestion regarding flushing caches, deleting preferences, etc and observed an interesting phenomena - the amount I could transfer before the link hung, went up into the MB's now. I also noticed that sometimes I could actually successfully transfer a very large file (GB's) from the Mac Pro to the MBP but generally have not had success the other way around. Hence my conclusion about the latency issue - it is as though the Airport driver software on the MBP gets into a blocked state and waits for the hardware which has missed a command sent to it and so doesn't respond. Just a theory.

Using monitoring software I also noticed that there are large spikes downwards in data throughput whenever the Airport software goes hunting for other networks during a file transfer. If you single click the Airport icon on the menu bar and leave the drop down menu showing, you will see the greyed out "Airport: On" item occasionally change briefly to "Airport: Looking for networks..." and then back again.

In every case, that I have experienced a hung connection during my hours of file transfer testing, the hang always occurs during this hunt mode while transferring data.

PS: I have also tried different combination of accessing the MC Pro using afp, samba etc with no real difference in its ability to sustain large files transfer in a reliable way. Sigh, 🙁

A big stuff up Apple. Like others, Bootcamp and VM Fusion don't have such issues with dropping connection as far as I have noticed.

 

[stevemiller]

i am literally going to lose my mind with this computer.

its back to dropping connection literally every 5-10 minutes. i don't know what to do. a laptop that can't reliably connect to wireless networks is just downright ridiculous.

and the 'get a different router' arguments don't fly with me for multiple reasons:

-even if the router is to blame, every other device that connects wirelessly is somehow able to compensate and operate fine. snow leopard's finicky compatibility compared to iphone os, windows and even previous os x iterations, still makes it a failure.

-even if replacing my router did fix things, it would only fix THAT particular scenario. i've already come across 2 routers that this computer just can't stay connected to while everyone else can. part of the point of a mobile computer is that IT should be able to (reasonably) adapt to the places you take it, not the other way around. should i be telling client offices they need to replace their routers with airport base stations as its the only thing my computer will connect to?

anyway, sorry for the rant. i'm sure this problem doesn't affect everyone, but for me it's been unbelievably frustrating. i've tried all sorts of suggestions with changing wireless security settings, wireless channels, creating new locations, and so on. i've even given up and gone back to 10.5 (which did eliminate the problem). i decided to give 10.6 a second chance and hoped that this latest update would improve matters, but it's still as bad as it ever was. makes me wish i could go demand my $30 back from apple, just on the principle of the matter.

p.s. it couldn't even make it through composing this reply without crapping out. had i not copied the text i'd have lost everything i wrote when the page refreshed.

 

[ecapdeville]

I´m glad to say that after several days and connections I havent had any wireless issues with my Macbook Pro so i think now I´m safe.

well done 10.6.3!

 

[Asthor]

No connection to Apple TV

After I upgraded to 10.6.3 I lost my connection to Apple TV. Itunes does not show it and FTP cannot find it as before... 😡😡

 

[cjmillsnun]

The only people who do not seem to have problems with Airport cards are those who are also using Airport base stations. If those two were Microsoft products, everybody would be speculating that Microsoft, evil as they are, had implemented it like this on purpose to sabotage third party vendors. But since this is Apple, of course, naturally, it's everybody else's fault, but not Apple's.

Guess what. I don't have an Airport base station and have a reliable fast Wireless N connection on my MacBook.

I dunno if our airport extreme cards have different chipsets (mine is Broadcom based and I know some are Atheros) but mine works fine and has done on 10.5.6 (this MB came with this version), 10.5.7, 10.5.8, 10.6, 10.6.1, 10.6.2 and 10.6.3

I'm not denying you and many others have a problem. I agree with you it is for Apple to fix that problem. But not everyone using non Apple routers has it. My Router is provided by my ISP and is the BT Home Hub 2.0

 

[Arrandale]

I had upgraded to SL a few months back, but had the dreaded wireless issue (extremely slow speeds, bad connections, etc) and downgraded back to leopard.

I still want to go back, but wont until the wireless issue is resolved. Does anyone know if 10.6.3 fixed it?

afaik the wireless issue was machine specific... if downgrading to leo fixed it for you I don't see why you should bother with SL... unless you want the snazzy jazz?

 

[sauria]

Same issue after 10.6.3

I have quite a slowdown from 10.6.2 to 10.6.3 -- streaming from an Airport Extreme to an Apple TV, 5GHz N.

I didn't have much trouble with 10.6.2 but now that I updated to 10.6.3 the problems started. I have Airport Express and listen a lot of music via Airtunes. Since the update the connection drops and the music cuts outs once or more in a minute. Great stuff Apple.

edit: I closed Firefox and the wireless dropouts went away. Opened Firefox again and they came back. Re-installed Firefox and everything is running smoothly. Hopefully the -15006 error when waking the computer has been fixed.