Weird Airport/Internet problem with Snow Leopard

[cytuser1]

This worked for me... so far!

I have been having the same dropped wireless connection after installing Snow Leopard. I have tried everything discussed here including contacting apple support. The only thing that worked for me was to select WPA2 security on my router. I have been connected since last night with no dropped connections. I will be keeping my fingers crossed that it lasts. Cytuser1

 

[jincheker]

I have the same problem!

For a long time, I thought it was my own problem.....

 

[JohnRoss]

Now working on 11n - so far

I was getting very frustrated and was lucky to fiddle randomly enough in network settings to get 5 minutes connectivity to get to this page...

I've tried both the Delete/Add Airport Service and Edit Locations.

Now at least I can connect to my Airport Extreme using 11n, before it would only use 11b.

To check what settings you have press Option before clicking on the Airport menu icon.

I'm going to cross-my-fingers and hope this fixes things. I did wait until 10.6.1 was out before doing a clean SL install, guess I should have waited until .2!

 

[califguy]

Add me to he list of people having Airport issues after upgrading to SL. I did a quick install over leopard and everything went well except I can not turn airport off. I backed up everything, did a clean install (formatted) the HD, and restored using time machine. I still can't turn airport off, even in the system preferences. Any ideas?

Create a new Location under System Prefs-> Network and then delete your older location. That will fix this.

 

[Joyblossom]

Well, I had the same problem. My internet was working fine with Leopard but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard, my wireless internet connection has been fluctuating between being connected and not being connected. I was so fed up with this that I was even thinking about downgrading to leopard without using a time machine backup and losing all of my data. But then I decided to find some sort of solution to this problem without downgrading. After a lot of internet searching, I found what seems like a solution. You should go to your router's homepage and change your wireless channel. Other routers around you may be using the same channel as you and causing an interference. This is working for me so far. I hope this helps ^___^

 

[Jookbox]

Ok i had this problem since i upgraded snow leopard on day one. i finally had the time to do a clean snow leopard install, and it seems to work. This problem is probably associated with upgrading somehow.

 

[coloma]

AppleCare folks helped find a solution

I just upgraded to a new MacBook Pro running 10.6.1, and all has been great except wireless. The Airport Extreme that worked so well with 10.5.8 kept dropping me on 10.6. I tried all the remedies I found on the web (reset PRAM, create new location, reset DNS cache, delete SystemConfiguration folder, etc.) but none fixed the problem for more than a few minutes.

After 45 minutes on the phone with AppleCare, all looks good. They had me do a hard reset of the Extreme, and then reconfigure it using Airport Utility on the new Mac. The explanation was that the older Extremes didn't know how to talk to 10.6 properly, and that the 10.5.8 Airport Utility didn't know how to fix them. The sequence was as follows:

- make sure you have your passwords for the Airport Extreme recorded as this sequence will wipe its configuration
- power off the cable modem and leave it unplugged temporarily (make sure lights are off in case of battery backup)
- use a paperclip to press and hold the tiny reset button on the back of the Extreme until the light on the front of the Extreme flashes fast amber
- plug the cable modem back in
- from the Mac running 10.6.1, fire up Airport Utility. You should soon see a generic Airport Extreme icon whose name starts with "Apple". Configure it. Do not restore the old settings. Note that the first name and password it asks for are the admin name/password for the Extreme, not to be confused with the network name/password.
- Configure a new network and assign it name/password. Use WPA/WPA2 Personal security.

At this point my MacBook was happily connected ... hope it works for you, too.

Donna

 

[stringbeanie]

I tried the "delete airport with the (-) and add it back (+) and also repaired my permissions. One of those two actions completely fixed my wi-fi problem which was pretty severe. I have had 5 days of 100% connectivity for the first time since I installed Snow Leopard. All is good.
Here is a link to instructions for repairing permissions: http://kb.iu.edu/data/aoxn.html

 

[Jookbox]

Ok i had this problem since i upgraded snow leopard on day one. i finally had the time to do a clean snow leopard install, and it seems to work. This problem is probably associated with upgrading somehow.

Just reposting that this actually didn't fix the problem. I get less dropped connections, but I still have to restart my airport every now and then because of the lost connection.

 

[ae86gtv16]

i'm kind of in the same boat with the rest, but what i noticed with my internet connection is that when i'm downloading a big file and browse the net at the same time the browser would stop working. the browser would just say loading for a long time, but once cancel the downloading of file the website that's loading loads immediately.

this always happens when i'm downloading files, can't seem to download and browse the net at the same time. any fix to this? please help! i'm gettin frustrated. i got a MBP with snow leopard.

 

[AreMacsBetter]

I bought my first ever PC replacement, an imac, around April last year just after a new version was released & I was really pleased with it - it looked good and worked great. However, after about a week my solid wireless internet connection started going flaky as described here by others - it would be up for 10 mins, then drop-out and I would have to reset the airport. After lots of fruitless discussion with Apple support etc I concluded myself that there had been an automatic OS up-date I had accepted without thinking & this changed the configuration of the airport causing it to have drop-outs when the wireless router was a reasonable distance from the imac. It is easy to test this - just plug a long telephone extension in and move your router next to the imac. It became rock solid for me again. Since this was not a permanent solution I decided to roll-back the OS from 10.5.3 to 10.5.2 and suddenly I had a good connection again. Using fixed channel rather than auto channel router selection actually gave the best results. I left it as it is & chose to ignore the up-date reminders for OS changes from 10.5.3 to 10.5.7 since none claimed to have fixed a major bug in the airport configuration to bring wireless performance back to 10.5.2 capability.
When SL was released I decided to try it because there are speed improvements else where. This was a mistake because suddenly my airport problems are back. They are not as bad as 10.5.3 but I get much more frequent drop-outs. I then tried auto channel selection instead of my fixed and this stopped the connection working completely - I had to move the router back next to my imac to be able to get back into the router options and move back to a fixed channel.

In summary, my problem does not appear to be related to DNS settings, user Airport settings etc but purely a function of the way the Airport is configured by the OS to handle low-signal strength wireless connections (it maybe selects different hardware options in the airport.

My overall iMAC experience is that Windows is not so bad, and Windows 7 just re-inforces that - it works great on my laptop.

 

[uglybob]

More Airport Issues

having installed SL airport connect fine to home network but everywhere else I get error message that either says airport has self assigned IP address and will not connect or Airport has no assigned IP address and will not connect.

Reboot, reset location etc all to no avail.

 

[diogomusique]

Solved for me

Hey everyone! I struggled with a similar problem for about two hours after upgrading to Snow Leopard, but I finally figured out (what seems to be) a solution:

1. Go into your router's administration page and find your DNS server(s).
2. Open up Network Preferences in your System Preferences window.
3. In the Advanced section, click on the DNS tab.
4. Manually add the DNS servers you looked up in Step 1.

Hope this helps!

Add DNS manually works for me.
I access the IP from my modem and checked the DNS primary and secondary servers and add manually to DNS Airport.
Im surfing the web from safari and everything goes ok.

Thanks! (and sorry for the bad english

 

[PurpleSerguei]

Mac internet problem

Hay there Gwillyc. I have absolutely the similar problem with my Mac. Now, each time when I´m browsing in the internet, it starts to run really slowly and then it disconnects and I even can´t chat on Skype and other chat servers and browse on the internet for some random stuff. Sometimes the connection icon shows that my Mac is connected with the router, but each time I open Safari, it always shows up "You are not connected with the internet". I have rebooten it soo many times, I shut it down and turned it on, but it doesn´t work for a while. I even had a thing, when I turned on my Mac after the same problem which happened two weeks ago and the internet was fine again. I just don´t get it what´s wrong with it and I also don´t get if something is wrong with my Mac or with the router

 

[Ryda4eva00]

Fix for Snow Leopard intermittent network connectivity

You all are not alone. My company bought a huge amount of Mac Pros & MacBook Pros and realized the network intermittent issue while testing the image. The only workaround was to setup static IP. This does the trick but was a pain because we have to worry about managing static IP.

I have been working with Apple on this for about 4 months and they’ve finally discovered whats causing the problem. Below is a workaround. According to Apple, a permanent fix will be on the next software update release.

1. Open terminal
2. sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf
3. Insert “net.link.ether.inet.keep_announcements=0″
4. Reboot computer

You can check if the setting holds by running this command ->> sudo sysctl net.link.ether.inet.keep_announcements. Your output should be 0.

Hope this does it for you!

 

[gnite21]

It seems like this thread has been dead for a while, but I am revisiting it with the same problem on my new 21" iMac and Snow Leopard. I won't explain it, it's the same as nearly everyone else above. I tried some of the solutions that didn't end up being solutions. Then I stumbled upon a couple other sources both with different suggestions. I've done them all, and now... for the past 2 hours, I've remained both with AirPort connected and maintained a connection to the internet.

Here's what I did:

•Turn off firewall. Our router has a very secure and working firewall. It was suggested that using the firewall software on computer (as opposed to that which is in association with the router) messes with ALL incoming connections... not just bad ones.

•Turn off web sharing. I turned off all unnecessary sharing. I'm not really sharing anything anyway.

•Set sleep time to an hour or more. This was what no other forum had thought of... and I didn't think of it either. I forget which forum it came from... but my thanks to them!!! It was proposed that sleeping... at least on Snow Leopard... messes with connectivity. I had sleep set for 4 min. Once I did the above 2 steps, and then set sleep to happen at 1 hour... I've maintained a connection ever since.

Yes.... it's only been 2 hours, but that is WAY better than dropping off every 30 seconds or so since I've had the new computer (not even 2 days!!!)

I am seriously considering going BACK to Leopard on this new computer. My MacBook Pro with Leopard doesn't have these problems at all.

Good luck everyone!

 

[gnite21]

Sorry... repeat of last post... DOH!

 

[D2K2013]

I just got my problem fixed after a surprisingly brief call to Apple tech support. here's what I had to do:

1.) Open the Network preference pane in System Preferences.
2.) Select the "Airport" service. Delete it by pressing the minus sign at the bottom of the window.

3.) Click the plus sign to add a new service. For the Interface, select "Airport." Press "Create."
4.) Press "Apply."
5.) Select the new service (it will probably be called "Airport 2") and make sure Airport is turned on.

That's all I had to do! The support tech did mention that I might have to do this again for when I plug in to an Ethernet connection, but that's no big deal.

I do want to mention that I never had the intermittency issues mentioned by many here and elsewhere. I simply could not ever access the internet, despite full wireless connection or Ethernet connection.

Best of luck to you all.

Thanks a lot! Worked perfectly. Apple support just told me to add a new Network Location with the "+" sign. That didn't work. Your solution of deleting and then re-adding worked!

 

[stefansa]

I just upgraded to a new MacBook Pro running 10.6.1, and all has been great except wireless. The Airport Extreme that worked so well with 10.5.8 kept dropping me on 10.6. I tried all the remedies I found on the web (reset PRAM, create new location, reset DNS cache, delete SystemConfiguration folder, etc.) but none fixed the problem for more than a few minutes.

After 45 minutes on the phone with AppleCare, all looks good. They had me do a hard reset of the Extreme, and then reconfigure it using Airport Utility on the new Mac. The explanation was that the older Extremes didn't know how to talk to 10.6 properly, and that the 10.5.8 Airport Utility didn't know how to fix them. The sequence was as follows:

- make sure you have your passwords for the Airport Extreme recorded as this sequence will wipe its configuration
- power off the cable modem and leave it unplugged temporarily (make sure lights are off in case of battery backup)
- use a paperclip to press and hold the tiny reset button on the back of the Extreme until the light on the front of the Extreme flashes fast amber
- plug the cable modem back in
- from the Mac running 10.6.1, fire up Airport Utility. You should soon see a generic Airport Extreme icon whose name starts with "Apple". Configure it. Do not restore the old settings. Note that the first name and password it asks for are the admin name/password for the Extreme, not to be confused with the network name/password.
- Configure a new network and assign it name/password. Use WPA/WPA2 Personal security.

At this point my MacBook was happily connected ... hope it works for you, too.

Donna

Same problem here after upgrading to SL. Tried a lot of the common tips that can be found on the forums. As a last resort I figured it couldn't do damage to upgrade the airport express firmware and because I did not have the password any more, I also reset the express. So, wether it was the above solution (that I de facto followed) that worked for me or the firmware upgrade I will probably never know for sure, but I have been steadily online for hours in a row now. Hope this helps anyone!

 

[sandimacd]

Airport not working

Mine stopped overnight the day I updated OS software (10.6.8). Turned off then next day turned on. Found this question (AirPort stopped working) often enough in forums but no solutions.

Have tried resetting network info, Diagnostics, Assist Me, deleting network, adding back in, deleting location, adding location, permission repairs, borrowing disc from my iMac and MM to repair, tried to reinstall OS with remote drive but it fails to get on with AirPort and I don't have ethernet. Tried disabling Bluetooth (It wasn't ever enabled so I enabled then restarted and disabled and restarted.) Added Airport 2 and even 3. Tried all these more than twice, some more than 10 times.

The MBA can find and connect to both MM and iMac for file transfers but cannot get on my network. Tried resetting Verizon FiOS router. Tried over 3 days. All other devices and computers (11 total) can get on. MBA just times out and shows greyed out wireless signal icon with exclamation point.

Once, it even froze up and refused to accept any keystrokes when entering network name and password. Another time it started spinning and displayed message that it was searching for a bluetooth keyboard and mouse (??MBA doesn't have that as it is integrated!).

I am ready to trash it after 3 years and go back to buying PC notebooks. Really frustrated with Macs and Apple philosphy/support right now. I had mega Lion upgrade problems so returned to SL in Dec. Apple seems uncaring of problems with either OS.

I left Windows for Macs in 2008 because they JUST WORKED. I'm just plain frustrated with tinkering around every few weeks ever since Lion and iCloud hit the market. I'm done, for me the golden days of Apple have ended. If I have to spend hours tinkering with an OS system every few days, it may as well be Linux (which also has wireless connection problems)...at least it will cost me less money!