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Wi-Fi Dropout....how widespread?

Have you had wifi dropping problems?

  • YES! My Wi-fi signal drops, have to turn off/on airport to fix

    Votes: 39 30.0%

  • Wifi has been rock solid, no Wifi problems to report!

    Votes: 91 70.0%
  • Total voters
    130
DrVenture said:
In order to provide some help it would be great to know the following:

1. What kind of wireless router are you using? Model -Rev. Number - Make- Firmware Version - FCCID

2. What kind of wireless security are you using?

3. Are you having issues on 2.4 or 5 Ghz or both?

4. When you say your Mac drops its connection, does the AirPort icon go grey or does it stay black?
Click to expand...

I can't give you much of the information now because I am at work.

I am using a Motorola Surfboard Modem (can't remember model #)

WEP security

Bars(airport icon) stay black

I will be running my new i7 next to my girlfriends MacBook and my older unibody MBP. I will go to the same sites at the same time. The bars stay full. The older MBP and MacBook go to every site quickly and easily. They stay logged into Wow... While my new i7 can't stay connected to WoW, can't go to many of the same sites as the others. It drops constantly! The other computers work as they should. My new i7 doesn't. I have had Apple laptops for years and have never have this happen. Hell, even my Powerbook titanium G4 667 works with my wireless.
 
I have a lynksys wrt54gs, flashed with dd-wrt. I range from an average of 45' to 50' sometimes 60'. 0 drops here, 4 full bars. 2.4ghz i5
 
Lord Flashheart said:
I can't give you much of the information now because I am at work.

I am using a Motorola Surfboard Modem (can't remember model #)

WEP security

Bars(airport icon) stay black

I will be running my new i7 next to my girlfriends MacBook and my older unibody MBP. I will go to the same sites at the same time. The bars stay full. The older MBP and MacBook go to every site quickly and easily. They stay logged into Wow... While my new i7 can't stay connected to WoW, can't go to many of the same sites as the others. It drops constantly! The other computers work as they should. My new i7 doesn't. I have had Apple laptops for years and have never have this happen. Hell, even my Powerbook titanium G4 667 works with my wireless.
Click to expand...

WEP? Really?
 
I can't remember what security it is. Maybe it is not wep. Set it up a long time ago. Anyways, here is an update. Stopped at Genius Bar. They ran into the same problem (not as bad, but still dropped) so he said to call and have them ship me a new one since it is only 2 days old and their is a problem with it. When I called, the people who take care of getting me a new one were closed for the night, so I have to wait until Monday to finalize. The person I talked to entered everything in the system so they will call me and have all the info. They probably will upgrade the screen to AG for free if I want (which I do).
 
New 2.4gHz i5 couple weeks old. Wifi drops and resets itself usually once a day...whenever I get home from school, but it's fine after that for the rest of the day.
 
MBP 13" mid 2010, bought two days ago. WiFi drops out every 15 min to 1 hour. Also, MBP does not reconnect when waking up from sleep (needs to be asleep at least an hour)

- Airport icon stays black, then turns gray and then black again, etc
- Using TC, firmware 7.4.2, WPA2 personal
- A few other devices connecting to the same TC at the same time (OS X, iPhone OS, Windows XP) have no problem at all
- When MBP _is_ connected to TC, all works fine, e.g. there is no "slowness".

:confused:
 
yken said:
MBP 13" mid 2010, bought two days ago. WiFi drops out every 15 min to 1 hour. Also, MBP does not reconnect when waking up from sleep (needs to be asleep at least an hour)
Click to expand...

I used AirPort utility -> Manual setup -> Wireless to change "Radio Mode" to switch back and forth between 802.11n (b/g compatible) and 802.11n only (2.4 GHz). The switch would always fix the drop out (i.e. I had Wi-Fi on my MBP again). Although in 802.11 only my old Mac mini would not work.

I left the Radio Mode in b/g compatible mode last night and did not experience the Wi-Fi drop out anymore. This morning, I brought my MBP from sleep and all works fine, no sign of a problem.

I will keep on watching this and will post my observations here.

Update:

I do not have any more drop outs, on two mid 2010 13" MBPs. All works fine. The only change (apart of restarting TC) I made was that I set the Wireless channel to 1 instead of Automatic. The MBP is the first ever 802.11n device I used on my Wi-Fi network, and the only one having problems. Perhaps my neighbors have 802.11n network on a conflicting channel, don't know. In any case the problem I experienced does not seem to be related to my MBP.
 
Ah, this is something that started happening to my iPod touch too, 2 days after I got it!

When it restored from 'Slide to Unlock', ofcourse it had to reconnect to WiFi (which was still up), but failed to do so. It SEEMED like it was connected, but the router didn't assign the iPod a IP etc. So I had to reboot the iPod or the router.

This only happened at our WiFi network here at home, so I went playing with the router settings and setting all the IPs to 'static ip' (also of the iPod) solved my problem and it's been working great ever since.

My advice:

1) Try setting all IPs to static in your router administration
2) Try using your MBP at a different network to see if it happens there too.

If all doesn't work: contact Apple. ;)
 
If you are running WEP encryption you can run into those problems.
WEP is outdated and everyone with a moderate computer knowledge can hack it within an hour.

With my Linksys WRT54Gv7 I have had problems running WEP with some machines, but nothing with WPA2/AES encryption.
 
Yep, Sporadic drops (4/5 times a day) on my new i7 15".

Bought it on Saturday and it's going back to be replaced this Saturday - It's not something I want to be stuck with after my return period has elapsed - I rely on it for work
 
MBP 13" refreshed 2010.

it drops quite often. maybe every other 15 minutes.
wifi image shows as black and i have to manually disable and enable.

2 other PCs in the household doesn't have any droppage.
 
My Mid '09 MBP drops WiFi about once every three hours or so and it's a pain in the neck when it drops when I'm streaming video. Although weirdly I get tons of dropouts at my house, yet a rock solid connection with my parent's Airport Extreme.
 
No issues with my 15" i7 which I've had for just over a month now, the WiFi hasn't dropped once touch wood.

Got a Linksys WRT54GS with firmware v1.52.8 and using WPA2 and Mac Address filtering for security. Also have DHCP enabled.
 
I originally had some dropouts when connected to my 1st gen Time Capsule at home running in 802.11n (802.11b/g compatible) mode, but never a problem connecting to my Airport Extreme in office running in 802.11n (5GHz). Then at home, I switched the wireless channel and haven't had any dropouts since then.
 
Just thought I'd update my status. Turns out my airport/wireless issues were network related to my college, as I don't have any dropouts now that I'm on my home network.
 
I originally voted that I had a lot of dropouts. Turns out the problem was at the routers end. No problems anymore! :)
 
None for me. I've had mine for about a week and it hasn't had any problems. At school or at home.
 
Connection dropping leopard

I have a July 2009 macbook pro. About 3 months in to using it, it started dropping the wifi connection and sometimes I lost my network - Sometimes it's a cinch to reconnect and sometimes I have to call AT&T - they run me through the same routine everytime and of course it happens again and again. I am on my third router/modem - It's a "2Wire" Airport card has been changed and the genius bar keeps telling me the computer is fine - I am ready to shoot myself.
 
update on my situation folks-I got a replacement and the dropout issue has been fixed. However reception is still crap compared to MacBooks or any other non-metal laptop. An antenna inside of metal will get terrible reception. I still think it's unfortunate that MacBook Pros use metal for casing. But it's "good enough" now at least. Just a bit slower than my old MacBook.
 
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