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Wireless Issue - It's so unstable!

L

Link00seven

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2008
133
1
NYC, USA
I've been having issues with my wireless. I use my home wireless network as my primary internet connection.

I've noticed that I'll be using it without any problems, and then suddenly I notice pages arent loading (or if i'm playing WoW, huge lag spike.) The only way to get it going normal again is to turn the airport off and back on, and let it reconnect. Sometimes that fixes it for the rest of the day, other times I have to do that every 30 minutes. It just depends.

I found http://www.appledefects.com/wiki/index.php?title=MacBook_Pro#Wifi_signal_drops but that doesn't seem to be the issue at hand, because my signal never drops, the connection just dies.

Anyway of a fix? It's a pain in the ass to have to always turn my wifi on and off.

Thanks.
 
I'm with ya Link. I too have drops on my MBP wireless network. I'm using a Belkin54G wireless router, and it's stable when I'm connected, but when I turn it off or put it to sleep and go upstairs, (about 30ft away) then try to access Safari, it loses the connection?

Also, how do we get rid of the other useless networks that constantly pop up in the Airport list? They are of no use to me, especially as they're secure, so why do they constantly pop up? I'd love to delete them, and have my MBP only recognize my wireless network?
 
I think we all have similar problems at one time or another: it's the nature of technology. I doubt that you'll be able to "switch off" only selected networks that are "useless" to you; your MBP will scan for wireless where ever you are and that's useful if you're on the "road" and require another network.
 
I have a problem where once in a while, the connection will die and the little indicator will sometimes show connected, sometimes not, but it won't go back on the internet until I reboot the router. It only happens with some of my routers so it isn't a huge problem, but still very annoying.

If I restart after the drop, and try to reconnect, I get a "Timeout" when I click it, even though the network name appears.

Sometimes the connection strength will drop to 0 bars and time out for a while, then come back, too.

Friggin' annoying.
 
Get a linksys wireless router

I have had issues similar to what you describe with D-Link and Netgear routers.

Once I purchased linksys equipment, the problems vanished. My wife uses a dell laptop (employer issued) and here wifi access has been rock solid since we switched to linksys. This week , we upgraded to the WRT610N - dual radio.

Just one note, microwave ovens operate on or near the 2.4ghz frequencies and therefore can drown out a wifi signal. If there is a microwave between you and the basestation, chances are you are going to drop connections while that oven is cooking. (no matter how close you are to the basestation!)
 
I recently went to the Apple store "Genius Bar" and the guy said that there are less issues when using a N wireless network due to a higher frequency. Or something like that. I forgot to mention that my router is a Belkin54G, so maybe it's time to upgrade.

Just to clarify, I'm not losing connection at all, it's rock solid, but when I shut the computer down or put it to sleep, it loses the connection and only then. At that point I have to go downstairs right next to the router and it usually comes back up.
 
i was experiencing drops about every 20mins while running a ZyAir 3000. I have now installed a D-Link DIR-655 and no longer am experiencing any drops.
 
This happened to me at my parents house, where they have a SMC wireless router. The connection is solid as can be, but suddenly, everything slows down untill it halts completely. Can't load any pages, msn signs off and i get timeouts on IRC.
Lately this has also happened in the apartment where I'm living, the connection bar is solid but the net slows down for no apparent reason until everything stops. I've tried searching for a solution, but since it hasn't happened before I'm wondering if my airport-card may be the perp in this case.
The hardware test confirms that the airport is working as it should be, so I'm kinda miffed :(
 
Jostifer said:
This happened to me at my parents house, where they have a SMC wireless router.
Click to expand...

Just curious, have you upgraded to 10.5.6?

I used to have this issue to the point where my Wifi was nearly unusable. Tried tons of things, eventually found out that WPA encryption was the culprit and ran an open network, not broadcast with MAC filtering for some semblance of security.

After 10.5.6 now running WPA2 Personal for a full 24 hours without fail. So far, so good.
 
No, I haven't upgraded yet. I'll try to upgrade and see what happens. I'll post the results :) Thanks for the tip :D

EDIT: Ok, update time. It seems the update to 10.5.6 fixed my problem (yay!), but now the bluetooth doesn't work. Gah! Allways something -_-
 
Update time. It seems that the update to 10.5.6 made everything worse. It worked fine for the first few hours, but now the speed drops to a complete halt every half hour or so, all the while I have a full connection bar. The good news is, after a reboot, bluetooth is working again.
Though I would prefer wifi over bluetooth :(

Anyway, it seems more and more like it's not hardware related as I previously thought, so I guess that's a good thing. :eek:
 
KisMAC reveals wifi unstability on OSX is a driver issue.

Run a ping test from terminal to your router ie: ping 192.168.1.254 and see how sporatic your pings are.
Now, run KisMAC (wireless scanner) with the Airport Extreme card loaded in Passive mode and run the same ping (actually keep it running from before).. Boom, stability! I have seen this in Leopard and Snow Leopard (never used anything before). Now, when you stop KisMAC from scanning in passive mode, the wireless connection goes back to unstable and sporadic ping responses.

The card uses a software controlled MAC (Media Access Control) layer.
I can duplicate this on every Macbook I touch.. This is a driver issue that Apple has not fixed, and it sucks.
 
I was having this issue, and followed the steps here; connection has been rock solid for 2 days, hasn't been that way for months. I was having the issue when awaking from sleep, but also random dropped connections, sometimes every couple minnutes. Try this and see if it works.
 
Tried that, it didn't work for me.
I run a ping from a Windows computer to the Macbook Pro (late 2009).. Pings look like: 34ms, 64ms, 106ms, 91ms, 77ms, time out, time out, 110ms, etc.. (Windows to Windows on the same network ping response is 1ms consistently)

I load KisMAC on the Macbook Pro while the continuous ping is running from Windows to the Macbook. Go into KisMac preferences, ensure that on the Driver tab, I am using Airport Extreme in Passive mode, Click out of preferences, and click Start Scan, enter my admin password to load the wireless card into passive mode and instantly pings become stable at 1ms, 1ms, 1ms, 1ms, 1ms, 1ms, etc... As soon as I click Stop Scan in KisMAC bringing the card out of passive mode, they are back to being erratic and unstable.

This happens on any wireless network that I have been on. WPA2-PSK, WPA2-Enterprise (TKIP or AES / PEAP). SSID Broadcasting or not. B-only, G-only, mixed.
 
Ping 1500bytes

I have recently found that when my Mac responds to ping requests with odd unstable/erratic results, I can usually run a ping consisting of 1500byte packets from the mac that is responding with unstable results while it is presenting unstable results, "ping -s 1500 someotherlocalcomputersIP" and usually cause the Mac to respond stable to is own ping responses consistantly with 10ms or less response time. Much more stable than the erratic 200ms, 600ms, 400ms, 2000ms response from when this outbound ping is not running. As soon as I stop the outbound ping of 1500byte packets on the Mac to another machine, the Macs own response to pings goes immediately back to erratic.
Very strange.
 
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