Airport dropping wireless connection under Leopard

Hippo Man · #1 November 15th, 2008, 03:03 PM

I'm running Leopard on my MacBook Pro. For around a year, I've been accessing the internet wirelessly via AirPort. This is a WPA2 connection. In general, this works fine, but lately I've been noticing that once or twice a day, the wireless connection goes down, and I have to manually tell it to reconnect, sometimes several times in a row, before I can reestablish the connection.

I know that the problem is not related to my wireless router (a WRT54G), because I have other devices (a Linux box and a handheld) which use this same router and never lose the wireless connection, even during the times when my Mac's connection has been dropped.

I'm not 100-percent certain, but it looks like the AirPort connection might be dropping when other wireless networks in the vicinty start broadcasting and are first noticed by my machine.

My system is completely up to date with Apple updates.

I'm hoping that this might be some sort of known problem with a known fix.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

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Hippo Man · #2 November 15th, 2008, 05:22 PM

Well, apparently, this is a known problem under most releases of Leopard, except the original 10.5 (I forgot to mention that mine is 10.5.5). After much searching on the net, it looks like the fix that works the best for the most people is to downgrade back to 10.5.

That's not an option for me, and so I tried a number of other suggestions. This resource is an excellent (!!!) place for finding these suggestions and getting general information about this issue:

http://installingcats.com/2008/06/06...eopard-10-5-2/

They originally talk about 10.5.2, but over time, they work their way up to 10.5.5.

In my case, I changed the channel from 6 to 11, and so far, so good. However, I haven't run for long enough to really be sure, as this problem seems to come up only once or twice a day.

Well, time will tell.

By the way, the general consensus on line seems to be that the Apple Support people are next to useless concerning this problem. Person after person has described being told that these WiFi problems are unheard-of under Leopard (not true), or they are given simple-minded, technically unsophisticated suggestions which don't fix the problem. And worst of all, lots of people are told by the Apple Support people that they (the Apple techs) don't read the online forums concerning issues like these!

Anyway, I guess this means that we're mostly on our own when it comes to solving these kinds of WiFi problems under Leopard.

Oh well ... (sigh)

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Hippo Man · #3 November 17th, 2008, 11:12 AM

Update: well, it turns out that this fix didn't work. My MacBook Pro lost its WiFi connection yesterday in the same way that this has occurred previously. It took me several reconnect attempts before Leopard's Airport software could successfully re-establish the connection.

At the same time, my Linux box and my handheld never lost their WiFi connections to the same router.

This is really getting to be a PITA.

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Satcomer · #4 November 17th, 2008, 05:58 PM

Well have you trouble shot the connection? Does the Mac see any other networks or just the one you trying to connect to? Did you reset the Airport software in OS X by some of these steps? :

1. Go to the folder /YourHardDrive/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ and put the file com.apple.airport.preferences.plist . Then immediately reboot then rebuild your wireless connection.

2. Go to the folder /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and delete the files com.apple.internetconfig.plist , com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist & com.apple.internetconnect.plist. Reboot.

3. reset your Pram

Good luck because Linksys IMHO hates OS X machines.

Hippo Man · #5 November 18th, 2008, 06:33 PM

Thanks for your reply and your suggestions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Satcomer

Well have you trouble shot the connection? Does the Mac see any other networks or just the one you trying to connect to? Did you reset the Airport software in OS X by some of these steps? :

The Mac indeed sees a number of other WiFi networks in the vicinity. As for trouble-shooting, I have done almost everything I could think of and that I found described on the net. Read on ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Satcomer

1. Go to the folder /YourHardDrive/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ and put the file com.apple.airport.preferences.plist . Then immediately reboot then rebuild your wireless connection.

Yes, I have already done that ... actually, I've done it two or three times already.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Satcomer

2. Go to the folder /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and delete the files com.apple.internetconfig.plist , com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist & com.apple.internetconnect.plist. Reboot.

3. reset your Pram

These two I haven't done yet. I'll try that a little later and then come back after a couple days to report my results (this problem only shows up once or twice a day, so I can't be confident about this problem really being fixed until I give it a few days).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Satcomer

Good luck because Linksys IMHO hates OS X machines.

Well, I would word that the other way: that OS X hates Linksys. I say this because my Linksys router works fine with Linux, with Windows (both XP and Vista), with my Nokia handheld, and with two different Blackberry handhelds. This implies that OS X has one or more anomalies that cause it to deviate from the norm w/r/t WiFi.

Thanks again. I'll be back.

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fpayne · #6 November 23rd, 2008, 04:48 AM

I have the same problem. I have a Belkin wireless router with two MacBook Pros, an iMac, a Playstation, a wireless music system and an iPhone all connected to the network. Everything works fine except the iMac which is forever dropping the internet connection and/or the network connection. Sometimes it will not reconnect even when the computer is restarted. This problem only ever occurs on the iMac. All are running OSX 10.5.5. I have tried different routers but the problem persists. If I connect via cable there is no problem, other than a very long length of cable around the house to trip over.

There are other wireless networks nearby, but they do not affect anything else.

I have tried the solutions here and I agree, Apple seem to have no idea what the problem is ...... or are not saying. I will not buy a new router unless there is a guarantee that it will work.

If anyone knows the solution please pass it on, because there is a serious chance of nice new iMac going out the window.

As always, thanks to everyone who posts here, it has helped me many times.

Satcomer · #7 November 23rd, 2008, 08:07 AM

One last hint. A long time ago I noticed that in System Preferences->Network the location was set to 'Automatic' on my Airport card connection. I switched it to a custom location (I called it 'Home') and all my connection issues went away. This might help someone if they try the same thing.

ElDiabloConCaca · #8 November 23rd, 2008, 09:02 AM

Some people report that disabling IPv6 in the Network pane of the System Preferences helps, as some routers choke on IPv6 packets, and Apple, in all their "forward-thinkingness," enable IPv6 by default.

It's worth a try!