Dropped wifi connections

Of the two MacBooks we recently got, one (and it's mine, wouldn't you know?) exhibits the undesirable behavior that affects some members of the species. Namely:

It will randomly lose track of the Internet, despite still showing full Wi-Fi signal strength in the menu bar.
After #1 occurs, turning Airport off and on won't result in it actually finding things again.
After #1 occurs and the machine is rebooted, it may completely forget that it even has an Airport card.

I've googled fairly extensively, and have narrowed it down to one of the following:

The Airport card isn't seated correctly
The Airport antenna isn't connected to the card correctly
There's something wrong with the card's firmware
There's something wrong with our Netgear wireless router's firmware
There's something wrong with the software

In other words, I haven't really narrowed it down at all. It's either hardware, firmware, or software. The only thing I know it's not is human error. :) Of course, given that Maisha's MacBook isn't exhibiting the same behavior (knock on black polycarbonate), and given that the firmware and software on the two machines should be identical... hmm.

Anyway, in my own UNIX-geek researching of the problem, I'm gradually learning a few things, so I'll try to provide a bit of information along the path to (I hope) the solution.

I recently went through this same issue with intermittent connectivity and then dropping off (while showing full signal). I also had a terrible issue with not connecting after waking from sleep. This issue affected both my MacBook Pro and my wife's MacBook. I purchased a new Belkin N wireless router hoping it was a faulty Linksys b router. That didn't fix my problem (but really upped my connection speeds!). So I began searching. I stumbled upon your site in my travels. I figured since I found a solution that fixed both of my laptops then I would pass it along.

@sjorsvb You don't need the 2007-001. If your system can take it, you can download 2007-002 update for the Airport Extreme (this includes the 001 update). My wife's MacBook had this update prior to the problems. I don't believe that this update would fix your problem.

The main thing that both of our systems had in common was the new Safari Beta. After spending a day searching through google, watching my system and console logs, changing my router settings, and thinking really hard, I figured that I would try removing it. I redownloaded the DMG, and ran the uninstaller. Once I did that, I rebooted my machine. Suddenly all of my wireless problems disappeared! I did the same on my wife's MacBook with the same results. Now we no longer experience these problems.

Regards,

I bought one of the new Macook Pro Duos and can say I have had a few minor problems with my machine and Home AEBS. Occasionaly it will disconnect from the network with little traffic, not a big deal so far.

However, as for connecting to other networks, I have had problems. Using any 3rd party Wifi software gives weird results. Most of the time I have to stop and start the software to start scanning again (KisMac). It scans for about a minute and just stops.

This is a tricky one. FYI I have NOT experienced this...

• I have all the latest OS/Firmware updates.
• I do NOT have Safari beta installed
• I am using the old (snow) airport base station
• I have an airport express on the network, for doing airtunes.

Dunno if this helps isolate the issue.

ave you heard anything about people having similar problems with the new iMacs? my iMac's connection will drop out even when my iBook is right next to it getting a 5 bar connection. :-P

i just assumed it was having trouble keeping up with an old, old airport.

I haven't heard anything about it with the iMacs, but if it's an Intel iMac running 10.4.x and it has Atheros wireless chips (which I don't know whether it does) it might conceivably do it.

The MacBook seems to be behaving a bit better with the WLAN running on channel 8... but I installed the SMC firmware update that came out yesterday to allegedly fix the fans (which as far as I could tell worked fine) and the 2 times I've rebooted since then, it's done the startup chime, then gone to a black screen until I zap the PRAM. That'll teach me to apply updates the first day they're out! ;)

My new MacBook kept dropping its Wireless connection, every single time I opened the laptop and would wake it from sleep. Basically, I'd have to manually re-connect 2 or 3 times until the connection stuck, and I kept getting an error message saying "Error connecting to network 'jc'".

I first called support thinking it was my router. But then doing a bit of digging on the internet, I found out that this is a common issue with Macs, and there are the six simple steps to fixing it permanently:

1. Go to Preferences–>Network
2. Add a new location
3. In the Show: menu, go to Network Port Configurations
4. Make sure AirPort is checked (it should be by default)
5. Drag Airport to the top of the list (above Modem)
6. Click Apply and watch your signal meter. In about a second, it'll pop back to life.

(I also disable BlueTooth and FireWire, just because I don't need them at home)

Googling around (since my last post, I suppose, wasn't all that helpful)... found a promising link on mac suport forums: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1008143&tstart=0

Thanks Luke! This is just what I needed....