[aadfadsfa33]

So I'm in the habit of taking my MBP to my school's libraries to study - since they are quieter and have the school's WiFi network all set up. Unfortunately, my MBP is doing something rather odd... it fluctuates between full reception and no reception (to the point where the VPN client disconnects me and I have to reconnect). It doesn't stay at any particular reception level all too long. In fact, as I typed this post is changed -- full when I started and now it's got nothing so I have to keep typing until I have reception again...

Any ideas what could be causing this? Is it likely to be the MBP or the school?

[dahcar]

my school's library rented out notebooks to use in the library. if yours does, rent one out and put them side by side and compare. if not borrow a friend's.

[markponcelet]

My company runs a whole bunch of wireless access points, so I leaned over to the fellow in charge of them all and asked him if he's seen the symptom you describe. He immediately said yes. Here are the two instances where he sees it:

1. When an amp is bad, it often shuts itself off rapidly.

2. When the antenna of an external wireless card has been slightly damaged (say the pin is not quite straight where it goes into the PCMCIA slot), then the connection will be intermittant. (Maybe it's heat, maybe it's vibration.)

However, I don't think I've ever seen a Mac user have these symptoms. Maybe there are just few enough of them who contact us for help that we never see the issue. In any event, I agree with the post above: test with something else to be sure. Then you'll know for sure if you're dealing with bad hardware.

[aadfadsfa33]

Awesome, I'll test my girlfriend's notebook side by side with mine next time we're there. Thanks!

[ibook_steve]

Any other wifi networks you can go to to make sure it's not your computer? There must be a Starbucks somewhere if you don't have wifi at home.

Steve

[aadfadsfa33]

I'm actually going home for the weekend - so I'll try it out on the WiFi at home.

[fesdds]

I would also like to know of any solutions. I have a 1 ghz Ti powerbook that acts exactly the same way. I can lay the computer down right next to my airport extreme and it will go in and out of reception. I have an iBook that never loses reception, so it is not an airport base station problem.

[aadfadsfa33]

Worked like a champ at home - must be the school's wireless. Thanks for the help folks!

[amazing]

fasdds: At least with the Ti, the airport card is a user-installable option, so you can take the Ti apart to verify that the antenna is snapped all the way into the card. If your card behaves erratically with all sorts of different access points, that's the next thing to check. If your laptop behaves erratically with only one WAP, then you need to look at such things as:

--check the firmware version of the WAP. Is there newer firmware available?

--how crowded is the wireless spectrum. Fire up iStumbler to see if other WAPs are using the same channel, or to see if another WAP has a stronger signal and is causing a conflict.

--does the laptop lose signal when someone fires up a microwave or a 2.4 ghz cordless phone. Your neighbors might have bought a cordless phone, which is messing everything up??? A Ti would be more susceptible to this than an iBook, because the antenna system in the Ti is absolutely terrible, and any interference with the signal would disrupt it more than the iBook, which has a terrific antenna and terrific reception.

--the antenna bars in 10.4 and later don't indicate signal strength. They indicate something more like signal quality (imo, Apple shot itself in the foot when it made this change...)