[Juba310]

I just got my new macbook a few days ago, and everything so far seems to be going to great with the exception of my wireless signal. Airport seems to lose connection with my wireless (Dlink 614+) router very frequently (im talking more than once a minute). Whenever I download a file or even while doing normal internet browsing, it seems to be very slow- stop and go- type of internet. I have a windows PC upstairs that is also connected to the internet wirelessly which rarely drops connection. Is there perhaps something wrong that I can fix? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[plastiqueusa]

It may be an interference issue from neighboring networks or appliances; you might try changing the wireless channel on your router, or enabling 'interference robustness' on the MacBook.

[Juba310]

excuse my ignorance, but what does interference robustness do?

[sieb]

Found this: http://forums.macosxhints.com/archiv...p/t-25762.html





http://www.orinocowireless.com/suppo...ins/TB-035.pdf

The answer is that Orinoco provided a settable option in their PMCIA to give robustness against microwave ovens. We believe that this option is the one that Apple calls "interference robustness". The key to this option is that microwave ovens have a strong periodic component to their radiated power. For 60Hz ovens, at least,, they spend 8.3ms radiating strongly, and 8.3ms being quiet, out of a 16.6ms period. Now, if a PMCIA sees interference, it'll slow down the transmission more and more. At some point, the packet size takes longer than 8.3ms to get out, and such long packets will get whacked every single time (at least by a 60Hz oven) - not just occasionally. What the option does, I think, is to prevent the PMCIA from ever backing off to packet sizes that are longer than this. Clever. Basically keep the PMCIA from shooting itself in the foot as it valiantly tries to keep up.

The bottom line is that the option shouldn't make much of a difference unless ACK failures are common. That's when packet management becomes an issue. For truly random noise sources, in fact, keeping this option off may be the best noise mitigation strategy. So my guess is that turning it on to kill 2.4GHz telephone noise or rogue wifi router noise might actually be disadvantageous. But do what works.

[Juba310]

Thanks. I guess it doesnt help me that much... but the info is appreciated.

[ghporter]

I'm moving this thread to the Networking forum, because it's not really about the MacBook itself.

[Juba310]

Well I tried the Interference Robustness over the past few days, and there has been NO improvement at all. The connection seems to drop on a whim, and then reconnect a few moments later. Its getting really annoying, especially when I use applications that require a realtime connection to work properly. I'm assuming the problem is with my macbook/wifi router connection. Please help!

[ghporter]

Interference robustness has more effect on whether or not you'll get a connection in the first place than whether you'll keep one.

Are you sure it's the AirPort device, or the router that's giving you problems and not your ISP? More frequently than user equipment, the ISP causes problems. And you say that you lose your connection-what are the indications of this? It makes a difference in how you should go about troubleshooting the issue. It would also help for you to describe the walls (number and type) between your router and your MacBook; some common building materials block WiFi signals quite well, so there could be a big difference between the walls and the floor above which the PC stays connected.

Finally, have you updated the router's firmware? It's worth a shot.

[Juba310]

Thanks for the tips ghporter, heres the info you requested.

Im almost positive its the airport device, as my XP home desktop upstairs has no troubles using a wireless USB device to connect. The isp has given me trouble in the past, but I highly doubt this could be the problem as I've run the macbook right next to my PC, and the problem ensues on the macbook while the PC works fine. When I say it drops connection, I mean that webpages will take very long to load, as if theres no connection at all, and then snap in as it reconnects. I can see this also when im playing online poker- there will be an extended lag in the action, and then all of a sudden 5 or 6 player actions will occur, as the program catches up with the data it was missing. The two locations where I use my laptop are upstairs, next to my desktop, and downstairs on the couch. When I'm upstairs, I am literally directly above the router, seperated only by the ceiling/floor. When I'm on the couch im seperated by two walls (though there is an open hallway right by them). Like I said, its intermitten in both places equally.

The router is a Dlink 614+, with Firmware Version: 2.33 , 5 Jul 2004.

Any ideas? I'll see if theres any newer firmware for the router, but beyond that I'm clueless.

[Juba310]

Just tried updating the firmware on the router... no such luck, the problem persists.

[rjt1000]

Macfixit is reporting on the issue of dropped airport connections with the MacBook and temporary workaround:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...60626090717264

[Juba310]

Thanks... I'll try it. However, it doesn't seem to matter whether or not the AC is plugged in, at least from previous tests. I'll see how it goes.

[wsmith67]

My month-old MacBook Pro had the same problem. Installing the 10.4.7 OS update seems to have fixed it.

[ghporter]

Yes, it's almost certainly the AirPort card in the MacBook rather than anything else. And as noted, others are encountering problems with wireless on their MacBooks and Pros. I think there is some sort of issue with the Intel-based drivers, but it's not so clear-cut that I can specify exactly what is going on.

I wish I had more information that was helpful.

[osxpinot]

try kicking your tx rate down to 11mb (default is 22mb) that should probably fix your problem.

[kimbakat]

I am having frequent drop-outs on my MacBook airport card. But not when I'm in other locations or when I work in another part of my apartment...it's fine.

It does turn out that I hook my laptop onto a Dell large screen monitor..when you close the laptop screen..it may be blocking the airport cards reception.

One quick fix..is that when I put my MacBook to sleep for a second..(when I see the power light start to "breathe"..I wake the MacBook up...it sees the connection again!

Check out this blog..it's the same experience for me.
MacNewsBlog - MacBook Pro Airport Issue: Fixed!

[PEPPERRULES]

Are using any kind of wireless security? I found that 128-bit encryption made my connection on my macbook unstable. A better router fixed that problem.

[ghporter]

128-bit encryption is WEP-which is poo on a stick. Use WPA!!! Seriously, WEP is worse than useless, but WPA is both secure and easy to use. Better routers aren't a bad thing, but depending on WEP certainly is.

[Benstansfield]

I'm having the same problem of dropped connections, constantly. I've restarted the modem and router several times, hasn't solved a thing. specs are as follows:

macbook 1.83 core duo running 10.4.10
linksys wrt54gs wireless g

i'll be heading down to the local mac store to see what they say, would like to be armed with more knowledge (tho, admittedly, they have been great) i think the trouble started with the upgrade to 10.4.10. sigh. don't really want to do a downgrade and reinstall right now.
thanks,
ben

[benk]

I have a new Macbook (about 2 months old) and I think I was experiencing the exact same problems. My wireless connection wasn't exactly dropping, it was more like "stop-and-go". I first noticed the problem when using skype. Skype was totally unusable for me because the jitter was way too high. It wasn't noticeable when I was downloading large files though but if I looked at the network traffic, I would see my connection going from say 50kb/s to 0kb/s and then back up to 50kb/s every 5 seconds or so.

I was able to fix this problem...after some hunting, I think I've tracked it down to a dashboard widget called JiWire (a wifi sniffer). This is how I tracked the problem down to Jiwire (just in case it's also a problem with other dashboard widgets):

In the terminal if I did a: ping -c 100 192.168.1.1 (replace 192.168.1.1 with your router address).

This is a sample of what I used to get:

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=196.294 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.290 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.260 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.268 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1194.680 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=195.736 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.294 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=1.211 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=1.292 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=1192.625 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=193.564 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=1.227 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=1.251 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=1.277 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=1190.244 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=191.290 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=1.178 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=1.542 ms

Every so often the response time jumps from around 1.5ms to >100ms and then >1000ms. This makes using Skype impossible and leads to my connection being "stop-and-go".

I noticed that if I did this test immediately after restarting my mac the response time was perfect. It was only after running the widget JiWire that I had a problem. When I closed down JiWire, my connection was perfect again.