Need some help with WiFi dropping please!

I need some help please!


My iMacs connection to my router is dropping and I have to turn the airport / wifi setting off then on again in order for it to resume.

It has been happening for quite a while now. Someone suggested it was the router so I bought a brand new one which does both N & G and it still happens whichever channel I am using.


The strange thing is, if I am downloading a large file, or streaming radio or video, that process carries on just fine- but when I go to open a new web page it freezes and doesn't open until I turn the wifi/airport icon off then on. This also includes trying to open up the local router interface so it is not just trying to access the internet. Also It is not specific to Safari as Firefox has the same issue too.


My Mac Mini, ipad and iphone do not have this problem.


I have tried an archive and install and this didn't help.

I am on 10.5.8 and the iMac is 8,1


Any ideas what this could be?

Thanks!!

You've tried the majority of troubleshooting.

If you connect by ethernet cable I'm guessing there's no problem

No, the problem has never happened on the odd occasion that I have connected via ethernet.

How far away from the router is your iMac located? What does the airport icon show about your relative signal strength to the router? Which router did you buy and is it up to date with it's firmware?

Does the disconnection happen after some time of inactivity or while you were using it?

Run a quick test for us..open up the terminal and excute

This will basically start a ping flood to google.com, you will see a series of periods as the packets are being transmitted and received. Being on the wifi, you will get messages about missing packets, but they should be very sporadic, i.e., you should get one or two packet drops every 1000 or or more packets. If the connection does drop, you will start getting failure messages for every packet.

Run this for a while and then break the program with CTRL-C and you will get a summary of the test. You want to see how many packets were sent and received and the percentage of packet loss.

On my iMac connected to the Airport Express on a 802.11N network, I get about 0.2% packet loss across about 100,000 packets.

Run the test and tell us how you fare and let's try to figure out the next steps..

From personal experience this starts happening to me if I have had intensive desktop activity such as lots of documents, pdf's, tv streaming, mail activity, multiple browser pages open and on the go for prolonged periods
Repairing Disk permissions seems to solve it temporarily for me.

Hi Raz0rEdge

The router is in the next room and the airport icon shows full strength (always). It's a Netgear DGND3300 and it's firmware is up to date.

The disconnection (actually it's not a disconnection-more of a failure) happens while I am using it. I say it's not a disconnection because it has happened while I am streaming radio or tv and the streaming is unaffected. It just wont load any new pages, including the routers homepage ie 192.168 etc

I have just tried pinging google but I got a message saying OPERATION NOT PERMITTED

Thanks for your help so far!

Hi Pendlewitch

I've tried repairing disk permissions but this didn't help. Even reloaded the OS and that didn't either.

Cheers.

So that is curious, if you had an existing thing happening, it continues to happen? I.E., if you are streaming the radio and TV, even though you can't load any new pages, does the streaming continue on until you stop it some time later or does it also stop?

Do you ever see this phenomenon when there is very little activity happening on the network (either by you or anyone else in your house)??

Yes, the existing streaming continues. It is unaffected and carries on until I stop it, even though no new pages will load. That is what baffles me.

Yes it has happened when I am home alone and only using the iMac.

So the problem is currently happening right now so I've switched to iPad so I can post on here.

I have just tried pinging the bbc website with no issues 0% packet loss.
I have pinged my router with no issues 0% packet loss.
I can open iTunes store and preview songs.
I can not load any web pages on my iMac
I can not load the programme indexes on BBC IPlayer + downloader
I can log into Skype and see who is online.
I can send emails via Apples built in email

Does this help identify the problem?

Is you're firewall on?
Do you have any security software installed? (norton, little snitch etc)?

At the moment firewall is set to allow access for specific services but I regularly switch between that and allow all incoming connections and the problem arises in both firewall situations.

No security software installed.

And if you turn it off?

It doesn't actually have an OFF setting. The lowest level is Allow All Incoming Connections. The problem doesn't go away on this setting.

Apologies, just noticed you're on Leopard. So as you say no 'off'.

Baffling though. I can only imagine its some piece of software on you Mac. You've seemingly isolated every other point of failure

mrplow said:

Apologies, just noticed you're on Leopard. So as you say no 'off'.

Baffling though. I can only imagine its some piece of software on you Mac. You've seemingly isolated every other point of failure

Click to expand...

Maybe Safari? I've always suspected it is my problem.

Always worth trying multiple browsers.

Also, bit of a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, but a backup, fresh install of OSX and trying again prior to installing other apps and files etc

Tried Safari, Firefox. No difference. Done an archive and install, same again.
Maybe I should just buy the Snow Leopard upgrade and see if that sorts it.

That was my point, an archive and install just puts everything back rather than a fresh install.

But perhaps the Snow Leopard upgrade is a cheap way forward.

With a fresh install, would I lose all my music, photos, video etc?