Why is my MacBook Pro constantly losing the wifi connection with my WRT150N router?

Question

My Macbook is constantly losing its wifi connection. Sometimes it has trouble connecting, other times it connects, but I obtain a server not found error. It seems to work reasonably well at work, but it can't obtain a connection at home even when I am extremely close to the router. Until recently, I used to only have wifi connection problems occasionally. My android phone seems to be able to connect to wifi without problem.

Answer 1

Try using iStumbler to detect and identify neighboring and overlapping wireless access points (WAPs). It's likely an interference issue that can be solved with vigilance. You need to find out what channels your neighbor's WAPs are using, and then switch your router to use the least crowded channel you can find.

Ideally you want to use channels 1, 6, or 11. These are the channels that have the most leeway when it comes to other channels interfering with their signal. Wifi devices operating on a particular channel can interfere with other devices operating on channels up to 5 steps away. The amount of interference grows logarithmically with signal strength and channel proximity.

For example, if you are using channel 1 and your nearest neighboring wireless network is also using channel 1, you are receiving a large amount of interference. If you are on 1 and the other network is on 6, the interference is negligible. However, if you are on channel 1 and your neighbor is using channel 3, you are likely still on the receiving end of a huge amount of interference depending on their WAPs signal strength.

iStumbler will give you information about the signal strengths emanating from the other interfering WAPs, and from there you can infer the best channel to use. You may need to periodically perform the same task as your neighbors change their wifi channels.

Answer 2

If you are certain that your Wi-Fi connection works fine when you are somewhere else, there might be signal or compatibility problems between your router and your Macbook Pro. Contrary to popular belief, wi-fi connections are not a voodoo thing, and they just involve radio waves, just like a cellphone and any other wireless device.

Reasons for a Wi-Fi connection being lost could be quite a lot, but usually interference and signal noise are the two primary factors. Where some devices are able to “maintain” the connection (despite the possible errors), others simply fail and drop it more often.

Wi-Fi is designed to continue working despite “small interruptions” (albeit with a decrease in performance due to ‘retries’), but sometimes this is not possible and connections get dropped.

Sometimes the problem relies in the encryption. When the network is not open and it’s traffic is encrypted, this “overhead” causes more drops than the usual.

Possible solutions are resetting the router to factory settings and reconfiguring it, changing the channel from Auto to something allowed in your country, making sure your Operating system / Computer has the latest drivers/patches/etc. and there isn’t really much else you can do.

You can try moving your router to another physical position.

I’ve read a few posts about that specific router model and Macbooks having problems, so also assume there might be a problem with that model (or some revision of the router) and OS X.

You can always try to see if the Console has some relevant error messages (/Applications/Utilities/Console.app).

Answer 3

I also have the same issues but with WRT160N.. I will try to reset it to factory settings and will test it again.

@Martin Thanks for the answer, I have one Q. I setup my router when I had a Windows Laptop, then I moved to new place and bought MacBook. Is reset thing is same both pn PC & Mac ?