OS X Leopard Airport Scanning Driving You Crazy? A Possible Fix
Saturday, 21 June 2008 Clay Burell 
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[UPDATE 2: 10 Nov. 2008: Downloading the AirPort Extreme Update 2008-004 (1.0) did the job for me. Two days in and no drops, much faster load speeds.
From the Apple Downloads site: "This update is recommended for all Intel-based Macintosh computers running Mac OS 10.5.5."
NOTE: I don't have Airport Extreme. I have an old Airport Express and a Linksys. But it still fixed the problem.
Good luck! Let us know if this did or did not work for you! ]
[Update: See comments for more news on this.]
Is anybody else experiencing Airport Wireless “airport scanning” weirdness in OS X Leopard? Since upgrading to Leopard, my wireless disconnects constantly to scan for other networks – when the network I’m on works fine. My Airport signal is also lower since the upgrade. I know it’s a problem because it’s affecting four – that’s right, four – separate Macs I’ve been using since Leopard came out. And I’m not the only person having this problem, as a quick glance at Apple’s support forum shows.
If you’re having this problem too, this free download, AP Grapher, might help. Since installing it a few minutes ago, I haven’t dropped connection at all. Here is some guidance from the Apple Support forum:
Hi guys
I too have been going INSANE because Apple can’t seem to sort this out. Its enough to drive you mad – especially when they still aren’t acknowledging it as a problem.
Download AP Grapher from here: http://www.chimoosoft.com/products/apgrapher/
Run the program while you browse…In preferences, I set the scanner to refresh every 10 seconds, and the Grapher to refresh every second. Although I’m still experiencing dropouts, the constant activity means they aren’t noticeable at all. It really does seem to work well because it reconnects immediately
The Grapher is also helpful – the Tx rate (yellow) will show you what’s going on and how frequently the connection drops.
…and no – i don’t work for chimoosoft!
Happy camping, Owen
If you’re more tech-savvy than I am, and have a solution for me and others, please drop a comment and help us all out – thanks in advance.
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Tags: airport, Apple, mac, wireless Print This Post
No. 1 — June 21st, 2008 at 4:05 am
Yes, this drives me insane! The weird thing though is that I’ve used osx leopard since it came out, but the airport scanning seems to have gotten worse recently. I am going to look into your fix (thanks for sharing it) and will let you know if it works for me.
Andrea Hernandezs last blog post..Professional Development Meme
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Karen Reply:
May 8th, 2009 at 5:31 am
I don’t quite believe it. The Airport Extreme patch by itself didn’t work. Desperation overriding my natural skepticism, I removed the airport status icon from my toolbar and, voila: fast internet connection on every site I’ve tried. One click solves MONTHS of frustration with scanning.
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No. 2 — June 21st, 2008 at 4:13 am
Andrea – AP Grapher still seems to be doing the trick. Please let me know if it works for you too. The frustration has been constant and endless for weeks now.
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No. 3 — June 21st, 2008 at 4:14 am
By the way, deselecting “Show Airport in Menu Bar” on preferences is another change I made, after reading forums.
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No. 4 — June 21st, 2008 at 4:19 am
nope. didn’t work. still scanning…I used to be able to watch a video with no problem, but now I can’t watch anything without almost constant stopping and scanning. I think it may not be the airport scanning, though, I think it may just be our broadband connection is slowing down.
Andrea Hernandezs last blog post..Professional Development Meme
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No. 5 — June 21st, 2008 at 4:21 am
did you set the settings per “Owen’s” instructions? And disable “show airport in menu bar”? It’s still working for me, and it’s been about an hour.
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No. 6 — June 21st, 2008 at 6:21 am
Yes, I followed all the instructions. I do think there is some improvement. My computer has always done the scanning thing, but it wasn’t bothersome before. Now, like I said, I can’t watch a video. I think it is something other than the scanning. I just plugged my computer directly into the ethernet cable, and it still happened.
I’m glad you solved your problem, though!
Andrea Hernandezs last blog post..Professional Development Meme
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No. 7 — June 21st, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Andrea, that’s just weird. For the record, it’s now 18 hours and no dropping problems. Again, I:
1. Installed AP Grapher
2. Removed Airport from the menu bar.
That did the trick, and ended a weeks-long headache.
Sue Waters adds to be sure you’ve updated your Leopard software (Apple > Software Update…. in menu bar). I’d already done that, and it wasn’t enough, but it never hurts.
Let’s hope others weigh in with their own silver bullets.
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No. 8 — June 24th, 2008 at 3:04 am
UPDATE: AP Grapher only solved the problem for a day or so.
I think I’ve found the REAL FIX for my situation, anyway. It’s this:
Airport Express “Channel” setting was set to “automatic.” I think that caused Airport to scan for any and all available wireless networks.
FIX IT (fingers crossed) by ASSIGNING A CHANNEL TO YOUR WIRELESS NETWORK. See this link for more: http://www.macworld.com/article/45248/2005/06/changechannel.html
Do that by opening AirPort Utility, selecting your base station, and – if it’s set right now on “automatic” – clicking “Channel.”
Then assign a channel that’s ideally four channels away from other networks in your location (AP Grapher’s “scan” view will show you other available networks where you are, and what channel they are set on, to help you determine the best “more than four channels away” setting for your base station).
Hope that helps. It seems to have done the job for me.
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No. 9 — June 27th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Clay, I’ve tried that a few times without success. Let me know if it works for you.
Jeffs last blog post..Used to be a Sweet (young) Boy
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No. 10 — June 27th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hey everyone. My airport scans too, but my connection doesn’t drop. Usually that means it’s having trouble finding the source of the network. And disabling “show airport status in menu bar” has nothing to do with resolving the problem at hand. All it does is stop showing in your toolbar whether airport is connected. I would make sure that the firmware on your router is up-to-date, try erasing all networks except your own in your Network System Preferences, and then look at changing the channel on your router. If you have interference from neighbours or stuff in your home, a channel change should resolve it. Hope that is helpful!
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No. 11 — July 16th, 2008 at 5:16 am
Okay, lots of hits here, so let me update.
AP Scanner _did_ help reduce the frequency and duration of dropped connections, but it didn’t solve the problem.
I just installed a Linksys wireless router in my apartment, and have had no problem at all: fast loads, strong signals, no drops.
This leads me to suspect that the problem is with my Airport Express. It’s two years old, but worked fine until I upgraded to Leopard. So my guess is that Leopard doesn’t play well with older Airports.
Do all the rest of you have older Airports as well? Or do some of you have new ones?
If you have new ones, then I’ll forget considering to buy a new Airport or Time Capsule, and just stick with the Linksys.
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James Reply:
December 6th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
i have the new 17inch 802.11n paid 3,100. The airport is so bad it’s not usable!
Apple say’s i have the best.
What i have is 3,100 of waisted money. My hp is what i use. Apple say’s the 802.11n is to hi tec. for wifi. I bought the quickertec expressCard there site tells all on apples new so grate airport but I’ve not reseived it to say anything. I say don’t up grade or buy new unless wifi isn’t your thing anyways. A tv-tuner should be inside with a tables or as they say modbookapple is supposed to be so good. The 17in comes w/277GB not a working 320GB.
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No. 12 — July 21st, 2008 at 4:25 am
I have a Macbook Pro with 10.5.1 and this has been a problem ever since I bought it. It had Tiger before the upgrade and it had the same issues of dropping the connection. You want to know the funniest part? I use BootCamp and run Vista Enterprise Edition on the laptop. It NEVER loses the wireless connection. So for al the Apple tech guys out there it seems if you want a wireless connection that doesn’t disconnect you’ll need to put Windows on your Mac.
And for everyone stating in all forums that it is a router firmware issue that is completely impossible due to the following observations. My Macbook pro does this EVERYWHERE. I mean it loses connection at every hotel where I use wireless, my friends who have wireless, at my work and my home NO exceptions. Flip over into Vista and no more drops at the same exact location.
So I wasted 2000.00 to buy a silver Windows laptop with a Apple logo.
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No. 13 — July 21st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
[...] now, will try em in the morning! OS X Leopard Airport Scanning Driving You Crazy? A Possible Fix Leopard’s Airport Scanning: a Crazy-Maker and Possible Fix | Beyond School __________________ The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. – Albert [...]
No. 14 — July 22nd, 2008 at 5:02 am
@cccode (and all): I hate to say it, but the Airport Scanning has returned with my Linksys.
Has anybody heard anything from Apple on this? Maybe it’s a problem only for certain batches of their products, which would explain why some people don’t have the problem, while others do.
I’m reduced now to having to plug in to an ethernet cable to work reliably on my MacBook.
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No. 15 — July 26th, 2008 at 4:07 am
[...] is working. One user is reporting the problem on four Macs of his. Every time he thinks the problem is fixed, it [...]
No. 16 — August 3rd, 2008 at 4:05 am
Okay, here’s the latest ray of hope, from a support forum:
Anybody else find anything useful?
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No. 17 — August 7th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I have a month-old Macbook Pro (15″) running Leopard that just started doing the same thing. I installed the “radar widget” and it did absolutely nothing.
Videos stop buffering, chat applications close, it’s horrible. I thought it might be my internet connection but when I switch to a neighbor’s connection it does the same thing. I’m thinking perhaps a dedicated channel for my Linksys Wireless router will do the trick (though a roommate has an Airport Express we might try too).
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No. 18 — August 8th, 2008 at 1:27 am
How frustrating! Here are my observations for what they’re worth:
I got my macbook w/leopard in October. It always did the scanning, but did not drop the connection until recently. My husband uses an ibook, running osx 10.4 that is equally bad about dropping the connection. We have an airport express router. He thought this was the problem, that we should have bought the extreme (the more expensive airport), so it is interesting to hear that people have this problem no matter the router. Finally, I am having the same problem even when I plug into the cable directly. Again, the problem is NEW! I have experimented with watching videos on youtube that I used to have no problem watching just a few months ago on this same computer. Now they stop again and again!! Very, very annoying.
Andrea Hernandezs last blog post..Dealing with Disappointment
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No. 19 — August 10th, 2008 at 1:27 am
My completely unelegant (is that word??) solution to this has been to start a ping in the back ground to my wireless router. Not a great solution but it keeps the connection stable and active.
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No. 20 — August 10th, 2008 at 1:56 am
@Edward, if you could post the steps to do that, the hundreds of visitors this post gets each week might make you a hero
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No. 21 — August 10th, 2008 at 2:06 am
Well right now its a manual process of starting a terminal shell and doing a ‘ping 192.168.0.1′ (my router address) from the command line and minimizing the window. As I said not very elegant but its working, I can stream video and share iTunes. Ping is very low priority and is low bandwidth. Its not perfect but it will work until we can get a fix. I am thinking I can probably do this with automator somehow, but I am still working on that. So the steps are:
1. After logging in, open a terminal session and use shell, new window (you’ll have to pick your favorite theme, its personal preference has no effect on the outcome).
2. From the command prompt type: ping (your router/access point ip address) then hit return.
3. With the ping running minimize the running window.
4. Surf as desired.
If I can come up with an automator script I’ll post that as well.
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No. 22 — August 10th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Edward, thanks so much for that.
For those like me knowing enough just to be dangerous, the Router I.P. address can be located in System Preferences > Network > Airport, right? Under “connected,” mine says “AirPort is connected to linksys and has the IP address 192.138.1.101″, for example.
And this is valid advice I’m giving, right?
Thanks again. People like you make the world better for surfing (fingers crossed).
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No. 23 — August 10th, 2008 at 2:42 am
@Clay: That is showing your IP Address, I am assuming that since your network is named linksys that you have a Linksys Router (Sherlock Holmes has nothing on me!) and that it is still set to its default address which would be 192.168.1.1, you can try it out by following the steps I previously listed. I assume that because the IP you listed, 192.138.1.101, is owned by the University of London, and that you meant 192.168.1.101.
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No. 24 — August 10th, 2008 at 2:52 am
The typo king strikes again. Good catch, Sherlock.
I guess I’m hoping a “finding your router i.p. for dummies” bit of all-purpose advice might be possible for all the ppl coming to this thread in hopes of improvement.
But I’m getting the feeling that there’s no one-size-fits-all method for finding that router i.p. – true?
Thanks again for troubling, Edward.
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Brenda Reply:
June 7th, 2009 at 2:17 am
I’m still learning my way around the MacBook and stumbled across this thread looking for a solution to the airport issue… but I do know something about networking
Unless you have an advanced configuration, your router is most likely your gateway as well. To find your gateway address, open a terminal window and type:
netstat -nr
And look for the line that says “default” in the destination column. The IP address in the Gateway column is probably your router.
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No. 25 — August 10th, 2008 at 3:07 am
Well the gateway is typically the IP address of the web interface for managing the router. For Linksys it tends to be 192.168.1.1, you can identify it by looking at the setup guide for the router or check with the manufacturer. You can identify it in the GUI by opening Finder, Application, Utilities, Network Utility, on the Info screen click the down arrow where is says Network Interface and select the one that is the Wireless Network Adapter, you can see it by where it says Model at the bottom, mine is en1. Then click on the Netstat tab, Select the Display routing table information option and click the Netstat button. The first 2 columns are Destination and Gateway, the entry you are looking for is default under Destination when you see that look under Gateway, the IP address there is the address of the router.
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No. 26 — August 10th, 2008 at 3:16 am
I should mention that this is another process running and could accelerate battery depletion, but constantly re-establishing a wireless connection can’t be good for battery life. This is also a workaround and I will be testing after each system update to hopefully not need it anymore.
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No. 27 — August 14th, 2008 at 2:46 am
The minimized ping command is not working for me. I’m still getting constant network drops…hopefully this message will post! I have a 1 month old Macbook running 10.5.4 with all updates current. Thanks for the suggestions and keeping us posted Clay!
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No. 28 — August 16th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
my solution for my macBook pro/airport extreme [g1] was this:
-disable IPv6 in the network settings
-disable ‘display airport status in menu bar
strange, but true.
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No. 29 — August 19th, 2008 at 11:25 am
schande. Good tip. I’ve been working this ALL DAY and the simple 2 steps you posted are holding up for a half hour now.
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No. 30 — August 19th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I jinxed myself… I am reverting back to Tiger (10.4) immediately.
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No. 31 — August 19th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
@Mike, If you find a link with easy instructions on how to revert to Tiger without losing all sorts of data, please share it here. I’m with you: until Leopard fixes this monumental bug, it’s not worth the trouble. I need stable wireless connections and fast loads more than Leopard’s bells and whistles.
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No. 32 — August 25th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
correction: after a day or so with a stable connection i’m having dropouts again. now i tried disabling airport security and signal robustness with MAC address access control but to no avail.
the only thing that seems to be working is to disable all security options [password, closed network and MAC address access control]; not really an option for most of us, i’m affraid.
no news from apple yet?
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No. 33 — August 27th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I have a (one week old) 24″ iMac running 10.5.2 with the airport scanning issues from the first time I turned it on.
I’m using a linksys WRT54G2 router. I have a MBP (running 10.4.11), an old titanium PB, and a Dell laptop connecting without any problems.
Any advice?
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No. 34 — August 28th, 2008 at 3:56 am
Hi all, sorry I don’t have much to offer, as I’ve tried several fixes and today the scanning returned after several weeks of clear surfing. Really frustrating as I have a 12″ G4 Laptop that works fine with tiger, but the 24″ iMac scans and drops connection intermittently.
My best fix so far is to reset the router and change the channel, but its not working today. The website below has a clear analysis and solution chain that has helped me.
http://installingcats.com/2008/06/06/airport-wireless-connection-drops-on-leopard-10-5-2/
There is a comment on repairing permissions that has seemed to help some people as well.
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No. 35 — September 1st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Promising fix. Try this: and out of curiosity, tell us if you migrated an older Mac onto your new Mac, like I did – and like this clever guy did too. That might be the cause….
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No. 36 — September 7th, 2008 at 4:33 am
I have the new 3ghz iMac and use an older airport extreem and have had the “Scanning” problem since I took it out of the box. there are a few things that have helped but one one real fix so far. firstly I would suggest changing your wireless channel to 5 for all who use apple airport routers/basestations. this is the channel that has the least amount of interference. installing thins such as a ping program or the AP Grapher only makes the problem less but does not solve anything.
the only thing that will work and will work perfectly all the time is to take out all security on both your router and airport card. even with no real security and having mac address protocol on so only selected mac addresses can connect will not work either.
I have personally addressed this with Apple Tech Support and their answer is that I am having interference problems with either my phone or someone else’s network. I know this is complete crap and have phoned back a few times and always get the same response. the only helpful thing I have gotten from apple is the channel 5 thing (which made my internet faster bit still dropping).
good luck to all =)
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No. 37 — September 9th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Try deleting your Real Player
inally! All I had to do to solve the nasty wireless connection drop problem was to remove “RealPlayer Downloader” from my personal account login items. I had read about this solution in this forum in the past but had never bothered with it because I did not believe I had ever installed a “Realplayer Downloader”. I was wrong, it was installed as part of a larger package when I upgraded my RealPlayer software several months back. Further, I was not up to removing all RealPlayer files as had been suggested was required in some contributions. Since then, everything has worked flawlessly and I did not need to leave 802.11n and I did not have to remove all RealPlayer files.
For the less tech-savvy, like me, here is my stab at a step-by-step how to diagnose and resolve the problem:
(1) Under the Apple, select “System Preferences…”
(2) Within “System Preferences…”, go to the fourth row, which has the heading, “Systems” and select the first icon from the left, which is labelled: “Accounts”.
(3) Once inside “Accounts”, click on “Login Items”.
(4) If you have a item called “RealPlayer Downloader” (may not be precisely correct about title as I have vapourized mine), it may well be the source of your MBPs problems. (Diagnosis.)
The cure:
(5) Simply click one time on”RealPlayer Downloader” to cause it to be highlighted, then remove it from “login Items” by clicking once on the “-” (the minus sign) that sits just beneath the sentence that begins with: “To hide an application when you log in …”. Please note that “clocking on the hide checkbox will accomplish nothing for you. You must remove the item from Login Items, not just cause it to be hidden at startup.
(6) Restart your computer.
(7) start enjoying your MBP wirelessly again.
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Clay Burell Reply:
September 9th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I hope that works for others. It didn’t for me.
Thanks for sharing.
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No. 38 — September 17th, 2008 at 5:05 am
[...] is working. One user is reporting the problem on four Macs of his. Every time he thinks the problem is fixed, it [...]
No. 39 — September 30th, 2008 at 6:47 am
This has been driving me nuts and still is. I purchased a wireless usb adapter from a company called Hawking Technologies. It works very will. It just sucks have this external antenna sticking out of my computer. But until apple fixes this I’d rather have a stable internet connection.
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No. 40 — September 30th, 2008 at 6:53 am
another workaround to try out is this:
try configuring your airport with a mac running on anything EXCEPT leopard. seems that the airport utility software in 10.5 is malfunctioning.
did it yesterday, today my connection seems stable.
i’m still very pessimistic about this, so i’m not saying this is a fix. if this isn’t working, i’m passing this silver brick back to the apple store.
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No. 41 — September 30th, 2008 at 7:34 am
I’ve tried just about all of the workarounds listed, but alas none work. I have a 24″ 3.06Ghz iMac, and this has been a day one issue. I also have a 17″ powerbook G4, a 13″ macbook, and two iphones, with both the laptops running leopard, and only have the scanning issue with the imac.
I originally had an older linksys router, and decided to buy an airport extreme, thinking there was some sort of RF issue between the 802.11n wireless NIC and the older router. Well, i have the same problem even with the airport extreme. It’s intermittent, some days, i have no problems, other times, i can’t get 30 seconds of stable connectivity.
running a ping to my router results in almost total packet loss:
10.0.1.1 ping statistics —
453 packets transmitted, 67 packets received, 85% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.519/170.476/5410.098/850.303 ms
The airport extreme is only 10 feet away. This is driving me crazy. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to submit this comment…
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No. 42 — October 5th, 2008 at 7:18 am
When I started to experience these problems I searched the net for a fix and can’t believe how widespread this is and wonder why Apple do nothing?
I have (regretfully) bought an iMac recently. Connection to airport extreme / internet is superb – no problems. As soon as we connect to airport with the macbook or macbookpro (10.4.11) the iMac gets the sporadic scanning situation (dropped connection every minute).
Spent over 4 hours with Apple on their support line, as I am sure other people have done here, which was a waste of time. Basically they followed their script by making sure the firmware was updated, creating new user for airport, suggested changing channels, changing from 2.4 to 5.4 Ghz etc. Evidently its all my fault for living in an area with a lot of wireless activity in the neighborhood.
Each day I have this problem I waste time and money when I should be working, and now my only “desperate” solution is to run an ethernet cable from the airport extreme to the iMac and have the laptops just connect to the wireless. Our cable modem has to be two rooms away so I will need to get planning permission to drill through two walls/rooms in order to get the cable to my iMac….at probably great expense.
I will never buy another Apple product after this mess….I am loosing the will to live with this.
Steve
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No. 43 — October 5th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
I have been battling this constant scanning issue since getting a new MacbookPro & MacMini about a month ago… after bragging to wife about how we’d use it to get video from hulu.com etc… but it runs a while & then hangs up buffering.
However… the PING solution appears to “fix” it.. not sure how much the constant ping traffic effects things.
here is the script I am using…
activate application “Terminal”
tell application “Terminal”
do script “ping 192.168.1.67″
set miniaturized of windows to true
end tell
change the 192.blahblahblah to whatever you router ip is. found that in the network control panel.
“Save as” application & you have a steady connection.
Insane, but true.
Jeff
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No. 44 — October 6th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Thanks Jeff. Looks like it is fixed without setting up the ping.
I got rid of the real player downloader, as suggested above but didn’t seem to fix the problem. I happened to click on the airport icon and then join other network selecting my own. This did the trick. I read somewhere else, and I lost the link now, that the “join other network” will clear the cache (not sure what it all means), so I think real player was the problem…or maybe creating a conflict between our computers. Who knows.
Anyway, thanks for everyone’s help, very much appreciated.
Steve
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No. 45 — November 6th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Just unpacked my brand new MacBook yesterday, it’s the older, “white” one with Firewire. Lo and behold, I do have the same problem, AirPort: Scanning and dropping connections like gangbusters. Downloads dropped down to zero and then in the hundreds again.
I put a new firmware into my Linksys router, I run 10.5.5, have no security stuff running. It’s super frustrating.
I have no software on the machine but what came with it and World of WarCraft, have to admit it.
Using the “join other network” method did nothing for me, I see the constant scan again.
This is my first Mac and I am clearly not impressed.
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No. 46 — November 6th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Roland – it is very frustrating. I completely understand where you are coming from.
Real Player might have come pre-loaded on your computer, have you disabled the downloader? De-activating this seemed to have helped out a lot of people.
Steves last blog post..Election and Gay Immigration
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No. 47 — November 7th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Steve, thanks for the suggestion. I did check the Login Items list – the only one on there was an iTunes help application and I even disabled that one.
I wonder whether this is actually two different sets of problems. Does the scanning message only appear once one clicks on the airport symbol? Or does it scan all the time as the wildly fluctuating download speeds during my patch downloads might suggest?
Let’s see what Apple is going to come up with – I should try a few more applications like Skype that need a permanent connection and monitor the situation.
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No. 48 — November 9th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Hello Fellow Sufferers:
Apple just released an Airport update that I installed just now, and page loads are MUCH, MUCH faster.
Give it a download and let us all know if you’re fixed too. (And re: the Real Player theory, it didn’t work for me.)
Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end. And thanks for all your input along the way
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 10th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Here’s the LINK TO THE UPDATE.
It’s “AirPort Extreme Update 2008-004″ (1.0).”
From the site: “This update is recommended for all Intel-based Macintosh computers running Mac OS 10.5.5.”
Note: I don’t have Airport Extreme. I have an old Airport Express and a Linksys. But it still fixed the problem.
Good luck!
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No. 49 — November 17th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I have been struggling with this same problem off and on for a long time but most noticeably for the past two weeks. I completely lost connectivity when any farther than 3 feet from the router.
I just downloaded the update for the Airport Extreme and although it might be a little early to judge, I can now be online and actually load pages from the opposite side of the apartment.
I hope this continues!
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No. 50 — November 23rd, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Hi there,
I had exactly the same problem as you guys! It seems that I solved the problem. In my case the problem started after I upgraded to Leopard. I did the standard upgrade from the installation disk. The performance of Airport was terrible. Before the upgrade it was stumbling fast.
I tried everything, but nothing really helped or was only of temporary kind. So I decided to back up my important file and do a clean install (with format) for all my Apple computers. Of course this was a huge job, but I got crazy with the drop-outs. It seems that this worked, the connection seemed to be even faster.
Then all of a sudden it started again!!! Then I remembered it was not only my upgrade to Leopard that was changed in my configuration. I also added a left-over AirPort Expressed based on ‘n’ to my network. Thought it was convenient to have Internet in the garden. So I took out my only network device based on ‘n’ and everything ran smoothly.
“Now with blazing 802.11n”, well it blazed away my bandwith, so I will put it on eBay and try to exchange it for 802.11b, and 802.11g. Apple claims “Interoperable with Wi-Fi Certified 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g”, but don’t count on that. Only when ALL devices are “n” based.
I hope this helped you guys.
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No. 51 — November 23rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
O yeah, one more thing: don’t forget your newly bought Apple will probably have an 802.11n airport card inside. Make sure you upgrade the rest to this standard, because all 802.11b/g stuff will experience problems. Maybe one of you want to exchange your old 802.11b/g AirPort Express into my new 802.11n?
Cheers!
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No. 52 — December 4th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Just bought a Macbook, and discovered this problem, which is driving me bonkers. Tried the Airport update, it had no effect. Already tried switching channels on the router… any other ideas?
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No. 53 — December 16th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
1 have leopard but 10.5.4 will this update still work 4 me? this scanning bull is making me hate the internet.
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No. 54 — December 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
There’s a 10.5.6 system update out today, which is supposed to “improve Airport connections.” Haven’t tried it yet – anyone else?
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 16th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Neil:
At this point I’m too skeptical to say for sure, but I did just install the “Mac OS X Update” (10.5.6) and have had fast loads ever since.
I’ll post again in a couple days to confirm the news is still good.
Thanks much for the tip.
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No. 55 — December 17th, 2008 at 5:28 am
10.5.6 did not fix it for me.
I installed the upgrade on two computers (bought in August 2008): a mac mini and a macbookpro.
The macbookpro seems to be better but the mini is not. As a reminder… to me at least… wireless worked fine on both until upgrading the os the first time around… sometime after aug 1 I think.
Jeff
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No. 56 — December 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am
[...] Leopard’s Airport Scanning: a Crazy-Maker and Possible Fix | Beyond School [...]
No. 57 — December 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Hi guys,
Thanks for all of the great tips here – just wished any of them worked. I’ve had my new MBP (17″) for maybe two months, am up to date on all software updates, am set to channel 5, do not have realplayer as a login item, etc etc. I’ve just installed AP Grapher and am running the ping in the background, but it is OBSCENE to me that SO many people are having the exact same problem and this still hasn’t been addressed. Upgrading to 10.5.6 did squat to help, despite the supposed Airport improvements.
I was so insane over this, I thought it might be my router, despite the fact that I had heard MBPs in particular had issues with this. I went out and spent $180 on an Airport Extreme, hoping the additional antenna from the n protocol would make a difference. It didn’t.
For me, my connection will be fine, and then I can tell its slowing down. If I click on the Airport icon and let it scan, the connection comes back – but the signal was solid, so it should never have been dropped in the first place.
This is utterly maddening. I have been extolling the virtues of mac since being forced to switch for work, and after this BS, my husband will never want to deal with this crap. I’m so fed up, I’m ready to fire up my old Dell and leave my MBP at work, since I know THAT doesn’t have any wifi issues.
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No. 58 — December 24th, 2008 at 2:01 am
10.5.6 didn’t work for me either, nor did AP Grapher, pinging in background, Little Snitch, or any of the other solutions suggested. I was considering trying an Airport Express, but won’t if people are still having problems with those.
Just as snipe describes, I can restore the connection by clicking on the Airport icon and having it rescan – setting AP Grapher to rescan more frequently seems to make the dropouts shorter, too, but unfortunately the shortest interval it allows is 10 seconds.
And for the record, I have Boot Camp installed on this Macbook, and I get no dropouts when I’m booted into Windows. So this is definitely an OS X 10.5 problem. “Utterly maddening” about says it all.
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No. 59 — December 24th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Hi Neil,
Please do let me know if you find something that works. I’m subscribed to this blog post, and I started my own blog post about it, just to keep all of the possible fixes straight. I’ll be updating it as I find more potential solutions, but I’m so exasperated right now.
The ping/AP Grapher solution seems to be the most fruitful, but its still not awesome.
snipes last blog post..Airport in OSX Dropping Wifi Connection
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No. 60 — December 24th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Here’s another good comment thread on this, though no solutions that have worked for me there, either.
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No. 61 — January 2nd, 2009 at 9:51 am
[...] to scan every ten seconds and it has cut down on the connection drops significantly. Hope it helps. http://beyond-school.org/2008/06/21/airport-scanning/ MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.5.4) [...]
No. 62 — January 5th, 2009 at 4:35 am
The pinging solution works for me in 10.4.11 MacBook to Ruckus MediaFlex router. Now I need to find a way to make this pinging script run in the background, without having the terminal icon in the dock, since I don’t ever need it and it’s just taking up space…
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No. 63 — January 10th, 2009 at 4:23 am
My two cents …
I have a MacBook Pro 15″ and had NO wireless issues while running Tiger. After upgrading to Leopard, I have all the problems outlined above and no solution with all installed updates, etc.
NOTHNG WORKS AS PROMISED WITH APPLE anymore …
Not my iPhone 3G
Not my iPod
Not Mobile Me
Not Leopard
Their products have gone to hell and remind me of Microsoft 10 years ago when nothing worked.
This appears to be yet another case of a company trying to grow too fast and leaving any issues for consumers to suffer with.
I’m no longer purchasing any Apple products.
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No. 64 — January 10th, 2009 at 4:35 am
Well, I have a solution, but it was neither cheap nor easy. After a trip to the shop found no problems with the Airport card, I broke down and bought an Airport Extreme router, to see if that would help. Test results showed:
* Airport Extreme set to b/g/n compatible: same problem.
* Airport Extreme set to n only, at 2.4 GHz: same problem.
* Airport Extreme set to n only, at 5 GHz: Blazing fast connection speeds, not a single lost packet, even in rooms of my house where wireless reception was previously only a rumor.
What seems to be going on here, if I may speculate a bit, is that Leopard gets easily distracted by competing networks, so if you’re in a location with a lot of 2.4GHz traffic (like me, with neighbors all around), it can’t handle it. The solution is to get the hell off of 2.4GHz, but that requires giving up on b/g connections, since those won’t work on 5GHz.
Unfortunately, we also have a Windows laptop in the house that doesn’t have an n wireless card. So until we can buy one, right now I have my old b/g router daisy-chained to my new Airport Extreme, serving up a separate subnet just for the sake of the Windows laptop. My friend who helped me set this up characterized this as “insane,” but hey, it works.
Snipe and others, if you try this solution, please report back if it works for you as well.
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snipe Reply:
January 12th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Neil – you are my freaking HERO. Thank you so much for posting back to this topic with what you found. That fix seems to have worked for me too. Its been over 24 hours and no signal dropping at all. Keep your fingers crossed, but I think this may have worked!
I updated my blog post to reflect that – hopefully we can save a few more people from these headaches.
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No. 65 — January 10th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Hi Neil – thanks for posting this. I do have a windows laptop, but I barely ever use it, so it hasn’t been a factor for me. I want to say I tried switching to N-only on my Airport Extreme, but I honestly tried so many different things, I can’t even remember now. I know that we don’t have a lot of wireless connections where I live (I’m on the side of a mountain), but I’ll try anything at this point.
Its bafling to me how intermittent it is. I can go for hours with no problems at all – and then another hour where its dropping every 20 seconds and I can’t even finish FTPing text files to my server without the connection breaking. No change in surrounding wifi networks during this time.
I’ll give it a go when I get home, although it will likely take a few days before I know if it worked, since it’s not a problem I can reproduce. Will post back here with my results tho.
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No. 66 — January 10th, 2009 at 5:08 am
dfvera – I can appreciate your frustration, but as a former windows user and fairly new apple convert, I have to say that despite this (incredibly aggravating) issue, I have had no problems with apple stuff. I have an ipod and an iphone, a macbook pro and mobileme, and haven’t had any issues at all, save this one. I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time of this – maybe you can try Neil’s solution?
snipes last blog post..Airport in OSX Dropping Wifi Connection
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No. 67 — January 11th, 2009 at 5:55 am
[...] Set up terminal window to ping your router. This is easy to do but is obviously not ideal, as you’ll have to do this every time you connect to your wifi, but it actually seems to have helped for me. If you’re comfortable with setting up Apple Scripts, Jeff over at the forums on Beyond-School.Org shows you a quick way to automate this in his blog comment post. [...]
No. 68 — January 12th, 2009 at 2:40 am
The apple support download is ONLY for 10.5.5, and will not install on the latest 10.5.6. I am obviously here since I still have the problem. Was the fix supposedly rolled into 10.5.6?
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No. 69 — January 20th, 2009 at 7:19 am
One thing that folks should be aware of:
If the Airport (or whatever wireless router is set to be 11n-ONLY (also known as “greenfield”) it can and will ignore (and disrupt) any neighboring Access points in the area.
If you can see your neighbor’s 802.11b/g wireless, and you put 11n greenfield on the same or adjacent channels, you will be causing them interference that their equipment won’t recognize as wireless. You might as well unshield a microwave oven and sit it next to their house. Try to make sure that you’re using a vacant channel (and there are only 3 usable in north america on 2.4Ghz: 1, 6, 11) so as to be a nice network neighbor.
Better yet, use a 5Ghz frequency if at all possible.
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No. 70 — February 26th, 2009 at 3:03 am
One thing I would like to point out. I bought an imac new in 2008. leopard has never allowed my imac to stay connected using the airport card that came with the machine. I do have windows xp installed on a boot camp partition. xp never looses a connection, ever. I can play games online, 46 hours straight is my wireless record. no problems what so ever. anybody know why xp using the bootcamp drivers has no problems?
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No. 71 — February 26th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Are you using the 5GHz setting on your router? If not, try it. And if your router can’t handle 5GHz, you may need to get a new router.
As for why OS X has this problem and not Boot Camp, the explanation seems to be, as I wrote above, that “Leopard gets easily distracted by competing networks, so if you’re in a location with a lot of 2.4GHz traffic (like me, with neighbors all around), it can’t handle it.” What this says about the quality of Leopard shall be left as an exercise for the reader.
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No. 72 — March 4th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Do you need the Airport extreme or can you use any N router that can use a 5 Ghz frequency??
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No. 73 — March 14th, 2009 at 6:01 am
I have been having these troubles for months… why don’t apple do something about it? I am so frustrated with it, it has wasted so much of my time. How do you change a router setting to 5Ghz?
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No. 74 — March 14th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Hi Michael,
Open the Airport Utility, find your router i the list, and click on Manual Setup. Click on the Wireless tab and select the 5ghz option from the Radio Mode dropdown
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No. 75 — March 30th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
After months and months of trying about everything that i could find on the web about this problem, i finally had the opportunity to leave my macbook pro at the apple helpdesk for a few days. They replaced the airport card [for free] and since then [1 week ago] i’ve had no network drops.
Finally, after 6 months, my macbook is unbricked. I am as happy as a child.
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No. 76 — April 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 am
I solved my constant scanning issue, well so far( 1 week), i bought a dual band router from d-link its the Model: DIR-825, it runs 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands simultaneously, and it been working great, fast, no dropouts or scanning, i have a macbook pro unibody, macbook air, and a macbook running on the 5 ghz side, and my mac mini, ps3, arhcos 5, G1 phone on the 2.4ghz side, i’ll keep you posted
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No. 77 — April 29th, 2009 at 12:22 am
just a follow up to my last post…still NO problems with scanning with the new dlink dual band router going on 4 weeks, so far so good!
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No. 78 — April 30th, 2009 at 5:09 am
So I have an iMac and have heard that my problem is everything from a crowded 2.4 GHz band to the aluminum casing around my computer causing interference. Whatever it is, I’ve (KNOCK ON WOOD) solved the problem simply by changing the channel on my router. I just logged on my router’s IP site and fiddled with the channel. I was on the default (6) and first tried 9 which didn’t work (perhaps because it was too close to the 11′s and 6′s that are operating in my vicinity according to AP Scanner. Then I tried 3, which was totally out of the way of local traffic. Problem solved.
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No. 79 — May 12th, 2009 at 3:37 am
I have this problem with rpeated scanning on Airport on my 2 year old MacBook. It is driving me crazy as well. I live in the country so there are no competing networks. When I go to Airport Utility it doesn’t even show my wireless network regardless of how close i am to it physically. I am using a Linksys Wireless G router.
Any ideas?
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No. 80 — May 14th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
FWIW…
I happened on this thread because I was having the problem with an Intel Mac Mini running 10.5.6 and 10.5.7.
I have an external hard drive that normally sits on top of the Mini. After trying many of the suggestions from posts on this thread and elsewhere, and getting nowhere, it occurred to me that perhaps some subtle shift in position of the HDD unit was somehow interfering with the Airport antenna. I moved the HDD about a foot away – problem solved immediately.
I suspect there are many causes for this issue, but if you have other equipment near your Mac, simply moving stuff around is a pretty easy thing to try.
Good luck, all…
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No. 81 — May 14th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
This thread was fascinating to me, as well as very discouraging. I’ve had these same problems with my MacBook Pro since I switched to Leopard a while back. I tried all the solutions about with no luck. The most frustrating thing about it is that my older iBook G4 (running 10.4) can sit right next to my MacBook Pro and get perfect signal and connectivity. I think I may try to take them both to an Apple store and show them how ridiculous this is.
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No. 82 — August 15th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Same horror here: perfect signal but no traffic going through the air. Only a stop & start of the Airport in my MBP [unibody late 2008] restores functionality.
Ranging from removing IPv6 to changing channels, from ditching my WRT54GS to buying an Airport Extreme, from airport radar widget to KisMAC I have tried it all… with 0 result.
I have 4 macs & iPhones. The iPhones are the only devices working flawlessly.
And of course if I boot any other OS [XP via bootcamp, Linux&BSD via USB stick or CD] then the wireless works flawlessly.
My Wi-Spy 2.4x [see http://www.metageek.net/ is not of too much use since it does not work with the 'n' [5Ghz] range.
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No. 83 — August 19th, 2010 at 10:31 am
I just rearranged my preferred networks in my network preferences, and that seemed to fix the problem of constant scanning… at least for now. I just made sure that the network I was trying to use was at the top of the list– and, no, none of the other networks in range are anywhere on my preferred network list.
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