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gmcardle

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 29, 2010
2
0
I recently purchased a new iMac as an upgrade to my existing Mac Mini. I installed Lion the day I received the new iMac and all seemed to work great that day. The days/weeks following I began to experience issues with Airport, my WIFI began dropping out even though my Airport icon had full bars - I'd noticed this as my Skype icon and other WIFI connected icons would turn gray. The quick solution was to turn WIFI off and back on, but this was becoming a frustrating solution as I never had to do this with my old Mac Mini.

As its a new iMac I got on to Apple a number of times regarding the issue, although they were always very helpful they never could solve the problem. They suggested 'adding a new location' in the Airport settings and 'changing the modem channel to 11, failing that to try channel 1 or 6. Neither of these options worked as after no time my WIFI would dropout again.

I started to read up on this issue and all fingers were pointing as Apple and that this issue was on ongoing issue that Apple has failed to address with the launch of Lion. Rather than settling for this I decided to ring Vodafone my broadband provider to see if they could help in any way, being honest, I wan't expecting them to provide much as I firmly believed at this stage that it was a direct issue with Apple.

My modem is the white Vodafone HG556a model. Within 5 minutes Vodafone has resolved my Airport connection issue! They asked me if the modem was plugged directly into the wall, it wasn't as it was plugged into the filter that came with it. I recently (around the time I got the iMac) moved my landline phone from that wall port to another location downstairs which meant only the modem was plugged into it. The technician from Vodafone told me to unplug the modem from the filter and plug it directly into the wall as the modem has an inbuilt filter. In addition to all of that, my technician also told me that I was (up till then) only receiving 4 megabytes of the 7 megabytes I'm paying for and that this issue was also resolved.

Since hanging up the phone to the Vodafone technician 3 days ago I have had not one drop in Airport and the issue seem certain to be resolved. I know this fix my not be applicable to many people with similar issues but at least it put something straight in my mind.....the problem was not Apple after all!
 
So, what I'm gathering from your long story is that your problem was really that your internet connection was going out, despite the fact that you're saying that your WiFi was going out. If this is the case, any other device on your network should have had the same issue.

Additionally, if it was the filter that was the problem, no amount of turning WiFi off and back on again would have fixed it. It's possible that Vodafone got you to restart the router, where Apple never did. If the router is your wireless base station, this act could conceivably have fixed your problems as you've described them.
 
All other devices worked as normal prior to unplugging the modem from the filter. WIFI connection to PC, iPad ect all worked without any connection problems. When Airport on the new iMac would drop I'd just turn Airport off and back on again and it would be fine for a couple of hours then it would drop again. So for whatever reason unplugging the modem from the filter and plugging it directly into the wall socket fixed my issue with Airport. It wasn't just a simple case of rebooting the modem which I'd previous tried before I contacted both Apple and Vodafone.
 
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