MacBook Air drops WiFi connection - again

WiFi still dropping

Well, despite my moment of triumph in the previous post, my MacBook Air still kept dropping the WiFi connection. My earlier recommendation seemed to work for a while. So then I tried restarting the computer, and switching wifi off and on again, which worked, but what a pain.

I changed the security settings on my router to WPA2 (was WPA/WPA2). That may have improved things a bit.

Change the Mac's network settings

For those who aren't afraid to delve into the Mac's system here are some more suggestions,  relayed from macdailynews.com/ .

I chose their Fix #2, to change the MTU size.

Eh?

MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit and controls the largest packet size allowed for transmission over the network. If this setting is greater than network capacity, the computer will experience packet loss and dropped connections

That post has detailed instructions, although my screens looked a bit different to theirs. I reset the MTU to 1453, a magic number apparently. Hasn't dropped again as yet.

Investigate your network

Temptingly for those who like to delve into the works, this post also says how to investigate your wireless network in detail. It's getting crowded out there, I discovered just how many other networks there are around mine. You use Wireless diagnostics, on mine it's in Applications. (I definitely do not recommend changing anything other than the settings described in Fixes #1 and  #2, as networks are extremely complex and delicate.)

Move the router?

A'hm, the author does suggest another simple solution - move the router to a better position:

Using Wi-Fi Diagnostics I discovered my wireless signal to be much weaker when keeping the wifi router out of sight behind an LCD TV, simply moving the router away from the TV a few feet dramatically boosted signal strength. Run the app yourself and see what kind of performance boost you can get by adjusting your own wifi network.

MacBook Air drops WiFi connection - solved

We had to change the wifi security to WEP to accommodate a primitive PC laptop. After that I had to re-log in to the wifi network every time it woke up. Absolutely maddening.

Lots of internet searching and different solutions later, eg delete network and re-add it, etc. Finally a sensible suggestion from someone: Run Repair Permissions from disk utility.

Problem solved, connection drops no more. So simple!

A few weeks later ...

This is from me! I really was doubtful that the solution could be that simple, but my MacBook Air was dropping the connection again, this time to a brand new BT HomeHub router.

So I ran Permissions Repair and guess what, it's fixed again! Hope it lasts.

And subsequently ...

Dropped again - this time I just did "turn WiFi off" from the top menu bar, and then on again, and it picked up again.