Wireless Network Lost -- Happens Often

X

xDavex

Bit poster
My MacBook constantly -- about once every half hour -- looses its wireless connection. This problem started once I upgraded to RC2; previously, I don't think the wireless connection was dropped once. Note that, under OSX, the wireless connection never drops. Note, also, that I'm running Windows XP Pro
 
xDaveX, can you please do one small test for us.
When your VM has just got an IP and its iternet connection is working at the moment go to the System Preferences in Mac OS X and renew DHCP lease for the AirPort. Will this break internet connection in your VM?
 
I had a problem with the last few builds where OS X would stop working with the internet, but the VM would work perfectly fine. I would have to stop and start the wireless to get it to work again.
 
DHCP lease renew

Serv,

Renewing the DHCP lease (in System Preferences/Network/AirPort) had no effect on my VM at all. I still had an internet connection in my VM after renewing the DHCP lease.

Thanks for Parallels, and let me know if there's an additional testing you'd like me to do.

Dave




--
xDaveX, can you please do one small test for us.
When your VM has just got an IP and its iternet connection is working at the moment go to the System Preferences in Mac OS X and renew DHCP lease for the AirPort. Will this break internet connection in your VM?
 
xDavex,

Thanks for help. Here's a list of things to check:

1. When VM internet connection is alive try renewing DHCP lease for XP.
Start->Run... Type 'cmd' and hit OK. Then in a shell window type 'ipconfig /renew'
What happens now?
2. When your VM has lost the connection try pinging the router and some other machine on the local network (not the host Mac).
3. The connection lost, issue 'arp -a' in XP. Does the router IP appear in the list?
4. The connection still lost, issue 'arp -d *' in XP. Any changes?
5. No connection yet, try renewing the guest lease 'ipconfig /renew'.
 
Serv,

I'm not really a very experienced XP user -- can you walk me through these tests a bit more? I think I can handle #1, but I'm not sure how to ping the router (2) or where to issue the commands in 3-5. I'm going out for a few hours, but I'm happy to run those test (or any others you think might be helpful) when I get home.

Dave

--

1. When VM internet connection is alive try renewing DHCP lease for XP.
Start->Run... Type 'cmd' and hit OK. Then in a shell window type 'ipconfig /renew'
What happens now?
2. When your VM has lost the connection try pinging the router and some other machine on the local network (not the host Mac).
3. The connection lost, issue 'arp -a' in XP. Does the router IP appear in the list?
4. The connection still lost, issue 'arp -d *' in XP. Any changes?
5. No connection yet, try renewing the guest lease 'ipconfig /renew'.
 
I know others are having the same issue. Like I've said in other threads, I and several people I know have had to NAT to the other connection to get this to work reliably.
 
This sounds like the exact same issue I've had in every release since beta 5. I've seen no change at all with this problem, so I've just given up on using wireless at all.
 
Dave,

For item #2 in the XP terminal window opened in #1 type:
ipconfig /all
this will dump the configuration for Parallels Virtual Adapter. Look for 'Default Gateway' -- it's your router. Now issue:
ping <router address without angle brackets>
Items #3, #4 and #5 are also issued in that terminal in your XP guest.
 
Just to confirm. I installed RC2 yesterday. It still will not maintain a bridged wireless connection at work. We are using a Belkin AP with Win2K DHCP server. The connection just randomly drops for 2-20minutes and then starts working again. This has been happening since beta 5. It does not happen at home with a Linksys WRT54G. It has happned at other client sites which I suspect were also using a separated Access Point / DHCP server combo. Perhaps that is the problem?
 
VTMac,

No, separeted DHCP/AP is not a problem in itself.
BTW, can you please try the tests I've suggested to Dave at work?
 
serv said:
xDavex,

Thanks for help. Here's a list of things to check:

1. When VM internet connection is alive try renewing DHCP lease for XP.
Start->Run... Type 'cmd' and hit OK. Then in a shell window type 'ipconfig /renew'
What happens now?
2. When your VM has lost the connection try pinging the router and some other machine on the local network (not the host Mac).
3. The connection lost, issue 'arp -a' in XP. Does the router IP appear in the list?
4. The connection still lost, issue 'arp -d *' in XP. Any changes?
5. No connection yet, try renewing the guest lease 'ipconfig /renew'.
Click to expand...

I've been using Parallels with a WinXP VM for the better part of the day, chatting with MSN.
I'm experiencing the problem with lost connectivity too.

I'm running Parallels Desktop RC2 on a MacBook Pro 17".
My access point is an Airport Express, latest firmware installed.
The Airport is also used as a DHCP server, lease 12 days.
I'm losing connection every ~10 minutes. At first I blamed MSN. But when I started downloading Slackware ISOs (to run in VMware inside Parallels), I saw that the network connection was lost.

I ran through your tests:

1. When VM internet connection is alive try renewing DHCP lease for XP.
Start->Run... Type 'cmd' and hit OK. Then in a shell window type 'ipconfig /renew'
What happens now?

While doing this, I ping my AP with the -t option.
I do an 'ipconfig /release', and lose connection.
(Doing 'ipconfig /renew' straight away only gives an error message...)

2. When your VM has lost the connection try pinging the router and some other machine on the local network (not the host Mac).

The ping is lost...
It's worth noting that Windows XP now complains about the missing network connection. This does _not_ happen when I lose connectivity every 10 minutes.

3. The connection lost, issue 'arp -a' in XP. Does the router IP appear in the list?

Yup, the router appears in the list.

4. The connection still lost, issue 'arp -d *' in XP. Any changes?

Well, since I haven't renewed the IP, all that happens is that I have no more entries in the arp table.

5. No connection yet, try renewing the guest lease 'ipconfig /renew'.
I get a new IP.
I can ping the router.
The router appears in the arp table again.


I'm not quite sure what you are trying to deduct from this test, but now you have my answers.
Hope you are able to fix this problem. Your product is otherwise excellent, but this bug is a big deal.
 
An additional piece of information:
The network connection is only temporarily lost. Usually for about 30 seconds.
I am not doing any other network activities in the host or the guest.
 
serv said:
1. When VM internet connection is alive try renewing DHCP lease for XP.
Start->Run... Type 'cmd' and hit OK. Then in a shell window type 'ipconfig /renew'
What happens now?
2. When your VM has lost the connection try pinging the router and some other machine on the local network (not the host Mac).
3. The connection lost, issue 'arp -a' in XP. Does the router IP appear in the list?
4. The connection still lost, issue 'arp -d *' in XP. Any changes?
5. No connection yet, try renewing the guest lease 'ipconfig /renew'.
Click to expand...


Here are my results:

1) ipconfig /renew fails with the message:
An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection : unable to con
tact your DHCP server. Request has timed out.
 
Ok .. very annoying .. it didn't save my full post. I'll try again. Arrg.

1) ipconfig /renew fails with the message:
An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection : unable to con
tact your DHCP server. Request has timed out.

2) I can ping the DHCP server and backup DHCP server. These are the only two machine IPs that can be pinged on the network.

3) Router IP is in the list. As is the DHCP server.

4) Immediately I can browse the web again. May be conincidence as the network is generally temporary lasting in variable times.

5) Same error as in 1. It seems ipconfig /renew never works. Not sure why. (I suspect its working eventually, but just not fast enough.)

I can run a instrumented build if that would be helpful. PM me.
 
See my post # 32, Oct 2006, for my experience with this problem and the apparent solution. It is a Mac system upgrade problem, IMHO, in that SOME (not all) Intel Core Duo processors have a problem with 10.4.7 and 10.4.8. I know for a fact that the problem disappeared when I downgraded to 10.4.5. Maybe 10.4.6 is good, too, but I had no experience of this problem before the last two Mac system upgrades.
mokelvey
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top