I keep having to turn my wireless connection off and on

Question

This has been happening for the past month or two, and only on my home wireless network. There's no set length of time, sometimes it's if I'm downloading a lot at once, sometimes I open a single website, and my wireless connection freezes up on my MacBook Pro. It's "solved" by turning my wireless connection off on my MBP, then turning it back on. No other devices at my home connected to my Linksys router have this problem; iPad, iPhone 3GS, Xbox 360.
I've tried removing the network from my computer, and reconnecting it. I've reset the router a number of times, too, and no luck. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

There are several threads on WiFi issues. It appears there are a multitude of things that can cause wifi problems. I have been following several threads on this site on the issue. I personally have not had this problem but I became fascinated by this topic.
The other poster suggested you check out the channel broadcast of your router and others your computer can see. Someone could have changed their channel to sit at the same frequency as your router, but this would not appear as a change to you. There is software available to scan your environment. AirRadar is one I have used.
Another thing to try:
Remove plists to reset the wireless system
Go to Macintosh HD -> Library -> Preferences -> SystemConfiguration ->
Delete the following Plists:
com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
com.apple.nat.plist
come.apple.network.identification.plist
com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
Networkinterfaces.plist
This has worked for some.
In some instances people have resorted to pinging their own router to keep the "alive".
This workaround that works for some:
As soon as you connect to your wireless network, Open Terminal and start a ping going. They use their router IP address; but any local address will do: for example with an Airport basestation at IP addres 10.10.10.1
ping 10.10.10.1 <return>
You'll see a string that looks like:
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=728 ttl=64 time=1.527 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=729 ttl=64 time=1.513 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=730 ttl=64 time=1.203 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=731 ttl=64 time=1.684 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=732 ttl=64 time=1.063 ms
you basically keep this running in Terminal all the time.
From personal experience I have had routers die. So I have two Linksys and one Dlink carcass in my office. Now onto an Airport Base station. Some posters have found success with software upgrades to the routers.
External WiFi adapters that plug into the USB ports to get around any issues with the built in Airport card or router signal strength. My daughter at college got one called the Bear Extender, greatly increased signal strength for her.
Many vehement discussions why this suddenly changes. No conclusions.