Wireless connection unstable on Leopard

Question

Hi, I just got a new iMac as part of a free upgrade because my local store could not seem to fully repair my previous iMac and I am having issues staying connected to the internet while using Leopard.
Everything usually starts off fine but it seems that if I'm on my online game for 30-45mins the internet will suddenly disconnect. When I go to the list to view my available networks they are all missing for several seconds before reappearing and the computer automatically reconnects itself to my network only to disconnect another 10-15 min later and repeats the process. I've only had this computer for a few days and have managed to keep a stable connection of several hours only 2-3 times.
Before when having initial connection set up issues there seemed to be a problem with a driver that was easily fixed when uninstalled and the computer restarted. My only theory is that the computer may be over heating causing it to loose the ability to see my router but I don't know if there is a way to improve fan efficiency while using Leopard.
Please help me out.

Answer 1

Hello Tigerhawk,
While I am not an expert on Apple Wireless, I may be able to offer you some general advice and perhaps narrow down your problem description.
From what you wrote, I deduce as follows:
- On your old iMac, you also used wireless and never saw this issue. In other words, your current issue was introduced with the installation of your new iMac?
- You are still using the same Access Point?
- Your iMac is bootcamped and you first experienced the issue on the non OS-X system.
- Later, when using OS-X, you experienced the same issue.
Just a few more questions to get things into perspective:
- You are using 10.5.3 (I suppose). Given this is a recent update, you also saw the issue on 10.5.2?
- If there are other people in your household, do they suffer the same issue?
- Are you using 802.11n (Airport Extreme)?
- What brand is your Access Point?
- If all wireless items are Apple branded, are you using 802.11n only, or 802.11b/g?
- Are you using encryption? If so, what type? WEP? WPA/WPA2-Personal/Enterprise?
Lately I installed Airport Extreme on my own Mac and found the connection to be sluggish and would sometimes loose connection or experience signal deterioration. While installing the base station (Airport Extreme), I pretty much went the default way with the base station in Bridge mode.
I found that giving the base station a fixed IP address (instead of the default DHCP) and also manually configuring the DNS addresses made the wireless experience a lot better. Of course, this could be an isolated incident. Before I gave my Macbook (10.5.2 at that time) to my girlfriend, I also noticed irratic connection stability. But that was on a non Apple branded Access Point, so not a fair comparison. This Macbook is in her house, so I cannot test at the moment. As another comparison, the iMac in my GF's house (latest generation May 2008) is just screaming fast using an Airport Extreme base station. I did not observe dropping of connection. The Macbook still did drop connection, even when on the Apple Base station. Wired it is very fast and she's happy with that for the moment
You can try perhaps as follows for testing purposes:
- Remove all security from your wireless connection (open system).
- If that improves the situation, move to WEP.
- If that this works fine, move to WPA and observe.
- If all of the above do not change your experience, you may try the manual configuration I mentioned earlier.
Hope this helps in any way.
Best regards,
Eirram