macbook pro dropping wireless connection

Question

Setup:
Macbook Pro
13-inch, Early 2011
Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2
Netgear WRT54G2; Hardware Model V1; firmware: 1.0.01 Cablevision internet

It's not the internet--Xbox works fine on the connection (albeit wired).

I've:

-Changed channel on router (it's at 11)
-tried to upgrade router firmware (doesn't work, downloaded and tried twice--the upload to the router times out after 10 minutes and nothing happens)
-reset router to default, and set up again

Console shows nothing remarkable outside of a consistent awacsd error around the time the wifi drops.

12/13/11 7:30:30.000 AM kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
12/13/11 7:32:24.030 AM awacsd: Starting awacsd connectivity-47 (Jul  7 2011 20:52:38)
12/13/11 7:32:24.045 AM awacsd: Connecting AWACS client: xx.p03.members.btmm.icloud.com.
12/13/11 7:32:25.208 AM Firewall: awacsd is listening from ::ffff:0.0.0.0:4488 proto=6  
...
12/13/11 7:35:53.963 AM applepushserviced: <APSCourier: 0x700000005530>: Stream error occurred for <APSTCPStream: 0x000000005530>: The operation couldn’t be completed. Connection reset by peer

The only way to get the connection back is to turn off wi-fi then turn it back on.

I've been searching for a solution for several weeks now, but I've run out of things to try.

Where could I start tracing this error? What else can I do to try and track it down or fix it?

Answer 1

Your main question is the following: Where could I start tracing this error? What else can I do to try and track it down or fix it?

Basically, your problem can be pinpointed to one of four sources:

1. Your operating system and software
2. Your Macbook hardware
3. Wireless interference
4. Your access point

You should first try to test your connection with another laptop. You could for example try with your smartphone or the smartphone of a friend.

If the problem persists, you know it is either due to wireless interference or your access point. Let us suppose the problem does not persist; the problem is due to either your macbook hardware or the operating system.

You should download an Ubuntu boot disk for your laptop model and try to use the WiFi network. If the problem persists in the same way, it is a software problem. Let us suppose it is.

Now, you have identified it is a software problem. You should now isolate on which level the problem is present.

1. Does your laptop still report the WiFi card as being connected? Do statistics on received packets still change? If not, you could reconfigure your AP with no encryption; maybe this problem is WPA-related?
2. If the statistics on received/transmitted packets still change, can you still ping the address of your access point? If so, this may be a router configuration problem.

Let us suppose the problem is your WiFi card / connection. MacOS is a UNIX-based system, so you should have some logs present in /var/log/ or dmesg, which you can access using a Terminal. See if there are any helpful errors present there.