I am just posting this here in hopes that others find this via a Google search. Please post a comment if you are also experiencing this problem.
EDIT May 30, 2007:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportextremeupdate2007003.html
Apple finally recognized that they had a problem with their airport extreme drivers on the new Intel machines, but the catch was that its a problem with 3rd-party routers using WPA or WPA2 (the only secure wifi protection). This finally explains why I couldn’t properly connect my MBP to any wifi router that used WPA protection, but it connected fine if I manually connected the machines or used WEP protection.
I just bought the new 15″ Macbook Pro 2.16 w/Core 2 Duo around Halloween. I loved my old 12″ Powerbook, but I wanted a more powerful machine with more screen real estate. I am enjoying this machine for the most part, but one thing that is a complete dealbreaker is this laptop’s inability to maintain a wireless connection. I connect to my D-Link DI-524 rev.D router w/the newest 4.03 firmware successfully but after about 10mins of use the wireless just craps out. I don’t have any problems with my HP NC6000 laptop connecting to the same router. I have also experienced this on a Linksys WRT54g v5 (i know this version is the crappy version wo/Linux support). I have tried everything on the forums. I think there may just be something wrong with the Draft-N card they put in this thing.
UPDATE: I have managed to keep connected to the Linksys WRT54g by manually setting the IP address. Not sure why this does anything, but I did notice it took a long time to acquire an IP address automatically before.
UPDATE AGAIN: Apple seems to have heard the complaints on messageboards and the blogosphere and released an update to solve the problems on my Macbook Pro’s airport being worthless.
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportupdate2006002.html
Another UPDATE (2-19-2007):
Apparently Apple didn’t think update was neccessary because they have pulled the update from Software Update and from Apple.com link above. You can still download it at VersionTracker: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28282. Not sure why they pulled it, but it helped out with my problems.
People were talking about this at MacFixIt:
MacFixIt reader John Crook writes: “On my new Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (15â€) I found that my Airport connection was intermittently “lockingâ€. My laptop could not ‘see’ either the internet or my router – even though the menu bar showed full signal strength. A reboot was necessary to restore the network connection.
“(It appears) that Airport Update 2006-002 has fixed this problem. […] No problems since I applied the update. I was usually getting the problem at least once a day and most often after a wake from sleep. Due to the intermittent nature and inability to reproduce the problem it’s hard to be certain, but I’d say it’s looking very likely that the problem has been fixed.”