MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Wireless Issues

I had numerous problems with my spring 07 macbook (1.83 C2D) under 10.4.11 that I managed to make usable through all manner of contortions using an old Belkin 802.11b access point that worked fine with any windows pc, an iBook G3 and my powerbook.

After purchasing a new access point, an SMCWAPS-G, for an iPod Touch that was useless with the older access point (Belkin .11b) all was good, and with all computers ... Until ...

... buying a late 08 Macbook Pro through Amazon for $1500 with rebate. This isn't the uni-body, but it was one of the last batch of "last gen" macbooks, made during the last week of September 2008, according to Coconut ID card app.

Well, things started off fine. I noticed the signal strength was much lower than on my macbook, and I chalked that up to the alloy body. But it connected, and stayed connected, fine. Then the same old started. Slow connection, terrible page loads, etc. I've seen it all before, so the first thing I did was a quick ping test to my LAN gateway (router). It was all over the place. Under 2ms to over 200ms and up to 50% packet loss. Then, as before, it clears up and is solid again ... for awhile. Wash, rinse, repeat. keep in mind that no other notebook computer exhibits this behavior on this access point, so for the special commenter who insists on tossing strawmen and non-sequiturs into this discussion: Bugger. I can sleep a Dell and a Mac side by side on the same table, open and then run the ping tests one at a time and the MBP will sputter while the Dell will ping under 2ms non-stop.

I also run AP Grapher app to monitor TX rate, SNR, etc. The TX rate here is the one all over the map. I know it doesn't take much noise, or interference, to upset a radio signal, but the MBP is very aggressive at throttling back the TX rate with the slightest drop in SNR. It goes from 54 to 1 with only a hiccup in SNR. As soon as the throttling starts, the packet loss begins, and there goes your speedy connection -- I'm running 10Mbps DSL, and it's solid as a rock.

So, for those of you having slow surfing speeds, open up network utility or a terminal and ping your router and let it run, then control key + 'C' to quit (if using the terminal). High ping numbers (anything over 10ms) and/or dropped packets is what you're looking for.

I'm not going to waste time with this again. I have three-year applecare on this MBP, but I'm not going through all the bull with TS because I've done 4/5s of everything they'll have me do. Only reinstalling the OS is left. Oh, my access point is running the latest firmware (3/17/08).

So ... I ordered a third party USB WiFi adapter. I'll post back with how it works out.

Serenity now!
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Yes, please let us know how the third party WiFI adapter works.

So far the only semi-reliable solution I have found is when I disable all encryption/security (and that's not a very workable solution)... and even then it's noticable slower than other machines on the network.

Hi all from the "far Italian coast",

The problem is still here, but my wife was away with my children so i was able to do some test during the night... ( Just to resume my previous post in my home network my brand new macbook pro is the only thing that is slowwwwww in browsing, with the same configuration iphone, other macbook 13'' and a laptop PC are all really fast and with stronger signal )

Just to compare our result if some one other want to try :
( i had same test with a pc and other macbook running tiger )

- Use Istumbler 98 to get an idea of the real signal strenght ( my mac indicator is always full !! )
- Use alt-click on airport icon to look at strenght and compare to istumble ( they nearly match )
Clicking on the icon let u see in order : mac add. , channel, RSSI, and connection speed.
- Use network utility to ping ur wireless router mine si 192.168.0.1 ( continue to ping )

My result in brief :

- I've tried all channel from 1 to 12 and there was no difference
- The problem is not "flat" sometime u can browse and have good ping time
after a couple of minutes u have slowwww ping to router... and of course slow surf.

- Tried wep wpa and wpa2 i discovered one important thing: if ur using a "N" network use
WPA2 AES instead of WPA , WPA2 is the only thing certified for N network.
I was using a WPA and switching to WPA2 improved my ping time.
Of course the problem is not solved !!
I mean when the ping time is good now is improved but after a while i go slowww again.
That's way i think many people had some results switching to G !
And That's way it seems to solve the problem but after a while ur stuck again.

- I tried without any security = open network : again this improve in general ur speed but this
sentence refers to the period of "good ping time" after a while ur pinging over 150 200ms again !!!

- I've tried different distance from the router : i live in a small house with 3 floor router is at 0.
At 1st floor any other device is having from 75 to 90 % of wi-fi signal
Macbook pro is at "the best" 51% witha noise of 9-17%
Macbook pro connection speed is from 39 to 119 most of the time is 52. ( it changes !! )
At floor 0 a in front of the router : anything is 100% or 98%
Macbook pro have 82% to 88% and 7-8% noise... this is really crazy....i can't figure out to be closer
to the signal.
- i've tried the "ip6 switch" .. no repetable advantages by turning on and off.. sometime it seems to
solve the issue but ur just in a "good ping time period"

Just to clarify... during the test anything with wi-fi was off, dect phone was unplugged and off, microwave was disconnected, and i'm the only wi-fi in miles. ( no other network really i'm quite lucky on that )

I repeated the configuration side by side at each test :
I was not able to ping from the iphone but from the pc and the other macbook ping time was always 1.5, <1, in a continuous ping only 1 or 2 were over 20ms

On top of that like u see in my previous post i've tried with applecare all the normal fix.. even the re-installation.

Nor to say.... with Eth cables..is blinding fast.

I've only one more test to do ... try with other router ( mine is a Sitecom N ) i can do the test this night at my brother house with a d-link.

Anyway the 5 or 7 i will bring my macbook to repair... 1400 bucks and i'm not able to surf in front of the router ???

Regards,

I will post back my findings, for sure.

One thing to try, if you haven't already, is moving your router/access point.
Some problems this will not fix, of course, but sometimes it works for people.

Wireless radio antennas should not be too close to a wall. Give the unit at least a foot of breathing room (I think most say 6" but a foot or more is better). Also, as another poster mentioned, line of sight can help or solve these problems for some. So, try moving the radio (router or access point) away from _anything_ that may cause interference and intno line of sight with your Mac. The macbook pro has a weak signal anyway, and any degradation in signal causes the software to throttle back the TX rate, sometimes wildly, and this causes drops and packet loss galore, hence the slow browsing. As for folks having disconnect problems, I've never experienced that particular problem - only the intermittent packet loss problem that I never have on my MS windows Dell.

I have several macs, a 24" imac, a two year old 15" macbook pro, a mac g5 etc and I've never had a problem with the internet not working well. I bought one of the new 15" macbook pros yesterday (i wish they made 17 inchers) and the internet was extremely slow. My upload speeds were like 7megs, but my download speeds were like dial up. I tried everything I could on it and figured I'd have to return it. I read some people's advice on the wireless-n being the cause or the cure. So I tried to only do wireless n instead of mixed and it was even slower. So I tried wireless G only and it instantly sped up to like 6megs download speed like it should have been. I used it all last night and no problems and same thing this morning. So I'm hoping that fixed it for good. I have a linksys router. Hope this helps someone else out.

The culprit seems to be Airport Utility 5.3.2 version.
If you have Leopard 10.5.6 pre-installed, you may try to find Airport Utility 5.2.2 somewhere on the net and downgrade it.

AU Version 5.3.2 is for Tine Capsule + Airport Base /Router
AU Version 5.2.2 is for every other routers

Avoid Airport Utility 5.3.2 like “Leper” (nothing personal here)! I think this update is only for those with Time Capsule or Airport Express Router.
That explains why, when you bring your MBP to the Genius Bar at the Apple store, the connection works great because you connect to Apple’s Router while at home or other places this Airport Utility thing keep looking for Apple’s Airport station and demand that you spend some more hard earned cha-ching to buy Apple’s hardware (router). Doh.

If you use "mainstream" non-Apple routers (majority of the cases), this update probably is the culprit to all headache.

Somewhere along, I have updated this package AU 5.3.2 by mistake.
After tons of headaches, I found out the fix: get rid of that Airport Utility 5.3.2!

What I did today is, re-installed Leopard from the DVD install disk (Leopard 10.5.2) then updated straight to Combo 10.5.6 update package. Ba..bing! My connection is rock..a.. solid!
Hope this tip helps

I am afraid I have an objection to your Airport Utility 5.3.2 culprit theory. I am running this same version of Airport utility in a my old Macbook pro (Cor Duo, 2.16 GHz) and my new Macbook pro (late 2008, "unibody"), and the wireless connection problems appear only in the latter, while the former runs pretty smoothly.

Well, the wifi adapter turned out to be shyte. I tried it on my powerbook -- which has no problem with WiFi - running 10.4.11, and it wouldn't keep a connection worth **.
It's a Wi-Fire, made by hField. I don't expect to hear back from them till next week; however, based on my experience I can't recommend their adapter.

Now to the Macbook Pro. I tried another approach this time by doing the following all at once: I deleted my wireless network under networks; I deleted keychain entries for airport; I deleted .plist files (mentioned earlier in this thread) pertaining to Airport, and I reset my access point to default settings (even though I'd changed nothing), as well as placing the access point even closer to where I mostly use the MBP with a longer ethernet cable from the switch.

I've had good performance since doing this with only one hiccup, and that occurred after waking from sleep, and it self-corrected after a couple of minutes. I'm getting consistent 2ms ping times as long as my RSSI level stays under 70 (I'm in the 65 to 68 range). You can get the RSSI value by alt (option)-clicking the airport strength bar indicator. Doing this gives you more details. I was getting 80 to 85 (lower the better).

One thing I did notice with the USB adapter, when it DID connect, was that I could see other networks at low power that I don't see on my MBP. I remember one of them being visible on my macbook, but the MBP doesn't see any of them, I assume because of its weaker reception or inability to detect hidden SSIDs.

In summation, things are quite improved since the above steps, but to say I have little faith in my luck with wireless and this MBP is an understatement.

Good luck, and keep posting. I'll post back after a bit of use.
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I am sorry that it does nt work in your case. My MBP wifi has been rock solid for one week now, at home, at work, at the hotel during last Christmas trip.
May be a mismatch of driver and hardware?

We live n the same house, and, my brother's 2007 MBP wifi has no problem with any version of Leopard ever. While mine had problem sometimes somewhere with the upgradings. With clean install described, I am happy again.

G' Luck

I found the solution after many many many attemps.

It's not a MBP problem, it's your wireless router.

1- Set your BEACON between 20 and 50. D-LINK router for example use 100 has default value. It's too long.
2- Change your channel. D-link default is 6. Use whatever channel. I use 10.

Hope you enjoy!

As a follow-up, nothing I did fixed mine, so I demanded a hardware swap.

Dropped my drive in a new MBP, everything works 100% fine on all the APs that were previously failing.

Ok, where is this BEACON setting on a Apple Airport Extreme router?
And should it work for me also if I use any channel but not 6?

I don't think changing the BEACON is a fix for all. I've set mine to 20 and I thought it was a winner until about 15 minutes later then, whack, dropped connection again.

so far I have tried

1. PRAM reset - No winner
2. Changing wireless channels - No Winner
3. Changing from 11g/n to 11n only - No winner
4. Turning off IPv6 and sleeping computer - No winner
5. Moving airport to top of services - No winner
6. Deleting parallels network drivers - No winner
7. Deleting and re-adding network - No winner

and no

8. Setting BEACON to a lower setting (20 my case - although I seem to think my speeds are better) - No winner

In fact, I started this post at 21:22:44 and right now at 21:24:30 the wireless has dropped again.

Any other thoughts that I may have missed?

I just bought a discontinued macbook pro. Since then I cannot use internet at any place.
No internet at home any more. At school Connection drops, simple web pages are slow. Voip impossible. streaming fails.

I Never had any problem with my white dual core. Now I totally regret my upgrade to a macbook pro. I am disapointed.

This is NOT my school router settings to be changed. this is not my brand new DSL wifi that *****. this is not my neighborhood signal that suddenly got reduced.

What to do besides selling it back ?
How to fix the problem

Message was edited by: cacadoie

Hello all,

It's bee a little while since my last post, and while I haven't had any success eliminating the problem entirely, I <have> discovered something interesting that seems to mitigate the problem significantly. For the past week, I've been streaming music from the internet via iTunes while connected to the problematic access point. I can count the number of dropouts on one (or maybe two ;)) hands - in the span of a week. Prior to this, the longest I went without a dropout was a few hours, the average time between drops was on the order of 20-30 minutes (some only a few minutes between). Keep in mind this A.P. is not mine to administer, so the settings are the settings, I can't change them. This also means I don't know if the configuration (or even hardware) of the access point has changed recently, so this may be another incidence of coincidence, so take this with a grain of salt.

-Cheers