My wifi keeps disconnecting on my MacBook pro (early 2015). I was fine until 4 or 5 days ago. My iPhone, iPad and desktop connect just fine. I can also connect my MacBook to wifi anywhere else, just not my home network. The wifi card is Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.77.111.1 AirPortDriverBrcmNIC-1710.4). Is there any solution?
iMac 27″, macOS 10.13
The diagnostics suggested by the Community Specialist will provide some good information.
Also, it seems you have ruled out MacBook Pro hardware problems since you can connect to other places.
WiFi can depend on location of your computer, position of routers, and WiFI channel. No doubt your desktop is in one fixed location. What about the phone and iPad, do they move around much or mostly in one spot? What about the MacBook Pro, do you use it in different locations within the home or mostly one location? Have you tested the situation where you place the laptop next to the desktop and the laptop WiFi fails while the desktop works fine?
Assuming this occurs throughout the home with your laptop ... are the other devices much newer than the 2015 laptop? Newer devices often have better WiFi resiliency in the face of interference, channel congestion, etc.
There is a program you can download and try it out for several days free called WiFi Explorer. It shows all the nearby networks and channels being used. You can use this to see if other networks are overlapping on your network's channels.
In any case, it might make sense to at least reboot the router, to force it to look for uncontested channels.
You indicate it was fine until several days ago. Sometimes the environment changes as other networks are added from nearby homes, so if they are on the same channels as you, that can cause a worsening that might cross the threshold with an older device.
Your 2015 laptop has WiFi 802.11ac but newer devices have 802.11ax. The 802.11ax devices have much better resiliency to interference from other networks' on the same or close by channels; 802.11ac does much worse with this. If other networks near your home have been added recently, this could cause worse performance and WiFi drops.
You can also experiment with the configuration on your laptop and your home network. For instance, you can configure your router to have separate networks for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and force the laptop to use 2.4 GHz, which will be slower but more resilient.
The diagnostics suggested by the Community Specialist will provide some good information.
Also, it seems you have ruled out MacBook Pro hardware problems since you can connect to other places.
WiFi can depend on location of your computer, position of routers, and WiFI channel. No doubt your desktop is in one fixed location. What about the phone and iPad, do they move around much or mostly in one spot? What about the MacBook Pro, do you use it in different locations within the home or mostly one location? Have you tested the situation where you place the laptop next to the desktop and the laptop WiFi fails while the desktop works fine?
Assuming this occurs throughout the home with your laptop ... are the other devices much newer than the 2015 laptop? Newer devices often have better WiFi resiliency in the face of interference, channel congestion, etc.
There is a program you can download and try it out for several days free called WiFi Explorer. It shows all the nearby networks and channels being used. You can use this to see if other networks are overlapping on your network's channels.
In any case, it might make sense to at least reboot the router, to force it to look for uncontested channels.
You indicate it was fine until several days ago. Sometimes the environment changes as other networks are added from nearby homes, so if they are on the same channels as you, that can cause a worsening that might cross the threshold with an older device.
Your 2015 laptop has WiFi 802.11ac but newer devices have 802.11ax. The 802.11ax devices have much better resiliency to interference from other networks' on the same or close by channels; 802.11ac does much worse with this. If other networks near your home have been added recently, this could cause worse performance and WiFi drops.
You can also experiment with the configuration on your laptop and your home network. For instance, you can configure your router to have separate networks for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and force the laptop to use 2.4 GHz, which will be slower but more resilient.
quoting op/user "My wifi keeps disconnecting on my MacBook pro (early 2015). I was fine until 4 or 5 days ago. My iPhone, iPad and desktop connect just fine. I can also connect my MacBook to wifi anywhere else, just not my home network. The wifi card is Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.77.111.1 AirPortDriverBrcmNIC-1710.4). Is there any solution?"
without seeing any diagnostics info, & without being in front of your computer, ...
.. based on what you told us ...
m1: ... i would 1st suspect the home wifi-router & ISP's internet connection.
( some router from ISP has the MODEM built into it . some router are just router, as the need a separate modem device connected into wall/ISP port ).
m2: if internet connection is unstable such can happen,
"cable" type internet connection can disconnect/reconnect on weather effect such as heavy rain, etc.
m3: it could be ... your home modem/router (one or both device) is over-heating, and restarting ... place in a good cooler place, or give (both) a small-fan based air.
m4: different wifi-router creates different speed & band (2.4GHz , 5GHz , 5.8 GHz, etc) based networks,
m5: and can have different type of easy/complex networks ... based on user config, etc,
m6: ... not only based on protocol implementation difference , some router have quality issues.
m7: so, different network-router & router-settings ... can create different type of network data inside the macOS ... you can check network data inside the macOS after connecting into each different network , you will see so many network data have changed .. and over usage time ... more different types of data coming in .. even though those devices have not connected into your computer,
.. these affects macOS / macbook ... macOS spends time & resource maintaining these various data & connections.
so in different wifi location, you will see computer have different network behaviors, etc, etc.
m8: change your router's wifi BAND.
m9: use free wifi-analyzer scanner app in android-phone to see all wifi bandwidth usage info
m10: ... adjust your wifi-router's wifi-bands based on that, to use relatively free or relatively less-used wifi-band, etc.
m11: macOS kernel, etc if overloaded, can also behave strangely ...
m12: it could be ... macbook-pro's macOS kernel is overloaded to the point that it stop handling wifi-card for some time . so wifi-card disconnects from wifi router as handshake packets have stopped ... when macOS kernel again gives wifi-card its turn to use various computer resources , then wifi starts to work again.
m13: when the problem occurs in your home, if your computer does not heat-up, or "Activity-Monitor" app showing everything is fine, then you can eliminate this paragraph's cause, and let us know what happens in you Activity Monitor when you connect into your home wifi network.
m14: it could be ... you have USB devices that is using heavy & dedicated & prioritized USB channel+bandwidth mode, such as USB video-cards, USB SSD storage, etc , then wifi may sometime disconnect/reconnect , in some macbook.
m15: wifi-card (usually also has builtin Blootooth) usually often connected into such interface that converts it & connect it into earlier USB version based internal bus/data-lane, internally inside the macbook , atleast in earlier macbooks.
m16: more powerful & higher bandwidth wifi-card in newer macbook may/can connect with better interface such as mPCIe or PCIe, etc.
m17: provide home router model info to us kindly if possible. (do not provide any serial-number).
m18: provide more info , more info on changes that you notice when you connect into home-wifi & before that in your macbook computer,
and exactly when wifi stops working, then happens inside "Activity Monitor".
m19: did 4 or 5 days ago you upgraded macbook to newer macOS version ? or did you do any other update ? did you add new wifi network or ethernet line based devices ?
( few days earlier, apple sent macOS update notice to many ... in different area, new macOS is rollout on slightly different days, etc ).
m20: to me looks like , macOS related issue .. if its not wifi-router issue.
as its happening only in your macbook, & only in your home-wifi.
you dont have to response to this message , just providing some general questions & suggestions.
EDIT: changed numbering.
Hi Lyta1138, We appreciate you reaching out to us. We understand that you are experiencing Wi-Fi connectivity issues.
Let's try some steps that may help further isolate the issue.
First, let’s check if the issue persists when signed in on a different user account.
The article below can help if you do not have any other user account to test with.
Change Users & Groups settings on Mac
If you are experiencing the issue when signed in on a different user account, please check if the issue persists while on safe mode.
Performing this step may help resolve the issue, or further isolate the issue.
Below is an article to help guide you through the process.
How to use safe mode on your Mac
Take care!
CORRECTION:
m8: change your router's wifi BAND channel(s), channel-pairs, channel-triplets. etc.
Random WiFi disconnection from home wifi
