WiFi turns unstable when using through my MacBook Pro.

I am having the exact same problems like mentioned hundreds of times before here. Brandnew MBP 14" M3 Max. Got a Gbit Lins at my home and getting nearly maxed out speed over WiFi. Its the same behavior mentioned here unlimted times. Searched google now for close to 3 days for a permanent solution. Nothing. A shame that apple isnt taking a look into this issue, because its is public since the M3 got released. The only solution is to turn off/on the wifi button in the menu bar and it is working again. I got a top wifi setup at my home with repeaters and stuff and connected the routers/repeaters with cable at important points. I can not believe apple gives a fk about this issue and people like us paying thousands of dollars and they are ignoring the issue like it wouldnt be there.

My WiFi can max 1000 Mbps Download and 50 Mbps upload. so i got a nearly perfect setup and close to max rates. I am on no DHCP and all my clients are set to a static IP. No overlapping, everything is configured very well, like all my apple devices are in .100 - .120 (Mac Studio, MBP, Apple tv, iPhones, iPads etc.) bla bla

@apple get this issue sort out immediately please

The Wi-Fi in Macintosh computers or iPhones is not inherently defective in any known way.

It is possible that a hardware failure in your particular computer could cause certain problems. These are generally inability to make ANY connections at all, but there are some more subtle issues that could be in your Wi-Fi hardware. These are not LIKELY.

IF you lived 'in the woods', far from your neighbors, your demands for perfect repeatability, stability, and no interruptions whatsoever might be justifiable. But you are still subject to interference.

if you have anyone else's Wi-Fi devices in range of your Router, then all bets are off. The frequencies used for Wi-FI data transmission are publicly available without a license, and unless you do the analysis, you have no way of knowing what horrors are being transmitted through the airwaves all around you.

I recommend the inexpensive Utility, WiFi Explorer. [also features a free trial] it has a "spectrum" graph that can show you quickly what is happening on the radio waves around you. Here is a graph of en extremely crowed and completely non-functional network

you need an essentially CLEAR channel to get your data through. None of these are working properly, and may be seeing gross symptoms like poor speed, frequent disconnections, or random delays.

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I often recommend readers post the Option-Wi-Fi snapshot obtained by holding the Option key while clicking the Wi-Fi icon on the menubar. This yields a display similar to this one. From the values provided, Readers can analyze how your Mac is actually performing compared to theoretical maximums, and can do a gross check for hardware failures.

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Hi

In terms of pings having issues ....sure. I'd agree with that, except that the problem *only* happens via WiFI. It does not happen with a wired connection. There is nothing else going on that is going to "congest" a 10Gb/s backbone. I can run wired pings against the same targets at the same time and they show the 0.2 us sort of response pretty much forever and ever.

Both the M3 Pro and the M1 Pro show this "WiFi only" behavior. Go to an M1 MacBook Air and the pings over WiFi run 4 to 15 ms. That seems fine to me. No > 100 ms spikes.

Just checked an M3 MacBook Air, it has the same spike issue.

(Sorry this is a bit jumbled in terms of who's responding to what .... we're all typing at the same time :) )

Bob

Tip 1: Disable and Enable Wi-Fi

Tip 2: Power Off and Power On Your Router

Tip 3: Disconnect All External Devices

Tip 4: Restart Your Mac

Tip 5: Disable Bluetooth

Tip 6: Re-add Wi-Fi Connection

Hi

Very similar issues here. I have a pair of MacBook Pro's. One is M1 based and the other is M3. They both show erratic ping times via WiFi. Pings range from 2 to 11 ms some of the time. Every few seconds there is a burst of 60 to 200 ms pings. Then it goes back to the 2 to 11 ms stuff.

Ping is against a variety of in-home targets. They all behave the same. The iPhone's can be doing the same thing at the same time. They see no problems. Backbone network gets pings in the 0.2 ms range for a Mac Mini to Mac Mini sort of test.

I have a number of access points from various vendors. They all behave the same. I have tried this on 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz. The issue is the same on all bands.

If I run speed testing against internal targets, the WiFi speeds are in the 1 to 2 Gb/s range. Backbone speeds are up around 9.7 Gb/s.

Switch the MacBooks over to a wired connection, pings are fast and stable.

Weird ....

Bob

I'm having this exact issue with a high spec M3 max. The computer will just randomly shut off the wifi connection during a FaceTime call even, showing in the taskbar at the top that wifi is turned off. On a wired connection via my Kensington SD 5700T Thunder bolt 4 dock (not a cheap dock by any stretch) the computer will also randomly lose the ethernet connection. The ethernet issue is way worse and I've had to resort to using wifi. I'm on Sonoma 14.5. My M1max never had any of these issues with the exact same dock and cables. And the M1max never randomly shut off its wifi connection like this m3 max does. It could be the Kensington software messing with things as it does have an app for turning on and off wifi when on a wired connection, but even when I turn that software off, why would the wifi connection just randomly shut itself off.

Hi

Well, I can move closer to the AP. It's almost 15 feet away at this point. When I do, I see no change in this pattern:

---------------------------------------------------

PING 192.168.40.1 (192.168.40.1): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=10.580 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=10.563 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5.240 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=10.340 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=10.485 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=6.407 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=7.247 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=255 time=111.393 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=255 time=47.820 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=255 time=104.846 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=255 time=5.954 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=255 time=5.858 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=255 time=9.977 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=255 time=11.068 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=255 time=11.525 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=255 time=11.183 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=255 time=11.236 ms

^C

--- 192.168.40.1 ping statistics ---

17 packets transmitted, 17 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 5.240/23.042/111.393/32.448 ms

----------------------------------------

I get that pattern on 6 GHz where this is the one and only device connected to the AP. I also get the pattern when I connect on 5 or 2.5 GHz. Depending on which AP I use, there are varying number of devices on the AP. All of the AP's are wired the main backbone is 10 Gb/s and tests out at over 9.7 Gb/s.

Pings are to a local target on the net. Ping response via a wired connection is pretty good:

------------------------------------------------

PING 192.168.40.1 (192.168.40.1): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=0.240 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=0.249 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=0.269 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=0.200 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=0.212 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=0.218 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=0.305 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=255 time=0.210 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=255 time=0.239 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=255 time=0.255 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=255 time=0.217 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=255 time=0.152 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=255 time=0.306 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=255 time=0.256 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=255 time=0.213 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=255 time=0.163 ms

^C

--- 192.168.40.1 ping statistics ---

16 packets transmitted, 16 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.152/0.232/0.306/0.041 ms

---------------------------------------------

Local target Speed test seems reasonable. I just got 1.7 Gb/s down and 1.3 Gb/s up. That part is fine with me. It's the ping nonsense that has me confused.

Bob

one difference between "all wired" speeds and "part Wi-Fi" speeds is that talking over Wifi requires waiting your turn. The Router needs to tell you (among all devices on that same channel) that it is your turn to talk now.

802.11ax reduces that requirement through clever beam forming, but does not eliminate it.

if you want to be able to transmit whenever you like, and have more predictable ping times, Don't use a shared medium like WiFi. That polling is built into the WiFi protocol, which supports as many as 50 local devices on a channel. Even if you are the ONLY device using that channel, you still have to 'wait your turn'. It's usually not long, but it's not ZERO, and it is not especially predictable. On average, it's very low.

Use Ethernet, which is generally point-to-point, then stored and forwarded. Unless your backbone is swamped, delays will be very small and fairly even.

Hi

Ok, on 6 GHz, WiFi Explorer shows *only* my access points. I can shut one of them down and the device I'm connecting to is the only thing on the entire band. There is nothing else.

On 5 GHz, one of my access points is also the *only* thing in that section of the band.

Rather than the whole option screen, here's the useful info:

Indeed, I can get 1.5 Gb/S on a speed test on this interface. The pings at 100 ms are a gotcha.

Bob

You have good raw signal at RSSI of -41 dB. You must be very near your access point. Your noise at -91 dB is a little higher than I expect.

You have attained transmit rate of 1921 total, 960.5 on each of two antennas on a 160 MHz channel on 6GHz channel 69. your hardware seems to be working fine.

That Transmit rate represents 256 patterns per signaling interval. There are two higher patterns that use 1024 patterns per signaling interval that you have NOT used, likely due to interference or not close enough to your access point.

?are you connecting your access points over ethernet?

and NOT 'over the air' competing with your other devices:

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<< They both show erratic ping times via WiFi. >>

Erratic pings can be an overall indicator of possible problems, but more often it is an indicator of bursty compute-time on your computer and busy-ness/available time all your other gear. I know of no problem that can be diagnosed by erratic ping times, nor any steps you can take to make ping times more smooth.

Hi

Been there / done that all multiple times. It has no impact on any of this on any of the (now three) computers with the "ping problem".

I've also power cycled the switches, the access points, the firewall and the Mac Mini's as well as the router. Since the router is in no way involved in my ping testing, it's not real clear why that would be part of this.

Bob

Hi

Yup, there always will be some scheduling nonsense with WiFi. That's why the 4 to 15 ms variation in ping that I see on the MacBook Air M1 or on my phone does not bother me.

It in no way explains *why* the M3 based devices (and the M1 Pro) see these spikes up into the 100's of ms on an otherwise empty channel. They are the only devices that show that behavior.

Bob

even on a channel all by yourself with no other devices, the protocol requires that you wait until the Access Point says its your turn. that will be 'bursty'.

With ethernet, you start transmit when YOU like, on your terms.