WiFi Issues With MacBook Air

Kevin, sorry to hear this was not a solution to your problem. I can say with a great deal of confidence that I had no problems with my wifi connection on this mid-2011 MBA Lion 10.7.0-10.7.1 until I installed the recent Thunderbolt display update for 10.7.1. Anyone heard of this causing others' issues?

hey-

I had a frustraing time when I updated to lion.

After spending 3 weeks looking I cam upon this fix which actually worked:

http://thoughts.maayank.com/2011/08/wireless-problems-with-macbook-air-and.html.

briller

Hey-

I tried every config possible with my Airport extreme and Macbook Air.

I even bought an E2500 - no luck.

Then I found this link- and getting desperate tried it and it worked.

http://thoughts.maayank.com/2011/08/wireless-problems-with-macbook-air-and.html

Was getting 200kbps download and 1Mbps. Once in a rare moment I would get 5 Mpbs,

Now everytime I get 5 Mbps (max for our cable company in the boonies) and 1 Mbps up.

Apple needs a Lion update for this issue.

Briller

(The suggestions in that post have not worked for me, btw. I tried them many weeks ago.)

So, today, at home and trying to use my MBA - see my previous posts on this thread for minute documentation of what I've experienced and attempted - and my network speeds were absolutely choked to the point of being unusable. Given that no one else was around and/or connected to the network, I decided to pursue one of my theories - that the combination of the MBA hardware + Lion + secured networks - were at the root of my problems.

I used Airport Utility to turn off the WPA2Personal wifi security on my Airport Express and waited for the reboot. I had experienced constant problems for hours today, despite restarts, turning Airport off and on multiple times, zapping PRAM, etc. It wasn't until I turned off the Wifi security that I was suddenly up and running at normal speeds. And here I am.

I am documenting this and all problems with MacBook Air wifi and networking issues on Twitter at #mbawififail and urge you to do the same.

Are you experiencing networking problems of the kind documented on this thread?

Are you on a secured network?

Have you tried turning the security off, and testing, if you are able to?

Please report back.

All my issues started when I upgraded to Lion.

You got it right - choked to the point of being unusable.

I am an engineer and tried everything systematically via setups, configs, bands, channels, passwords, DNS's etc with Airport Utility. It was a hige matrix. I spent weeks on it and many, many hours and was amazingly frustrated with Apple's lack of serious help. Had 2 session at the Genius bar. 'Interfernce' was the mantra.

After every change, I ran speedtest.net. Every once in a while I would get a 'clear path' but it would not last.

then I found Kelly's post and gave it a try. I couldn't believe it worked. So far so good. Password protection works fine. Very simple home network : Airport Extreme 5th gen and MBA-13/256/4GB, 1 MBP and iMac. It is as if I had not upgraded to lion - like when I first got the MBA in April. Fingers are crossed till/if Apple comes up with a real fix. MBPand iMac never had a problem.

Briller

Sorry- It was not Steve Kelley- his fix was different and I was not comfortable trying it.

http://younixgeek.blogspot.com/2011/08/issues-with-2011-macbook-air-dropping.htm l

Here is one I did and it worked:

http://thoughts.maayank.com/2011/08/wireless-problems-with-macbook-air-and.html.

It in effective downgrades the Broadcom wifi drivers.

Briller

Hi All,

Just wanted to add that I've done the kext swap mentioned earlier and this does NOT work for me. I had tried it when it was first posted in early august, and again earlier this week after 10.7.1 and both times i still had frequent drops.

Also, super horrible news! My house was broken into and my air was stolen yesterday... SO that's pretty fun. Waiting to hear from insurance and all that fun stuff.

Hope this issue is resolved by the time I get a replacement. 😉

Thanks,

matt

After wifi working for several weeks with no problems, it now does not work at all again -- call scheduled with Apple Care Monday. I have forwarded several of the "fixes" to my contact there for his input and will let all know if anything works. At last resort I will need to connect directly -- which defeats the entire portability purpose for buying this particular computer in the first place. Once again I get the "timeout" response when I try to connect.

OK Guys!

After having these same problems:

My WIFI connection at home was disconnected EVERY time I woke my MacBook Air Mid 2011 13" up from sleep. It simply wouldn't find my 5 GHZ wifi. So I thought, let me try to connect it to my 2.4GHZ WIFI (Telekom 921V 2-channel router) and it worked once, but then displayed the same behavior on the 2.4GHZ channel and kept not wanting to find my preferred home WLAN after sleep or even after turning WIFI off and then on.

Then I read a thread here that said something about the bluetooth/wifi connection, so I shut off my bluetooth on my MBA and wallah! It works, stays connected and finds the network after sleep. I've reproduced this now 4 times. Every time I turn bluetooth on, the macbook will simply not connect to my WIFI. When I turn bluetooth off, it connects in a couple of seconds and reconnects in a couple of seconds after waking up from sleep.

Try this and I hope it works for you (it's obviously not and end-all solution, but if you're not using any bluetooth devices at least you might have a solid wlan connection.)

Same thing here. With bluetooth off, wifi works like a charm. Connects immediately and doesn't loose packets. Currently I have both Magic Mouse and wireless keyboard connected, but the problem happens even if no bluetooth devices are connected, but bluetooth radio is on.

By the way, you can do a quick test: ping a server on your local network (one you know will answer to all ping requests) then try to turn bluetooth radio on. You'll see that some packets are lost as soon as you turn the radio on.

Celebrated too soon. Everyhting was working fine, but today (with bluetooth still turned off) after waking up from sleep, I'm not connecting to my 5 GHZ channel anymore. I keep getting a timeoutmessage and it keeps defaulting back to the 2,4GHZ channel.

Had my scheduled call with Apple Care -- they had me connect a new Airport Express and establish a new network for it solely on our new Macbook air. That was Monday. Today, Wednesday, it does not connect and does not recognize the new network, even after re-entering it. Airport Express glowing green and all other devices work. No magic fix -- no surprise.

Update on issue based on trip to Genius Bar. Long and rant-ish...

Finally took my computer in to the "Genius Bar" for this. What a terrible experience. He was looking at his watch the whole time and pouting about this taking more than 15 minutes. In short don't bother taking it in.

1. Their in house server based diagnostic system did not work.

2. Despite for most having the problem disappear at Apple, mine got worse, no WiFi whatsoever.

3. They tried to connect with a USB to ethernet adapter and that did not work either.

4. "We can't be repsonsible for all of your apps working". Like Parallels is causing the entire problem...

5. They can run a 24 hour diagnostic and wipe the system with a fresh OS. Beyond that they could (only if hardare problems identified) replace the WiFi card or main logic board.

6. They simply will not admit (probably as per strict advise from a corporate lawyer down through the ranks at Apple Stores) that there may just be a serious OS or software driver issue.

7. Do not EVER tell them you used kext to downgrade your WiFI drivers (as was reported perhaps working for some here in this thread). That basically threatens them with you knowing a thing or two, maybe even more than them. This annoying little cuss even had the audactiy to say "Macs don't have drivers that a Windows thing". Ugh. However, once you bring thus up they then disavow any responsbility for ANYTHING going on with the computer.

I've tried about every fix here on the forum. My wireless performance definitely comes and goes in many facets, ability to stay connected, automatic reconnection on wake and speed/performance of connection . However, its speed in my internal network using iTunes through my NAS (for both the media and iTunes database) is positively unusable due to slow network speed.

I'm anxiously awaiting 10.7.2 which should be out pretty soon. If that doesn't fix anything I might push Apple VERY hard for a swap to a regular Macbook (which since I am past 14 days they already said no way). These problems along with the ocassional refusal to wake from sleep and inability to connect to my Android phone over adb (likely a USB flaw in Lion...) are making this a pretty darn miserable computer to own. This is a huge contrast to the vast majoirty of Apple computers I have owned. I guess I (we) really should have known better. More or less a new hardware release (well new CPU only) along with a new OS at rev 0 is just asking for trouble.

Best of luck to all those suffering along with me.

This fixed my problem. It came from my CTO who's a Mac guru. He suggested using AppleJack to clean up the back end. After running it, my wifi problem at work went away, immediately. Zapping Pram didn't work. Booting in recovery mode and repairing permissions and disk also didn't work. But AppleJack did.

Install AppleJack (can be found on MacUpdate.com)

AppleJack runs in Single User Mode and is menu-based for ease of use.

Step 1. Hold down Command-S while you turn on your Mac. You should see a black screen with white text. Don’t panic.

Step 2. At the prompt type: "applejack" and hit return.

Step 3. Follow the menu-based instructions to run several types of disk and system repairs.

Tip: If you want AppleJack to run repairs automatically and then restart your Mac, type "applejack auto restart" instead. This is what we usually do.

After I restarted, it worked just fine. I don't know what it fixed to fix the problem, I just know that this method worked for me.

Good luck.