WiFi Issues With MacBook Air

Question

Level 1

14 points

WiFi Issues With MacBook Air

I am about two weeks in to my new Macbook Air and love it except for the wifi. I have had five or six other Mac laptops in the past five years including the original air. I can confirm that there are some wifi issues with the Macbook Air. Based on the messages posted here and my experience here is where I am. I think if it is a "N" network it seems to work fine. I have never had an issue with my Airport Extreme at my house or my Dad's Linksys at his house which is also an N. This also I think resolves the "is it an ISP" issue, since they are distinctly different ISP's and these both work perfectly.

My problems are on non-N's it seems. I travel a lot so I hit a lot of guest networks which are almost always "g". These networks I can generally find and attach to them but not get a consistent internet connection. With these networks I have found that turning the airport on/off and refreshing the IP address does not work. Again I can connect to the browser, in most cases get what appears to be a valid IP but not gain any internet access. I have found that a power down and reboot AFTER attaching to the network (but not getting the internet connection) will then give me a steady and consistent connection.

I need to do some more testing and I guess traveling to pin down some of these things but I wanted to share what I have found thus far, but I definitely think there is a problem with the wifi on the new MacBook Air's.

Thanks,

Macbook Pro and iMac 27" and iPad and iPhone and MacBook Air 2010, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Nov 28, 2010 6:10 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 23, 2011 3:19 PM in response to Kevinwal

Update for me: I also tried turning off bluetooth, which has indeed worked, though is a terrible workaround since I use bluetooth all the time.

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Answer 2

Nov 24, 2011 3:26 PM in response to grav

As the hundreds of posts on here discussing the same thing might suggest, the above is not a long-term solution.

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Answer 3

M L

Level 1

35 points

Dec 9, 2011 5:43 PM in response to mariofromnewtown

Any good estimates on the release of 10.7.3? I sure hope it is soon and it addresses this issue. What an absolute PITA.

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Answer 4

dan3ny

Level 1

8 points

Dec 16, 2011 11:24 AM in response to luisv714

Interesting that that fixes your problem. My WiFi works just fine at work with WPA2/Enterprise. It's at home with my insecure network that my MBA doesn't know how to connect the first few times.

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Answer 5

Dec 20, 2011 6:53 AM in response to mariofromnewtown

I've told you why, OSX has bad drivers and the sub systems is a linux based piece of crap, install windows and the machine will work everywhere.

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Answer 6

Dec 21, 2011 2:39 AM in response to gcrump

I want add my voice to the chorus of “me toos” and say that I’m having the same issue on a one week old 2011 13” Macbook Air. After reading this thread, I called Apple Care (Singapore, actually) to register an issue and they took me through a few basic suggestions for network setup, interference avoidance, pram nonsense, etc, but nothing helped, so I thought I’d have a go at diagnostics.

On my network I have:

- 2011 air (broadcom bcm43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.18))

- 2011 imac (atheros 9380: 4.0.58.4-P2P)

- 2010 mini (broadcom bcm43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.18))

- 2010 mbp (broadcom bcm43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.18))

All of these machines are running 10.7.2 and connect to the same wireless network, but only the air has the dropping issue. I know there is another thread about wifi dropping issues with any lion machine, but it strikes me that the two are related.

I also have a few different wireless routers:

- Fritzbox 7390

- 2010 time crapsule

- an old DLink 604g

I thought I’d try each one out to see what happens. The air dropped the connection while attached to each (this was nearby with good SNR at about −40dbm/-90dbm). I figuring it might be a config issue, so I tried a bunch of things to fix it:

- deleting and recreating network setup, via gui and then manually with plists

- combinations of 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz bands (with and without unique ssids)

- different channels (the fritz has a handy spectrum analyser for avoiding other networks and interference)

- disabling bt dun

- changing wpa2/wep keys

- purging keychain entries

- …

I’ve had the most luck with limiting my router to 802.11g on 2.4 GHz, which gives a pseudo-stable connection (that is, it hasn’t dropped yet). I still see ping timeouts, odd dns-like delays and horribly slow network access. I’m also getting a lot of entries in my router log during testing. This seems to occur just after I sleep the air by closing the lid, but does not occur when sleeping the other machines:

Deregistrering WLAN device (2,4 GHz): WLAN device not responding. Name: mac_air. (#0302)

Anyway, none of this is a long-term solution so time to nag Apple Care again. Btw, I’m also thinking the pos air might be more trouble than it’s worth. After all, it’s clearly malfunctioning and it’s bringing the rest of my network down with it. What do you guys reckon - should I try to return it or flick it off on ebay or something, or is it worth waiting for some miraculous fix?

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