Q: WiFi Issues With MacBook Air

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.

Got my replacement MBA on Sat. AND still having wifi issues.  Same exact thing as before.  Was secretly hopeful a newer production run would have fixed this... but no.

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. 

ok - any possiblity of conflicts with thunderbolt display?

I'm having very similar issues -- only i notice the change when i plug in my thunderbolt 27".

wildly frustrating.

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.

Would you share some info about your MBA? What year? Which OS? Any other particulars that may be relevant for us to decide how similar your case is to ours? Thx

Sure.

Computer: Macbook Air 13" 2010 w/4gb Ram & 128 GB HD.

OS: 10.7.1

Problem Solved with AppleJack: Seemingly random inability to hold onto some, but not all, and not all the time, wifi signals. And also random inability to maintain Wifi N 5ghz connection, forcing it to drop down to the next lower level.

Hardware: Both at home and at work I was dealing with Airport Extremes: UFO, pre-dual band, and dual band. All with WPA encryption.

Hope this helps.

I have a MacBook Air 2 Gigs and had this wireless issue. It was looking like the wireless would slow down or disconnect and I had a time typing anying.

I removed the apple swap files that has a delay for the ectronic drives and everything changed for the better.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

Darrell

Like a new machine.

I have had the MBA 11" for a while now and had the same wifi issue.  I played around with the settings and ended up turning off bluetooth and viola, the wifi issues went away.  I have tested this ocer and over and everytime bluetooth is on, the wifi messes up.  I have not had the time to take this to the apple store.  Wondering if any of you guys/gals have tried this.

You are right!

I have the 13" MBA (2011), and I can confirm: If I turn bluetooth off, the wifi issue is solved.

But I think: This cannot be THE solution to turn bluetooth off, it's only an interim solution.

Applejack did nothing for my WiFi issues.

M L wrote:

 

Applejack did nothing for my WiFi issues.

I'm not surprised. I'm quite dubious at claims that it would do anything to help the issues documented on this thread.  This is what Applejack can do:

--

[1] repair disks
[2] repair permissions
[3] cleanup cache files
[4] validate preferences files
[5] remove swap files

--

These are things that anyone who has spent serious time troubleshooting this problem has already tried - likely multiple times.  This is not the solution to the problem that this thread actually documents.

Furthermore, while some users report having had success (usually using creative spellings of the word "voilà," I might add) turning off Bluetooth, this is almost never a solution that lasts for long.  Even if it were, users tend to want to use Bluetooth functionality.  It therefore is not a solution, either.

R.I.P., Steve. 

#mbawififail on Twitter.