Q: WiFi Issues With MacBook Air

@gpowers01 has the right of it. This problem has been ongoing fo MBA owners of 2011 hardware and running Lion since this combo appeared on the market.  All these clever solutions of swapping out routers, creating new profiles, changing channels on the network, etc. do not work long-term because the problem is obvioulsy an OS-level bug that has some relationship to the artchitecture of this machine - as well as others, based on reports, but particularly egregious on the MBA.

While well intended, these solutions will not resolve the MBA networking problem.  They are helpful in that they are documents of yet another user experiencing the issues, but insofar as suggesting them as fixes, they don't work.  It's helpful to read back through these threads to see that they have all been suggested multple times. 

#mbawififail on Twitter.

You are right ubiquity75 !!! It is really an OS level bug and I think the only solution is a fix through an OS update. I hope Apple is working on it and will soon release this fix. For me things are working by creating a new profile however as you mentioned its a temporary fix.

Count me in! :-(

I cannot connect to any public open wifi.

But I can say, after the last Lion Upgrade (10.7.2) I partially solved the "wake up connection problem"...I do have my wifi connection 9 times over 10.

And thanks to my Iphone4S I can hotspot wifi connection for the rest of the time....

hope THEY fix this stupid BUG!

Add me to the list. I have a month-old 2011 11-inch i7 MBA. Most of my problems have to do with inability to connect to most networks after waking up from sleep, when the following happens:

1. Wake up from sleep.

2. "None of your preferred networks are available" message, when in fact they are available. Asks me to choose from list of networks, including my preferred network.

3. Click on my preferred network which has full signal, and after a few seconds get "a connection timeout has occured".

4. Turn wifi off/back on again.

5. Wifi now DOES connect to preferred network after a great number of seconds. 

Turning wifi off/back on almost always fixes the issue temporarily, but once I put my computer to sleep I know I'm back to square one. Turning bluetooth off seems to help, though I use a wireless keyboard and mouse fairly often, so this is NOT an acceptable long-term fix for me. Help, Apple!

Macbook Air disconnects from wifi when it goes to sleep.  When I wake it up, it will not automatically connect.  Last week talked with Apple supervisor who copied data from my machine to forward to engineers.  They are aware of the problem and working to fix it.  Hope to have repairs in next upgrade.  Let's hope.

I used to love Apple products but I am not so in love anymore! I purchased my 2011 Mac book air for graduate school but I can't connect to the Internet at school! Everyday I sit beside someone with a PC connected to the wifi, but I can't get on. The diagnostic says i'm connected but whenever I try brining up a webpage I get an error message that says the connection has timed out. But at the same time I get this message on my computer, i'm connected to the school's wifi and able to get online with my iPhone 4. So it's definitely an issue with the MBA.

I've tried for 2 weeks now and the help desk at the college can't figure it out either. I am so frustrated right now. I spent $1200 on a computer that I can't even use 1/2 the time! (it does connect with no problems to my wifi at home). Why is it that all the PCs around me Here at the school are working just fine but my much more expensive MBA isn't? Wish I had known about the issue beforehand. I would have purchased an HP for 1/2 the price!

Apple advised me that there is NO work-around for now.  Will be fixed with next upgrade.  All you can do is use "Energy Saver" in preferences and set to extend the "go to sleep" time. 

For the testers. Here is a test case that fails every time for me.

1. Turn on Bluetooth
2. Turn on the Magic Mouse and connect it to the laptop.
3. Turn off the Magic Mouse using the switch at the bottom of the mouse

The wifi may still reconnect after sleep past step 2, but once I complete step 3 it fails every time.

I went to 2 different Apple stores in Chicago and had no problem reproducing the issue inside the store with a genius looking over my shoulder by using the “Apple Store” wifi signal.

Left my MBA at the genius bar for 2 weeks where they replaced the airport card and did all possible checks without being able to fix it. They opened a case with engineering and are waiting for their resolution.

BTW, this is a 2011 MBA preloaded with Lion.

A good workaround for people here might be to buy a cheap wireless N usb dongle that works with Lion.

(as a usb-ethernet adapter solutoin is not for wifi, of  course!)

I can recommend the Edimax EW-7811UN, which you can read about on the Newegg site and the user reviews there. Many report this works with Lion, and it does for me.

(theres a diff model too which I think works also).

Buy it, get the drivers  for 10.6, as these work on Lion. Install them, restart, disable builtin wifi,

and plug in the edimax to a usb port.

A cheap practical solution until Apple releases an update to Os X to fix this imho.

Just another here with a 2011 13" Mba with the no wake from sleep wifi. I have found that the problem does not occur on mine while plugged into power but only while on battery. So **** annoying on such acool little machine. It's to bad Apple does not read these things and hear our complaints.

Just tried the "turn blue tooth off" suggestion and it appears to work.  Close lid, re-open and it reconnects to WiFi.  I have no idea why this works though and obviously it shoulnd't have to have Bluetooth off to work.

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.

I can confirm that switching channel on the router helps. It doesn't make the problem go away, the MBA just doesn't disconnect as often.

I used iStumbler (http://www.istumbler.net/) to determine which channels were being used in my area, and then I selected an unused channel in the wireless router configuration. The MBA should be able to reconnect to the router automatically if all you change is the channel.

How you change the channel on your router is a whole other story ;-)

PS: As another poster said, Apple has answered his bugreport and confirmed that the problem exists, so I'd expect a solution from them in a forthcoming OS update.

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