Q: WiFi Issues With MacBook Air

created custom network profile, rebooted mac, rebooted router.

so far so good.

It's been a while since I updated , but thought I'd add something this evening with 10.7.3 available.

It appears 10.7.3 addresses the wifi on wake issues, but I was still having issues with the internet connection dropping randomly after a period of time, the same issues I wrote my script to help manage.

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

It's been clear for a while that a number of issues around wifi existed, so based on the 10.7.3 outcomes, I dug deeper and started to suspect issues around ipv6 handling in the OS particularly when DHCP is in use. For many Lion users, the option to completely disable ipv6 has been removed , so ipv6 could only be set to link-local not off. This meant that  IPv6 addressing was still generated for interfaces, which might be resulting in the DHCP issues I have been experiencing.

So, after some digging under the covers I discovered a way of setting IPV6 to 'off' for all of my network devices, but really wifi is the only one I care about. The reality is unless you explicity know you need ipv6 support, most client devices (eg our laptops) really don't need support for it at this time or for the forseeable future.

To disable, as the administrator in a terminal session, run the following command:

sudo networksetup -setv6off Wi-Fi

It would appear so far that this has resolved the last issue. Only time will tell, I'll know for sure when I go to work tomorrow as I always have issues there.

Good luck to all, and I hope 10.7.3 brings some relief to

10.7.3 hasn't fixed this issue for me. Still doesn't auto connect to wifi from sleep. However it does auto connect after a restart and I can manually select the network to start it now, rather than having to turn the wifi off and on.

No luck for me either with 10.7.3 on my mid-2011 MBA. Overall wifi seems to be faster and more responsive once it connects, but when bluetooth is on at home, it will not connect to a preferred network. This is when bluetooth is on and no bluetooth devices are connected to it. It asks me to choose one of the networks, and after a minute my home network shows up. I choose it, and I'm told a connection timeout has occured. Turn off wifi, turn it back on, it connects after a few seconds. If I turn off bluetooth, it connects instantly when it wakes from sleep.

When I'm at work, and bluetooth is on and connected to a magic mouse and Apple BT keyboard, it connects fine when waking from sleep, and I usually wake it from sleep with these BT devices.

Thanks for your post @lostintrns. I've been wondering why my 11" MBA connects every time at work but never at home. It might very well be the fact that I have a BT keyboard and mouse at work, but not at home. It's really a bizarre problem because I have Apple AirPort Extreme base stations at both locations.

At the same time, it's strange that having bluetooth devices would make the WiFi connection work better, when most people on this thread are saying it works worse with BT enabled.

Anyway, I'll test the theory over the next weekend and see if using a BT device at home helps.

Don't upgrade to OSX 10.7.3.

I got the MacBook Air with Lion last summer and the wifi was super slow and dropping its connection every few minutes. None of the tricks worked. After many discussions with Apple they advised me to buy a Timecapsule and use that as my wifi router. Since then I've had no more issues, on my home network at least.

Yesterday I upgraded to 10.7.3 and I'm back to square one. Connection drops constantly. Again, none of the here suggested tricks seem to help.

Now what?

10.7.3 didn't help me at all. Still interference problems with bluetooth.

Returned... back to my 17" which has flawless wifi.

I second that - did not help

While waiting for Apple to fix this (I am worried that this is not a Software issue but hardware, thus this can only be resolved with a recall) here is what I did. It is pretty technical so many will probably not like to use it.

1. I downloaded sleepwatcher_2.2 (SleepWatcher 2.2)

2. I downloaded blueutil (http://www.frederikseiffert.de/blueutil/)

Wrote a simple sleep script that SleepWatcher will kick in when the computer is going to sleep and did the same for waking up. Then I had a sleep.command and wake.command I have in my Login Items (Account settings):

sleep.sh:

if [ -e /tmp/bl-on ];then

        rm /tmp/bl-on

fi

BL_LAST_STATUS=`./blueutil status | awk '{print $2}'`

if [ $BL_LAST_STATUS = "on" ];then

        touch /tmp/bl-on

        ./blueutil off

fi

wake.sh:

if [ -e /tmp/bl-on ];then

        sleep 10 #give wifi a chance to pick up first

        ./blueutil on

        rm /tmp/bl-on

fi

sleep.command:

./sleepwatcher -s ./sleep.sh &

wake.command:

./sleepwatcher -w ./wake.sh &

I am having this same issue. Bought my Macbook air 3 weeks ago, any word on whether this is a software issue I should wait to see resolved, or should I take my MBA back to the store and fight for a refund?

I paid an extortionate amount of money for this laptop so that I would not have to deal with issues like this anymore! I just want to get on with my work!

@zipiewax Just return it. I'm sure it's a hardware issue if 10.7.3 didn't help. There's no promises of a recall or replacement. I just returned mine. I will be watching Apple and this thread and of it gets fixed, I'll reconsider purchasing. I have a Mac Mini 2011 and MacBook Pro 17" and they all have flawless wifi.

Hey All,

Well, my spouse's mid 2011 macbook air wifi issue is finally resolved!  The issue she was having was difficulty connecting to our time capsule at home and only connecting to very few and specific networks outside of home.  The networks she could always connect to was in Panera Bread and Starbucks.  At other places wifi would showed to be connected, but she could not get on the internet.

This is what resolved our issue.  I downloaded 10.7.3, and the above mentioned issues still persisted.  While I was at Toyota, I decided to once again try and create a new profile, renew DHCP, and then restart.  Voila!  That did it!  She now connects everywhere with no issues.  Both of our computers connect to wifi faster and internet speed is improved.  I'm thinking that maybe the Safari update also was part of the issue.

Anyways, this worked for our Macbook Air.  I hope that all you guys find resolution also as this issue was very perplexing and frustating for us, as it is for many of you who still have it.

Wish you all the best!

The solution to the problem of slow wifi and cut-out reception with my MacBook Air* that worked for me was to make sure my MacBook Air is not trying to connect to a Bluetooth device that is not available.

For example, I have a trackpad that I sometimes connect to my MB Air. I found that if I did not tell my Mac to disconnect from the trackpad and the Trackpad was turned off or not within range, the Mac would be constantly trying to find it and connect to it, which was disrupting the Wifi connection such that Skype calls would break up or just cut out.

Once I told Bluetooth to disconnect from the trackpad, all resumed as before, which is to say that my internet speed went back to 24/24 (Download/Upload with Verizon FiOS). When the Bluetooth was trying to connect to my out of range trackpad, the internet speed was 20/12. (I used speedtest.net to measure Download/Upload speed.)

*MacBook Air Late 2011 running Mac OS X 10.7.2

caf - Good summary, this does seem to be exactly the issue. When my BT actually does connect to my wireless keyboard and magic mouse, I'm home free. But as soon as I get home, I'm done for until I actually turn BT off.

Is there a consensus as to whether connecting to wifi on a 5ghz band helps? It seems like it would, since BT operates on 2.4ghz if I'm not mistaken. Neither my router at work nor my router at home operate on 5ghz so I'm not sure. However, once I installed a Time Capsule at my parents house (which does operate at 5ghz I've had smooth sailing. But I'm not sure if it's the 5ghz, or because Time Capsule just communicates with my mid-2011 MBA better.

I can attest that having a timecapsule on the 5ghz was not the solution for us as I have had that all along.  In addition, as I like to buy all my products at the same time so that they were built with the same technology, I also bought the latest Time capsule with the broadcom chip.  Despite this, I was still having problems.  The only thing that worked for me is what I wrote above.  It definitely is a complex issue.