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User profile for user: LaraJones
LaraJones Author
User level: Level 1
0 points

new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection

Just looked throught this part of the forum and found out there are a lot of people out there which seem to have the same problem as me.

I purchased a new modell 2011 MBP on the very first day from our apple store.
At home, sitting directly beside the wireless router I didn´t noticed anything wrong.
I have got beside of the Mac OS a bootcamp Prt. with Windows 7 on it and everythign works fine so far.

Five days after purchased I started traveling on business and at present we are for some weeks in Melbourne. Were having a wireless connection in our appartement and here I have got massiv problems with my connection.

We are having altogether four windows mashines with us, my IPad, my Iphone, another HTC smartphone, and my new Macbook.

All the other devices connecting to our room wireless without problems. The net strengh is not fantastic but the other devices bringing it up to four bars on the windows wireless symbol in the task bar. None of the other computers where ever loosing the connection.

Only my macbook can not make it over three bars and its going on and off. Donwloads fail freuquently because the conection is interrupted more than one times..
In my opinion this problem is even worse on the Windows OS and a bit better but far away from beeing good and acpetable on the Mac Os.
I hope its only a driver issue and there is no hardware problem with the new mashine. Other than this I love the new notebook and I am very satisfied with its performance.

Iphone 4, Ipad 1 ,Macbook pro 13, I 5, 8GB, early 2011, Windows 7, Mac OS

Posted on Mar 8, 2011 9:00 PM

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968 replies
User profile for user: Birdie18
Birdie18
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 3, 2011 4:59 PM in response to ariliquin

With no doubt, That's a defect with my WIFI/Airport experience with 2011 MBP to me. I was wondering what can I do except posting here or even raising this issue to genius bar ? I meant from what I realized everything I can do now is "WAIT", what if Apple won't release a fix in ONE-YEAR(warranty period)? does that mean I have to live with this defect from whenever warranty expired without even complain it to Apple? what can we do now?! This issue is really bothering!
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User profile for user: GJBenn85
GJBenn85
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 3, 2011 8:02 PM in response to Birdie18

Add me to the list of people experiencing this problem. However, two noteworthy observations based on extensive troubleshooting:

-The same problem arises when disabling the AirPort card and using a USB adapter with its own software/driver, although it is not nearly as severe. Where the AirPort will lose its internet connection (but NOT network connection) every 5-15 minutes, the USB may lose its internet connection every 30-45 minutes.

-It is not router dependent, and other computers connect and maintain internet connectivity with all tested routers without any issue.

-The AirPort card works, CONSISTENTLY, all day long if I boot into Windows 7 via Bootcamp

These points make me believe the problem is OS X. If I keep my MBP long enough, it will be interesting to see if an upgrade to the new version eliminates this problem.

Message was edited by: GJBenn85

Message was edited by: GJBenn85
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User profile for user: dusktildawn
dusktildawn
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 3, 2011 9:10 PM in response to LaraJones

I bought a brand new Linksys E3000 as I thought it was an issue with my aging Netgear router...it turns out to be an Apple issue all along...what waste of time and money that turned out to be.

This is my second MacBook Pro (I had the mid 2010 model for two weeks before upgrading to the 2011 model) and I've been very happy with everything else until this same issue plagues my 1 month old MacBook.
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User profile for user: Ben Yu
Ben Yu
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 3, 2011 11:17 PM in response to iharris

I have the same problem, just bought a new MBP 15" delivered last week. My connection keeps showing "connection timeout", where all my other devices, older MBP 17", ipad, iphone all stay connected. I am using the AirportExtreme for many years already, never had any of this timeout issue. Went to a friend place and also got the same connection timeout after a while. i hope this can be solved soonest, as i find it very inconvenient and also reflect the quality of this product.
Hope this feedback can support your discussion with their engineers.
Thanks.
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User profile for user: Macabyte
Macabyte
User level: Level 1
12 points

Apr 4, 2011 2:10 AM in response to iharris

I hope it is, although I guess most of us will have at worst 12mths warranty. My new MB went back last week. 15" i7 2.2ghz. After trying numerous wireless workouts as mine was fine with a strong connection 5ft away, however the further I moved away the worse it was. Unable to connect at all 15 - 20 ft away. On the system network utilities it showed 90% packet loss after pinging google. Apple then asked me to boot from the instal disk, network utility from the disk menu and I was able to connect with zero packet loss. Connection was excellent. Apple then said that this is a hardware issue and being that the MB was 3 days old they would replace it or cash back! Don't want the bloody cash as this it the best rated laptop for my work.

Getting the new one in a couple of days time so I will definitely post how the new MB responds. I must say that Apple has done everything possible as far as customer service letting me know every detail of the new MB progress. I did look at ASUS but the MB is so good. I know many of us forked out nearly 3k! Frustrated, 'yes' But hold on will be a fix soon enough, Apple don't stuff around. 😉
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User profile for user: TheSpinDoctor
TheSpinDoctor
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 4, 2011 11:26 AM in response to LaraJones

I also have issues with my Airport card; I bought the latest generation AirPort Extreme and MacBook Pro, and I am having issues with latency and (occasionally) throughput. Latency is consistently above 100ms (as opposed to a Windows laptop with sub 25ms sitting next to me); both connected to the Airport Extreme.

Throughput on the Mac also varies wildly, with random connection issues and drop outs. A 60GB file takes approximately 3 hours to copy over Wi-Fi on the Mac with speeds dropping to 0 on several occasions, a peak of 11.2mb/s; but an average of 3mb/s.

The Windows laptop takes about 2 hours to do the same transfer of Wi-Fi, constant speed throughout.
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User profile for user: Craig Gee
Craig Gee
User level: Level 1
15 points

Apr 4, 2011 11:30 AM in response to LaraJones

I have a 2010 MBP that recently experienced some of the problems that I am reading about in this thread. The wireless connection would drop even though the airport icon in the menu bar would show full strength. By trial and error I found it easiest to keep the system prefs open to network and turn airport off and then on to reset and connect. I contacted AT&T and after 40 minutes on the phone, the tech told me to keep changing the wireless channel number until the problem cleared up.

Long story short, that didn't work. But, while reading the threads, I happened across something that I thought I'd try. My wireless authentication security was set to WPA2-PSK. I changed it to WPA-PSK and it has been working without a problem.

The second plus side to this has been my iPhone which seemed to have all the same wireless problems and now no longer drops the connection.

I don't know why this worked or if it will work for everyone. But this one change has worked and taken a lot of stress off of me.
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User profile for user: transpose
transpose
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 4, 2011 1:47 PM in response to Chino81

I couldn't find a method to downgrade the firmware, but I tried to use the IO80211Family.kext from my old macbook pro and while it didn't complain on loading, the Airport didn't initialize at all. The kext from my old macbook pro is version 314.? while the one on my new macbook pro is 320.1, which I thought was weird because both are running 10.6.7.

Message was edited by: transpose
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User profile for user: Alessandro Sabellico
Alessandro Sabellico
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 4, 2011 2:10 PM in response to transpose

ale-mac:~ ale$ ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=254 time=3.770 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=254 time=1.188 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=254 time=1.313 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=254 time=0.936 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=254 time=49.077 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=254 time=1.081 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=254 time=97.193 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=254 time=18.173 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=254 time=42.138 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=254 time=65.740 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=254 time=90.308 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=254 time=4.127 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
12 packets transmitted, 12 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.936/31.254/97.193/35.063 ms
ale-mac:~ ale$
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new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection

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