new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection

I sent a link to this thread to engadget a couple days ago and asked if they would shed some light on the subject so apple would be more likely to look into it. I'm guessing this problem is more widespread than people realize. There are a number of us on this thread that have seen the same problem on replacement machines too. If more people knew what to look for then apple would probably address it.

I sent a story tip to Engadget about a week ago, so far they have not posted anything on their site.
At the end of the day they get paid via advertising, if they take too many jabs at Apple they may lose their income stream.
This issue is driving me nuts, I am unable to work on servers via RDP because of the lag.

Whenever I download a large file or play an online multiplayer game like CoD or WoW, the wireless suddenly drops and sort of stalls. Does this sound related to what everyone else is having?

Whenever I download a large file or play an online multiplayer game like CoD or WoW, the wireless suddenly drops and sort of stalls. Does this sound related to what everyone else is having?

Well i received the changeover MacBook today as I had been having wireless issues connecting to the internet. As mentioned earlier I have very limited connection when I was around 15ft away from my Netgear DGND3300 Rangemax router, which every other device in the house is able to connect with almost full bars 70ft away. The MB won't connect at all from this distance. After doing previous test with apple on the 1st MB It wasn't bad with connection pinging from the network utility on the install disk however it was crap fro the system network utility.
Apple said send it back as it was only 3 days old suspecting it to be a hardware issue. THIS IS NOT A HARDWARE ISSUE APPLE!. The 2nd MB does exactly the same bloody thing.
Ping has started…

PING www.l.google.com (74.125.237.18): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=35.775 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=132.794 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=43.549 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=68.700 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=92.669 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=6 ttl=56 time=64.697 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 7
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=8 ttl=56 time=106.504 ms

--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 7 packets received, 30.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 35.775/77.813/132.794/32.212 ms

Ping has started…

PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=90.438 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
Request timeout for icmp_seq 6
Request timeout for icmp_seq 7
Request timeout for icmp_seq 8

--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 90.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 90.438/90.438/90.438/0.000 ms

APPLE if you ever read my previous posts you will see that I praised you for you service and now i'm just ****** off - STOP BEHAVING LIKE THAT OTHER COMPANY - fix the darn thing I didn't give you $2,600.00 for a brick! Get your act together NOW!

Lara - I believe the defective chipset issue you refer to affected the SATA controller, nothing to do with the wireless cards or bus connections.

I know that you're frustrated along with the rest of us, but I do believe this is a software/firmware issue which Apple will fix eventually.

All you can do is report the issue to Apple and let them investigate.
Their investigations will be relayed to the engineering team who I'm sure are, by now, aware of the problems that a number of people are reporting - although (in my opinion) it's highly unlikely that an official report will be released to say there are problems.

The report I got back for mine was that there was no issue found and they were not able to reproduce it (even though I was able to do so myself in the store).

We can't speculate on how long it will remain an issue for everyone, so at the moment you have two choices, to either return it and get a refund or to live with it as best you can and hope for a software fix.

I've chosen the second option - and through the manipulation of wireless channels and moving the wireless router around, I have an 'acceptable' connection (at least for browsing/downloading etc.). Any files I want to move around I need to plug in to my Gigabit switch, but that's not a major pain for me.

Hi,

I have the same strange ping issues here on my 15" macbook pro early 2011.

My oppinion is that its either a energysaving issue under osx, or a driver issue, because the pings under bootcamp windows 7 are normal.

Here's the ping from my osx 10.6.7 to my router:

64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: imcp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.254ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: imcp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=23.113ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: imcp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=31.445ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: imcp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=30.945ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: imcp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=30.998ms

And here's the ping from my windows 7 bootcamp i've installed today to my router:

Antwort von 192.168.178.1: Bytes=64 Zeit1ms TTL=64
Antwort von 192.168.178.1: Bytes=64 Zeit2ms TTL=64
Antwort von 192.168.178.1: Bytes=64 Zeit1ms TTL=64
Antwort von 192.168.178.1: Bytes=64 Zeit1ms TTL=64
Antwort von 192.168.178.1: Bytes=64 Zeit2ms TTL=64

Has anyone installed Lion and tried this?

OS X Lion DP 2 behaviors exactly the same.

Windows 7 professional bootcamp ping result is normal.

Good news is this is not a hardware issue, all we have to do is to sit back and wait for Apple update its buggy driver or firmware whatever.

C:\Users\test>ping 10.1.1.1 -t

Pinging 10.1.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Wow.... This seems to be just the exact SAME problem as we ALL had with the new Macbook Pro's Snow-Leopard 10.6 in 2009/10. I went through all the same hoops that you folks are going through now, including taking it to the Apple Bar and getting a NEW AirPort card, Still didn't work. Then to search different Forums for answers, Still Didn't get a GOOD Answer *TILL one day ( Four month had already went by) I simply UN-PLUGGED* ( pulled the power cord out of wall socket, count to 10 re-plug back in) on my 2WIRE router from AT&T. Let it do a Hard re-boot after plugging it back in and guess what, I have FULL signal and have not dropped signal since. One and a half years have gone by now. Don't ask HOW or WHY it just happened that way for ME. PS. Make sure your Router is up todate on firmware. Mine was, that's from me calling AT&T and asking what was the Latest Firmware to date for MY router. I Hope this works for at least some of you. Good Luck. I know what it's like. End of story.

With all due respect Mike, I doubt the issue is router related for a lot of people.

For my particular issue...
Firstly, it's fully up to date in terms of firmware (checked at the weekend in fact).
Secondly, its power is cycled at least once a week (I've actually done it a few times since getting the new Macbook).
Thirdly, I have a 2008 Macbook sitting next to the new one getting a perfect signal with no dropouts. I also have a PS3, 2 iPhones & a TV all connected perfectly to the same network with no issues.

I'ma running iStumbler on both Macbooks and can see that the new one receives a much lower signal quality than the old one.
I've monitored the channels which are used in my area, as well as the signal to noise ratio to pick the best one.

So in my case at least, this is definitely not related to my router.

There may of course be some people who are suffering worse symptoms because of some setting(s) on their router, so a reboot may trigger their router to re-scan the free channels and pick another one.