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LaraJones Author

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

968 replies

iharris

Level 1

0 points

Mar 29, 2011 2:52 PM in response to B1mmer24

Apple Engineering has already confirmed that there is an issue with the Broadcom firmware on the new MBP's and are investigating towards a fix.

It's not your routers, it's a firmware bug in the airport card. Just sit tight and hold out for the fix to come out, they are working on it.

<edited by Host>

Mar 28, 2011 8:34 PM in response to LaraJones

I'm having airport problems with my brand new 2011 13'' MBP as well. I haven't called applecare. I am hoping there is a fix soon!

Birdie18

Level 1

0 points

Mar 28, 2011 8:35 PM in response to TomB01

TomB01, 1/5 networking speed is totally not acceptable for me BTW.

Thing is it's hitting exactly the same networking throughput (~10MBit) via speedtest.net comparing to when I put cable on. However, from my understanding ping time should be more stable (I was pinging my router locally) than what I got (1ms to 1xx ms)and I have no idea if that behavior will cause any further issues even my speedtest.net result seems OK?

The other thing I need to mention, when I first got MBP, I did experience drop-out issue and 2 things were changed since 1 week ago and **SO FAR** I haven't experienced drop-out any more.
- Upgraded from 10.6.6 to 10.6.7
- I changed wireless authentication from WEP to WPA2

Any idea?

Mar 29, 2011 7:45 AM in response to LaraJones

I'm experiencing the same poor wireless performance for the past day or two, I'm not really sure when it started. I'm seeing ping times range from 2ms up to 200ms at home with my Airport router and at work with a Juniper AP. I called Apple Support and they were pretty useless and said they didn't know of any issues.

LaraJones Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 29, 2011 2:39 PM in response to mwdavis77

This is what the guy at the Genius Bar said as well yesterday, when he found my Network Card defect......
He did not hear of any Network problems with the new Macbook Pros before from Apple Side...Neither he had seen any 2011 Macbook with Network trouble...

I have to say its hard to believe that... Either Apple does not read their own support forum or they have strict order to keep it quiet...
I wonder.... Because faults just happen....to any company..just look what happened to Intel this year ....nobody can help this and nobody get blaimed for this...but what would help is an official statement by Apple that there IS A PROBLEM and that they working on a solution!
I was looking through the German Mac and Apple Forums yesterday night and its frustrating as they are full with reports of the same fault we discussing here.
Dropping signals,total unstable Ping results up to no connection at all ( I think on weaker signal nets)
and people getting their Macbooks swapped by apple and having the same problems even with the new machines...
I am really eager to see how my machine works when the network card is exchanged.....

Message was edited by: LaraJones

Message was edited by: LaraJones

TomB01

Level 1

9 points

Mar 29, 2011 3:42 PM in response to Birdie18

Well, Birdie18, I likely would not have noticed my network card issue if it had not performed so poorly in comparison to the machine it was replacing. I have a 25Mbps network (FIOS) connection, and regularly get more than that with my 2009 Macbook Pro, but my 2011 (both the original one, and the one they shipped me to 'fix' the network issue) has never gotten above 5.5Mbps. I (gulp) have no security on my home network. Not sure what is going on, but am seeing quite a few reports of the inconsistent ping situation, and some that are experiencing network drops, and some that are having a combination of the above. Guess we all need to make sure Apple is aware of these issues, adn trust them to correct it... (he says optimistically)

Mar 29, 2011 7:20 PM in response to TomB01

Tom,

That is precisely how I noticed my issue. After noticing that a friends' 2009 Macbook was getting better speedtest results than myself, I started testing the latency by pinging the gateway of my router. Here is an example. Pinging from my iPhone to the same gateway, my results are a consistent 02 ms.

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=71.662 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=96.370 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=16.810 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=46.523 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=64.595 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=88.388 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=9.370 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=39.464 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=62.115 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=88.921 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=8.124 ms

Mar 29, 2011 8:58 PM in response to LaraJones

So should I just go to the Genius bar??

It's very annoying. Safari is constantly saying I'm not connected to the internet when I have full bars.

Birdie18

Level 1

0 points

Mar 29, 2011 9:30 PM in response to Annette Martinez

From threads people posted, you will find even a replaced machine will behavior the same since it's likely to be something to do with wireless firmware bug.

Mar 29, 2011 11:05 PM in response to Birdie18

in a german mac forum, there was at least one who had success with a replaced mbp.
if all of the mbp´s would have this issues this thread would be quite a bit longer.
anyway, these are enough cases and i´m sure apple is investigating this but it becomes more likely that this is a hardware issue and airportcards will probably have to get replaced for this books. my applecare representative is waiting for an answer of the engineers but it´s definitly handled as a case and they work on a solution. however a firmware update probably won´t make it.

fasty

Level 4

1,045 points

Mar 30, 2011 1:44 AM in response to clueblast

I'm having the same problem re: ping although my connection seems a bit more stable than most.

The problem does not happen on my Windows desktop with a Belkin USB, my Santa Rosa Macbook or my consoles. It also happens on other networks

I managed to get better performance by switching my Airport Express from channel 1 to 13, even though I had channel 1 to myself in the area and speeds are better, but 300ms to ping my router? From my desktop it's not even 1ms!

I'll call Apple on Saturday, it's not a total showstopper for me, but I'd rather my machine worked properly.

Macabyte

Level 1

12 points

Mar 30, 2011 2:16 AM in response to LaraJones

I also purchased a 2011 - 15" quad core i7 8GB ram. I had never been successful connecting to my wireless network more than 15ft away where as all other wireless devices were connecting very good unto 60-70ft away and through 2-3 brick walls. I use a Netgear DGND3300 Rangemax. I had even reformatted the hdd, copied the iMac airport settings, changed the channel settings on the router, factory reset thus router and still no success. Called apple as I had only had this MacBook for 3 days, everything else seemed to be o.k. with it.
Diagnosis.
Apple asked me to create a new wireless account and ping google from the network utility from the installation disk to bypass the system.
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

however ping with network utility from system the internet connection was pathetic at.
--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---

10 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 90.0% packet loss
Same room, same day, no other internet activity in the house.

Looks like they are saying it's a definite hardware issue. Apple has provided excellent service as the nearest Apple store is 3 hours away. It has been sent back to be replaced by a brand spakin new one.

Message was edited by: Macabyte

yozhbk

Level 1

8 points

Mar 30, 2011 4:17 AM in response to Macabyte

Wow we are all over the place, hardware no drivers no firmware then back to hardware.

Whats really interesting, is that everyone who had this issue and then got a replacement still have the issue, while some people are saying they never had this issue. I dont think there was 1 person with a replacement that actually was better then the original. I`m out of the return date, so I guess the only option for me if it is a hardware issue to get the card replaced.....

Birdie18

Level 1

0 points

Mar 30, 2011 5:38 AM in response to VaFroggy20

Guys, something interesting

when i ping my router, respond time seems unstable as we discusses.

PING 10.1.1.1 (10.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=43.574 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=67.499 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=96.106 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=7.454 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=30.520 ms

if i ping with parameter -s 1024, it sends larger packet (default is 64 bytes) for each ping to router, the result seems more reasonable to me.

PING 10.1.1.1 (10.1.1.1): 1024 data bytes
1032 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=5.496 ms
1032 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=8.334 ms
1032 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=7.455 ms
1032 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=7.441 ms
1032 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=9.556 ms
1032 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=7.595 ms

Hello, any Network experts?

csnoel

Level 1

6 points

Mar 30, 2011 6:06 AM in response to VaFroggy20

VaFroggy20,
So is this the best way to test the problem (ping)? I am on my second 15" Mac. I notice most of my problems when I am transferring large files (pictures and Video) over the network. That is when I notice it disconnects more. I was thinking of getting a different router?

Thanks

new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection