Q: new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection

I am running OS 10.6.8 with all the latest OS updates installed. With you running on Lion, there's some obvious and understandable differences between my system profile and yours. Both your machine and mine have the same Broadcom WiFi chipset. From my system profiler output:

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.42.4)

However, one difference that stands out is the firmware version number (I'm guessing that's what it is). I am a bunch of releases behind you - but then again, some of that might be explained by interface tweaks that occured when Apple developed Lion.

Presumably this is something the OS dynamically loads into (or for?) the chip's code (on startup?) after sensing the card and locating the appropriate firmware to load, or flashes into the chip - whatever.

Anyway, clearly a much later version of the firmware in your profile. That many changes to firmware for a card that has been around this long? I'd say they are still doing a lot of tweaking, for sure. Maybe your version gets everything right. Mine sure doesn't seem to.

mfwells wrote:

 

I am running OS 10.6.8 with all the latest OS updates installed. With you running on Lion, there's some obvious and understandable differences between my system profile and yours.

 

 

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.42.4)

 

mfwells,

I'm pretty sure now, that you will not accept or will not understand, that the used OS is NOT the problem in your wireless disaster.

From my own system (10.6.8) profiler:  Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.100.198.104.5)

Lion or Snow Leopard is NOT the question in YOUR case.

Look around for all the people blaming Lion for there wireless problems and state always that they "never have such with Snow Leopard"

Step away from the operating system attempt, clear your mind.

And then check your infrastructure as your posted logs clearly tell you that the SNR values of your wireless are F.U.B.A.R.

First: transmitter location

Second: MBPros antenna

Third: Interferences

I'm away from your case now, 'till you have cleared your mind and are willing to perform a step by step troubleshoot instead of trying your blockheaded "SL is the evil" poking into the fog like a blind in the woods trying to identify a specific tree.

Lupunus

"However, one difference that stands out is the firmware version number (I'm guessing that's what it is). I am a bunch of releases behind you - but then again, some of that might be explained by interface tweaks that occured when Apple developed Lion."

Or it could simply mean that your firmware is way out of date and you need to fix that situation, which might actually fix your wifi problems.

Thanks for all the advice on the infrastructure. I've looked at it.

1.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with the infrastructure, antenna placement, etc....etc.....of the WAP and the laptop.

2.   There is also nothing wrong with the interference(s)...only possible sources are 802.11g and n networks located 50-100 + ft. away, on different channel(s), etc....etc... and very low signal levels.

3.     Why does Dell laptop, same physical locations, same WAP signal, same interference, sitting next to MBP SAME SAME work screaming good? Is Dell somehow smarter at 802.11 design than Apple?

4.  This thread and others are loaded with posts from people with older MBP that are having comparable - or exact same problems. The occasional "mine works fine" is no proof that there isn't a problem. I've lost count of the number of times in 30+ years of tech business that some engineer working for me says "customer is full of BS, it works in the lab just fine" or "we haven't had any other customers complain so there's nothing wrong"...yeah, right. Been skewered by that attitude - like I said, lost count. So I look at the "mine works fine" thing skeptically.

If Airport can't work in this environment, then it won't work anywhere. Dell laptop sure as heck has no problem, it SCREAMS.

And until you have a good explanation for #3 above, MBP and Dell laptop side by side, please stop suggesting it is something in the surrounding infrastructure. It's not - and if on the outside chance it is then Apple has a problem, not me.

So that leaves us with just maybe 3? possibilities:

1.  Software/firmware issues

I note that your firmware is 5.100.198.104.5 and mine is 5.10.131.43.4 - so different even though we are both on  OS 10.6.8. One explanation, I suppose, might have to do with any locality difference (US vs. Europe perhaps?), or model number of MBP? Or maybe, for whatever reason, you have a later version of the firmware that fixes problem(s). Could that be?

2.  MB internal antennas are broken - we have to assume by the way that they broke coincidentally with OS update somewhere in the Leopard update sequence.

3.  Both WiFi cards are broken in exactly the same way.

So here's what I am going to do, since I don't have a spare $2K+ sitting around to just trash this MBP right now.

1.     Just for giggles, I am going to swing by the Apple store and give their network a joy ride just to see what's up there.

2.     Then I'm going to buy an external disk and do a clean install of older OS, back far enough to one I know was working, and see what's up there.

3.     Based on results of above, I will round up an RF power meter and signal generator and see if I can test the antennas. This is last on my list because IMO it is most difficult and most improbable of the source of the problems.

Im parallel with this, it would be useful to know if my firmware version is all wrong or out of date, and if so how do I get it updated?

Will report back results as they occur.

Peace.

PJRives wrote:

 

that might be explained by interface tweaks that occured when Apple developed Lion."

As I wrote 10.6.8 it will be clear that this indicate the use of Snow Leopard.

Lion is 10.7.x

mfwells wrote:

 

Why does Dell laptop, same physical locations, same WAP signal, same interference, sitting next to MBP SAME SAME work screaming good? Is Dell somehow smarter at 802.11 design than Apple?

Comparing peaches and oranges.

Why does my Mazda 3 shake my spine out but my Ford Focus don't? Both have 4 tires of the same size and identical 4-cylinders duratec engine.

Got it! Operating system. One's a left hand drive model.

Aside of jokes ... eventually the Dell have slightly better antenna signal, the chipset/driver combination or (behind the reciving point of the machine) the wireless stack deals not so sensitive with noise on the signal.

Eventually check the incoming signal (SNR) at the Dell to compare.

mfwells wrote:

 

I note that your firmware is 5.100.198.104.5 and mine is 5.10.131.43.4 - so different even though we are both on  OS 10.6.8.

USA (FCC) and Europe use a slightly different channel scheme for wireless and also have some different technical rules for private WLAN; e.g. tx-power, used frequency's.

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

mfwells wrote:

 

I am going to swing by the Apple store and give their network a joy ride just to see what's up there.

That's not for giggle. It's a brilliant idea. Compare on other wireless networks.

This will clearly help to sort out the interference vs. "other reason" question.

Look at the SNR's you recorded yesterday. The values you've got came directly from the Broadcom chipset. No operating system was involved there except for writing the outcome to a logfile.

On that think about the remaining reasons for the seen values and ask yourself:

On the seen SNR and TX values, which possible reasons remain for my problem if the operating system is cut out as I know that the recorded values came directly from the WiFi chipset?

Then follow that path for troubleshoot....

Anyway, there could be clearly many reasons on hardware.

• A never discovered short circuit on antenna to aluminum case somewhere.
• A "cold" soldering point on the antenna plug or a chipset
• Lousy connection by a single loose wire somewhere.
• One single cut line in flatcable

and so on ....

Eventually you remember the BT/WiFi problematic on one of the first iPhone 4 series?

It later comes out, that the tiny soldering points connecting the BT/WiFi chipset to the logic board increases the inner resistance of the connection up to total loss of signal due to micro fissures (whiskers) and crystallization in this fissures, caused by mechanical stress and temperature. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_%28metallurgy%29 )

At last, as a suggestion, forget the "but my Dell" thing. It wont bring you a single step closer to a result or a solution.

I was assigned at Dell for a couple of years and you can belief me, I saw a "trillion" reasons why Dell Laptops may have serious problems on wireless too. And I know nearly all the customer complaints like: "My HP sits only 1ft away and run perfect with the wifi, why my Dell does not?"

Peace - Lupunus

Message was edited by: lupunus

Ok guys. Saw a lot of activity coming back tothis thread thought I chime in again. This is not directed at any one specific, but those people that say its the wireless infrastructure etc... Here are some hard evidence that this is a fundamental issue with Early 2011 MBP I dont know if its software or hardware (Im pretty sure its hardware related) but here it is....

I just bought a brand new AirPort Extreme thel atest and greatest one. Connected it from the box setup 2.4 and 5 network connected my NAS and my MBP to it transferred a 300MB file, while speed of transfer is amazing peak 22mbps. Here is a ping at the same time.

4 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1011 ttl=64time=3.218 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1012

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1013ttl=64 time=3.560 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1014ttl=64 time=5.884 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1015

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1016

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1017ttl=64 time=6.186 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1018ttl=64 time=6.442 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1019ttl=64 time=5.088 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1020

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1021ttl=64 time=5.446 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1022ttl=64 time=6.095 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1023

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1024

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1025ttl=64 time=8.437 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1026

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1027

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1028ttl=64 time=5.899 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1029ttl=64 time=8.506 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1030ttl=64 time=6.207 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1031

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1032ttl=64 time=11.515 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1033ttl=64 time=3.053 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1034ttl=64 time=6.754 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1035ttl=64 time=3.101 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1036

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1037ttl=64 time=5.435 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1038ttl=64 time=6.687 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1039ttl=64 time=3.167 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1040ttl=64 time=3.331 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1041ttl=64 time=3.016 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1042ttl=64 time=3.021 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1043ttl=64 time=6.175 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1044ttl=64 time=4.019 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1045ttl=64 time=3.316 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1046ttl=64 time=8.164 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1047

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1048 ttl=64time=6.426 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1049

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1050

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1051

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1052

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1053

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1054ttl=64 time=7.730 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1055ttl=64 time=5.195 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1056ttl=64 time=5.444 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1057ttl=64 time=6.392 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1058

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1059 ttl=64time=5.395 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1060ttl=64 time=8.995 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1061ttl=64 time=8.785 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1062ttl=64 time=5.118 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1063ttl=64 time=4.488 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1064ttl=64 time=5.696 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1065ttl=64 time=8.623 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1066ttl=64 time=5.762 ms

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1067

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1068ttl=64 time=3.089 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1069ttl=64 time=3.091 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1070ttl=64 time=4.045 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1071ttl=64 time=7.945 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1072ttl=64 time=3.465 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1073ttl=64 time=6.304 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1074ttl=64 time=6.915 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1075ttl=64 time=7.819 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1076ttl=64 time=5.256 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1077ttl=64 time=6.986 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1078ttl=64 time=6.038 ms

Now I also went to open a new page in Chrome at the same time to CNN.com and it took a while compared to when the PC is not transferring files. Now this can be replicated on every single MBP I seen in any store.

The drop out in wireless. I not really getting those, my issue is more with what you see above. This is a huge huge issue and I still dont understand how Apple cant fix this from February !!!!! I see this same thing over and over again. All the updates and new OS Lion does not help.

Now I`m a network engineer by trade, I deal with what you see above quite often and if left my clients/users with a network that looks like this I would never work again. Very sad that apple or broadcom cant come up with a solution.

yozhbk,

just to be clear, with a brand new Airport Extreme you're seeing a peak transfer speed of...just 22mbps?  Not 22MB/s (megabytes), but 22mbps (megaBITS)? 

I'm asking because 22mbps translates to only 2.75MB/s (when converted).  I never get less than 10MB/s when I transfer wirelessly to my desktop computer, and usually around 12MB-14MB/s (and as high as 19MB/s).  I wouldn't have enough time to pull up CNN while transferring a 300MB file because it'd be done inside of 30 seconds.

Please clarify when you get a moment.

Regards.

March 2011 17" MBP that's not having problems.

22MegaBYTES sorry for the lower case B.

It is a 22 MB/s speed. Just looked at the file it was 399 megs

Can you start a ping to your gateway or anything on your local network via IP in terminal and start a transfer. Have activity monitor open on the network tab to see the speed. While the transfer is going look at the pings do they drop or get higher. 30 sec is plenty of time to put in cnn.com in open chrome.

Try it see what happenes. I havent seen 1 2011 MBP that doesnt do that. Maybe 17" its not so widespread I mostly did tests on 13 and 15. But I did try few of them.

Now 1 more find and this seems to start with Lion. If TM is doing a backup and I put computer to sleep the wifi doesnt reconnect upon wakeup until TM cleans up.

Just now while typing this I stoped TM backup and wifi was lost.

Just to add in the last hour or 2 using this new Base Station, it seems to be worst then before.....

Adrian J. wrote:

 

yozhbk,

 

just to be clear, with a brand new Airport Extreme you're seeing a peak transfer speed of...just 22mbps?  Not 22MB/s (megabytes), but 22mbps (megaBITS)? 

Data transfer in networks usually are gauged and reported as Kbit/s or Mbit/s.

This is equal in cable LAN and WLAN and thats why 1000 MB LAN is commonly named Gigabit LAN and not Gigabyte LAN

Lupunus

Message was edited by: lupunus (image added)

yozhbk wrote:

 

Have activity monitor open on the network tab to see the speed.

Activity Monitor also reports in KBit/s

Under normal circumstances, in WLAN you will reach a real data throughput of about 30% - 50% of the nominal link speed due to protocol overhead and regular other network traffic.

A 802.11g WLAN with a nominal link speed of 54 KBit/s will give you a average throughput of 20-25 KBit/s.

All connected clients in a network share the bandwidth (nominal speed) of the network, what means that if you have (for example) 4 clients in 802.11g WLAN transferring data, each client will have a maximum throughput (speed) of 5 - 6,25 KBit/s

For that you should not mix up the marketing speed "up to 450 MB/s with our new XY base" with the real possible data transfer rate.

Under controlled and perfect conditions with selected data to transfer you may get a maximum data transfer  (throughput) up to 75%-80% of the nominal speed.

In normal conditions with interferences and other disturbance on the network traffic you may expect roughly 40% of the nominal speed.

Lupunus

you could also actually properly quote people and respond to what someone writes instead of what they quoted.

Because what you say I wrote I didn't write. I merely quoted the person I was responding to.

MY comment, if you had actually taken the time to read it and not knee jerk over the mention of Lion, was that perhaps the issue is that someone has out of date router firmware and should update it and see if that fixes the problems.

And while we are on the subject of folks mentioning Lion, it seems like you could have your head as much in the sand over the issue that perhaps it is Lion for at least some folks as they have over the issue that perhaps it is not. Maybe you should take a moment to take a deep breath and really read and consider and stop yelling at people that it can't be Lion, or Snow Leopard, at fault.

mfwells wrote:

 

Thanks for all the advice on the infrastructure. I've looked at it.

 

1.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with the infrastructure, antenna placement, etc....etc.....of the WAP and the laptop.

 

2.   There is also nothing wrong with the interference(s)...only possible sources are 802.11g and n networks located 50-100 + ft. away, on different channel(s), etc....etc... and very low signal levels.

 

Dude

Unless you own, and know how to use an RF spectrum analyzer you have absolutely no idea what is going on and no idea what the issue is, looking at some text and a few bars on the machine tells you nothing.

But carry on until you're ready to listen.

Csound1 wrote:

 

mfwells wrote:

 

But carry on until you're ready to listen.

FULL ACK