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New MacBook Air Wireless Problems

Hello -

I'm a longtime Mac user (20+ years) and have owned more Macs than I care to count. I also can't seem to get logged into the support discussions under my usual username, but I digress. I upgraded to a new MacBook Air about two and a half weeks ago, opting for the 13" i5 model. I took it home and was impressed by its blazing fast speeds. A few days into use, however, I began experiencing intermittent and unexplained chokeholds on Internet access via my wireless network. I've done hours of troubleshooting with a colleague on this, eventually tearing down the home network - AT&T DSL - and rebuilding it. I also ended up swapping out the first Air for the one I am currently on, the 13" i7 1.8 GHz model.

Here's the symptom: I'll be browsing or viewing something on the web, checking mail via Mail.app, etc., and the network connection suddenly drops precipitously - pages take several minutes to load, or stop loading altogether. Mail.app is unable to check or retreive mail. When I test the connection throughput using speakeasy.net's speedtest, my typical 5.17 Mbps download speed drops to 1.x or slower and takes minutes, rather than seconds to complete. During this time, I have _full bars_ on my Air. This happens in different physical locations in my home. This does not happen to any of the other 4-5 machines and myriad devices used to test alongside the troublesome Air (among them, a 2007 series MacBook Pro run 10.6.x, a late 2009 MacBook Pro running 10.7, a 2008ish MacBook running 10.6.x, an XBox, two iPads, two iPhones, an Airport Extreme, printers and probably other stuff I'm forgetting).

Here are some things I've done, in chronological order:

- After many hours messing with the 2Wire-as-wireless-router, I reconfigured the network to use AT&T's 2Wire router as simply a modem and connected my Netgear wireless router (auto-negotiating mode, set to channel 5 at present but also set to auto-select channels in the recent past) to serve out WiFi. All other machines are able to use this setup successfully (but also had no trouble when it was just the 2Wire modem/router combo). This has made no real appreciable difference on the problem with the Air, as far I can tell.

- Swapping out the first MacBook Air for the current one, the i7.

- Run Keychain First Aid and followedother suggestions as described here: this resulted in an error in my Keychain that was corrected by running Keychain First Aid as follows:

Permissions incorrect on ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist, should be -rw-r--r-- , they are -rw-rw-r--

This was repaired. I also told Keychain to "allow all applications access to this item" in the Access Control settings. This did not result in a solution, as the slowdowns/chokes continued not long after I changed this setting.

I have spent probably 10 hours total troubleshooting this problem, and am probably glossing over some of the things I've checked and tried, but now I'm looking for more suggestions, as well as any other confirmation that others are having a similar problem. Again, this is not a case of losing bars on the Wifi indicator, and all other machines are working without incident on this network. It's the Air that is choking.

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7), 13" i7 1.8 GHz

Posted on Aug 10, 2011 11:09 AM

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ubiquity75 Author

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Posted on Aug 11, 2011 11:39 AM

Well, here's today's update:

I took my Airport Extreme that has been in use as a network client hosting my HP printer and have turned that into the wireless router for my network. Note that this took an extremely long time, due to the fact that the Air could not configure it no matter how many hard/factory resets I did to the Extreme. In the Airport Utility, it returned with an error of "An error occurreed joining the selected wireless network" over and over again. I then decided to try configuration via ethernet - except, oops, my Air doesn't have it, so I went and retrieved my 2007 MacBook Pro (currently up for sale on eBay and about which I am now having second thoughts re: selling) to plug it in. Surprise - I didn't need to; the Air saw the Express (reset and identifying with its factory default name) in Airport Utility and allowed me to seamlessly configure it.

I set it up using WPA2 Personal for the security protocol and OpenDNS servers 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. The setup is now:

AT&T DSL -> AT&T 2Wire modem -> Airport Express using WPA2 and OpenDNS -> my machines

The 2007 MacBook Pro has had no trouble grabbing and staying on this network. The Air successfully authenticated to it, then had some issues losing connectivity twice but has been up for about 10 minutes or so as I write this post. I'll continue to test. The loading times continue to be strangely slow, with hangups constant on the Air. The MacBook Pro continues to behave as expected. Whatever the problem is, the Air is definitely affected by it in a way that none of the other hardware tested (see list in previous post) has been. This makes me very concerned about the viability of this computer as my main work machine. I'm still within the window to return it, if I must, as I can't seem to get any feedback on what to do about troubleshooting this further, and my own extensive troubleshooting is neither leading to a conclusive source of the problem nor resolving the issue.

My next bout of testing will take place shortly, when I take the machine to a public WiFi hotspot to see how it behaves there. There is no authentication to that network; one theory I currently have is that the Air has trouble with authentication. Thoughts?

In fact, I'm going to go into my Keychain right now and "Allow all applications to access this item."

Any comments, thoughts, ideas or feedback are _most_ welcome. Thanks.

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38 replies

ubiquity75 Author

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Aug 12, 2011 9:35 PM in response to ubiquity75

So I've backgraded, per previous instructions, the kernel extension. The new settings are as follows, with bolded items those that have changed. Incidentally, I seem to have lost Air Drop support - I can neither see/access or be seen by another computer within AirDrop:

Software Versions:

CoreWLAN: 2.1 (210.1)

CoreWLANKit: 1.0 (100.43)

Menu Extra: 7.0 (700.42)

configd plug-in: 7.1 (710.2)

System Profiler: 7.0 (700.3)

IO80211 Family: 3.1.1 (311.1)

WiFi Diagnostics: 1.0 (100.26)

AirPort Utility: 5.5.3 (553.20)

Interfaces:

en0:

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0xE9)

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.16.1)

MAC Address: [redacted]

Locale: FCC

Country Code: US

Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165

Wake On Wireless: Supported

Status: Connected

cpickrell

Level 2

300 points

Aug 12, 2011 9:55 PM in response to ubiquity75

AirPlay was introduced in 10.7, so 10.6 network drivers will not support it.

ubiquity75 Author

Level 1

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Aug 12, 2011 10:15 PM in response to cpickrell

Uhmmm, right. So, even if this fix does work, it's suboptimal at best.

cpickrell

Level 2

300 points

Aug 12, 2011 10:18 PM in response to ubiquity75

It really only helps you isolate the issue to the 10.7 driver. You'd never want to keep mixed drivers like this. There could be unforeseen issues.

ubiquity75 Author

Level 1

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Aug 12, 2011 10:20 PM in response to cpickrell

*sigh*

Yes, that is fairly clear.

ubiquity75 Author

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Aug 12, 2011 10:27 PM in response to ubiquity75

I had a slowdown/hang upon the first use of Firefox post-reboot, leading me to believe that CoreWLAN, configd or another item might be at play (based on the analysis of a non-symptomic mid-'09 MBP running Lion vs. the affected Airs).

maayank

Level 1

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Aug 13, 2011 12:57 AM in response to ubiquity75

So it didn't help you? :-\

Can you try and ping your router? Interesting to see if it's the exact same problem I had or something else.

Of course, even if it's something else I'd still guess at the root of it is the same cause...

maayank

Level 1

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Aug 13, 2011 1:17 AM in response to ubiquity75

Also: here is a thread on Macrumors. There's a guy there with an MBP 13.3 and your friend's configd and friends version and he seems to have the problem as well. *the plot thickens*

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1211031

Nonjo

Level 1

8 points

Sep 21, 2011 6:29 AM in response to ubiquity75

I'm having difficulty connecting to the WPA2 network at work, while I am able to connect to an unprotected network both here at work and at home. My MBA 13" 2011 also seems to drop the connection from my home network randomly.

Sep 24, 2011 12:23 AM in response to Nonjo

I have the same problem with my Macbook Air 11" (2010).

Every once in a while wireless network connection (via Airport Extreme) suddenly drops. Pages take really long to load, or don't load at all. At the same time all the other Apple computers (Macbook, Mini, iMac) in the same Airport network are working perfectly.

Apple support have been "working" on this case for 8 weeks now. It is amazing how bad they are in solving this case.

Elastino

Level 1

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Sep 27, 2011 5:12 AM in response to pekkis234

Same here, got solution at least for me.

Just purchased MBA 2011 with Lion.

iPhone4, iPhone3Gs, iPad1, and all other labtops in same network, work very fast. over 40Mbps.

Only my MBA fails to operate properly.

In my case, my new AirPort Extreme and new MBA try to handshake at 5GHz, then

it starts dropping packets. (confirmed with ping)

I have only one combination of 5GHz networks, but I can regerate the symptom whenever I select 5G nets.

So, configuring APE to sepate 5G SSID and 2.4G SSID, then I manually selected 2.4G instead of 5G.

Now, it works fine. Pings are sustained with <10ms without dropping, before it was 500~1500ms with dropping.

I'm getting -55dbm for both 2.4G and 5.0G, and my desk is just 10~15 feets from APE in openspace.

It seems like my MBA doesn't like new APE 5GHz.

MBA, APE has the most current firmware and software.

da-cam

Level 1

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Sep 28, 2011 11:21 PM in response to Elastino

I thought I would chime in also; I just bought a MacBook Air 13 i5 and I out of the box, I have been experiencing the WiFi connection issues, droping the signal etc. I thought it was a defective machine until I saw these discussions. BTW, I am using a Netgear dual band router and my MBA almost never sees the 5G band at all. I am very disappointed that Lion is a dud in this manner. If I could, I would have ordered my machine with SL instead since I never trust new OS until it is well used. I guess there is no real fix yet but I will welcome it when it comes.

Just for the **** of it, I did try changing my security settings type on the router and change the channel. For the moment it helped but I don't think it will last. The connection dropping is intermittent anyway so, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Nov 4, 2011 10:41 PM in response to crh24

------------------My solution of problem witn newest macbook air 2011(MC966) and router dlink dir 655---------------

PROBLEM: my air didn't see my wifi router, but all other devices:ipad,galaxy s,notebook - saw it

SOLUTION: In settings of my router I had supporting of all wifi standarts

Wireless Channel was: Mixed 802.11n,802.11g and 802.11b

I changed it on 802.11n only and all became good!

------------------/My solution of problem witn newest macbook air 2011(MC966) and router dlink dir 655--------------

tserreyn

Level 1

8 points

Nov 9, 2011 10:28 AM in response to ubiquity75

Pair of macbook airs experiencing the same problems. Multiple calls to apple support have shall we say been less than helpful. Was suggesting that the tech do a web search and was told they can't do that.

Nov 9, 2011 8:11 PM in response to ubiquity75

I have a 2011 Macbook Air with Lion. I also have a 2010 Macbook. I am running a Lynksis Router Dual Band with WPA Encryption. The Macbook has no problem running wifi in the 5ghz band, but the Macbook Air doesn't even find it, unless I am within 15 feet from router. Right now, I am about 40 feet from the router, within line of sight, and the Macbook Air only finds the 2ghz band. The Macbook, which also has Lion, is sitting right next to me using the 5ghz band with no problems. I am a little disappointed considering I thought this computer was an upgrade to the Macbook.

Any thoughts on how to fix this problem, please let me know. I hope Apple comes out with a Software Update to fix this problem.

New MacBook Air Wireless Problems