Wifi drops constantly - Macbook Retina Pro

Finally I discovered that the Mac connects to my router on two bands – 2.4 and 5GHz. I quickly went to the router advanced settings and started manipulating with those 2 bands. First I have completely turned off the 2.4GHz and bingo! Mac stopped messing around and was working completely fine. Unfortunately I have some devices that needs 2.4GHz band to connect, and also in other part of my flat the 5GHz is not working anyway.

I ended up changing the SSID name for one of the bands – so I connect either to 5GHz or to 2.4GHz.

That seemed to solve my problem. Hallelujah!

My guess is that Mac automatically trying to swap between those 2 bands back and forth, depending on the signal strength or something, but my router doesn't support that and the whole system gets confused.

I'm based in UK and using BT Home Hub 4 (Type A) | Software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.130.1.32

Change your WiFi router to WPA2(AES) or WEP open (not encrypted) and if it's "hidden" or "invisible" undo that as it's not going to stop a hacker.

Try the basics first:

Change your router channel number. Most times this works & is all you have to do.

Disconnect & reconnect your modem. unplug it for about 10 seconds. Plug it back in. Do the same for Apple’s routers. Wait for everything to reboot.

System Preferences>Network

Click the Assist Me button.

In the next window that pops up, click the Diagnostic button & do the necessary.

Research Knowledge Base for network problems that pertain to the OS that is currently installed on your computer. See these basic networking KB Articles: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1401 AirPort troubleshooting guide

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2712 Using network locations in Mac OS X

Manually provided DNS server addresses are higher priority than DHCP's

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1714 Solutions for connecting to the Internet, setting up a small network, and troubleshooting

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What to do when you can't connect to the Internet

Also, run the Airport Utility app which is located inside the Utilities folder.

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If using a Linksys router, contact LinkSys Customer Support and/or post in their forums.

If using Apple's Airport, please re-post over in one of the AirPort Forums.

Hello, I bought a Macbook Pro Retina 2.7 and had nothing but issues with the WIFI dropping or not connecting at all. I took the first one back and was willing to give it another try. The same thing happened with the replacement laptop. I discovered the problem at least for me. I used Migration Manager and Time Machine to set up the laptops with my 2008 Macbook Pro so that I could have everything set up from my older laptop. This caused the issue with the Mountain Lion OSX even though my 2008 had been upgraded to Lion. I removed the Users after creating a new user but the problem persisted. I had to get the thunderbolt adapter which is $30 easy and use my ethernet hook up. I erased the disk and had the new Macbook Pro Retina reset to factory specs. The wifi stated working properly now. I am unable to use migration manager from time machine as there is something that changes the connection settings but I can add my old files manually from Time Machine. So my new Macbook Pro Retina is working as normal now but am dissappointed that I could not back it up from my older Macbook.

Results of the diagnostic test?

Did you try all the solutions from the links I provided in my 1st reply to you?

Click on all of the links. Only you can determine from reading them if they apply to your type of situation. Otherwise, how would you know if they will work or not?

I have the same exact problem. Exactly. I have a 15" 2.7 retina with 16gb and 512 gb ssd. The wifi *****. It drops a minimum of once every 15 minutes. I have to turn the airport off and then turn it back on and it works fine. If I switch over to win7 w/ boot camp I never have an issue. I have two other mbp on my network, 2 iphones, 2 iPads, a host of other android devices, and an ESXi server with 15 VMs running. I dont have the problem with ANY of the other devices or VMs. Not one.

The funny thing is that it seems to be devices are that manufactured by cisco/linksys. My main router is a Cisco SRP-541W. I tried a WRT54G and had the problem. But then when I switched to a netgear router, I had no issues at all. Wired works fine through thunderbolt, and USB wirless work perfectly fine too. LOL

There are hundred if not thousnads of the same posts...You figure Apple would catch on and try to fix it. Nope.

If people are still having this problem, a solution is in the works. I've had the same problem several times a day since buying a 15" MBP retina over two months ago – until tonight. After 4 or 5 consecutive Genius Bar appointments, hauling in a Time Capsule and two Macbooks to reproduce the issue, I got a call this morning saying Apple was now acknowledging this issue and had a fix that works on about half of these machine. They were about to do a ~$700 hardware repair on my machine (which seemed odd to me), replacing my display/WiFi antennas and the BT/WiFi card. Instead, they went through a series of steps to clear out all settings related to WiFi AND BT. I'm sorry I don't have the complete details – they said it couldn't be shared with me – but it includes removing Keychain records that relate to wireless, removing registered BT devices and clearing out known WiFi networks, etc. While I'd noticed that disabling BT usually solved the problem, I hadn't thought of clearing out BT and Keychain settings. Since both wireless technologies are handled by the same card, it makes some sense. For me, it worked right away. I was told a system software update would be coming out soon (sounded like a week or two tops) that would incorporate this. But, in the meantime, I'd recommend going to your local Genius Bar and asking them to look it up.

-Garth

Carlsbad, CA

Hello VictorGo,

Very bad issue indeed, a few days ago I experienced that on mine too. Although it just came one day, I had no issue with WiFi before. So I thought it was a software issue rather than an hardware issue.

What I did was simple and now, I don't have issues anymore. I went to "settings/network" in the WiFi part, I deleted my saved networks, in my case it was networks from my Time Capsule 2.4GHz and 5GHz, I did the same in my keychain and in the iCloud Keychain as well. Then I turned off iCloud keychain on my devices in order to reset it (Mac, iPhone and iPad). Finally I connected from my Mac to the 5GHz network, I re-enabled iCloud Keychain from my Mac (that way it will send all my passwords from Mac), and I turned it back on on iPhone and iPad.

Now, I don't have any issue about WiFi droping... I don't know exactly where the problem was. Maybe something about conflict from networks...

I hope it will help! Otherwise go to an Apple Store, it can be an hardware issue...

Have a nice day 😉

Might be the same issue in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5535320

That said, for some, including me, it's a driver issue. The 10.9.2 update includes the updated driver, so if you haven't updated yet -- which you should anyway for security SSL fix -- then you should consider it.