2008 Unibody MacBook dropping WiFi

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2008 Unibody MacBook dropping WiFi

I posted this on MacRumors but no one was able to help me so I was wondering if the wonderful Apple community could help.

Hey Guys,

I have a 2008 unibody MacBook running OSX 10.8.3 that has a bit of a strange issue with the wireless.

I have recently acquired a Meraki MR12 Wireless Access Point and 3 year cloud controller license. This has replaced my Airport Extreme as my main access point purely for the stats and information that you can get from the cloud controller.

Since the change I have been having some issues with my network where the wireless icon shows that you are connected to the network and you can ping some key IP addressed

192.168.1.1 - Firewall / Gateway
192.168.1.2 - Airport Extreme (Time Machine only)
8.8.8.8 - Google DNS

This is telling me there is some connectivity, but if you try to do anything on the network that requires application traffic nothing gets through. For example loading a web page in Chrome or Safari fails, dropbox looses its √ from the icon(lost connectivity) and time machine cannot find the disk (although you can ping the airport)

If you turn the wireless on and off again then you get your connectivity back for a while sometimes it can be 10 mins others its 3 hours before the drops.I have seen on some forums that you have to force your WAP to use WPA2-PSK rather than WPA and WPA2 as this can confuse the clients.

This is a summary as to how I have my SSIDs setup

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/6OUQ4Gr.png[/IMG]

I have setup a secondary SSID for testing as it is not affecting my flatmates laptop and have managed to find the optimal settings are no encryption with Meraki RADIUS authentication. Obviously this is not ideal so to add a little level of security I have hidden the test SSID.

I have tried everything to try and get my mac working on the main SSID

SMC & PRAM reset
New Network profile
reset network settings to factory defaults

I have made a quick youtube video to demonstrate the issue, I hope I have blanked out any details that anyone could use to take advantage of my network.

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RVRV5nvfg[/url]

The WAP is plugged into the PoE port on my ASA 5505 Firewall/Gateway I have no Vlan trunking setup yet and the ASA provides DHCP.

This is the interface configuration for the ASA I have omitd alot of the conf file as it is either irrelivent or provides to much information.

The AP is plugged into eth 0/7 and the Airport in 0/1 No other client is affected but they are all non osx (iPhone, Win 7, Ubuntu, openWRT.)

[code]

interface Ethernet0/0
description physical connection to O2 Box IV
switchport access vlan 2
!
interface Ethernet0/1
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1
switchport trunk native vlan 1
switchport mode trunk
!
interface Ethernet0/2
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1
switchport trunk native vlan 1
switchport mode trunk
shutdown
!
interface Ethernet0/3
shutdown
!
interface Ethernet0/4
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1-3
shutdown
!
interface Ethernet0/5
shutdown
!
interface Ethernet0/6
shutdown
!
interface Ethernet0/7
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,3
switchport trunk native vlan 1
switchport mode trunk
!
interface Vlan1
description to inside VLAN
nameif inside
security-level 100
ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
!
interface Vlan2
description to outside interface (DHCP O2 Modem)
nameif outside
security-level 0
ip address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 255.255.254.0
!

[/code]

Posted on Apr 25, 2013 8:19 AM

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Answer 1

warrmr Author

Level 1

0 points

May 9, 2013 11:22 AM in response to warrmr

Ok so I have been doing some more reading and have spotted loads of posts on the apple discussions and on here that are showing similar issues but on SL rather than Mountain Lion.

I have gone through most of the troubleshooting steps they have outlined in there and none of it has worked.

First was to try and telnet to Google.com to see if it is just chrome or the whole OS that is not working.

This failed as expected

[code]

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$ telnet google.com 80

Trying 173.194.41.142...

telnet: connect to address 173.194.41.142: Operation timed out

Trying 173.194.41.133...

telnet: connect to address 173.194.41.133: Operation timed out

Trying 173.194.41.131...

telnet: connect to address 173.194.41.131: Operation timed out

[/code]

Can ping google DNS just fine

[code]

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$ ping 8.8.8.8

PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=37.826 ms

64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=38.933 ms

64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=38.094 ms

^C

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---

3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 37.826/38.284/38.933/0.472 ms[/code]

Cant see anything squiffy in the routing table

[code]

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$ netstat -rn

Routing tables

Internet:

Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire

default 192.168.1.1 UGSc 17 169 en1

127 127.0.0.1 UCS 0 0 lo0

127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 5 36127 lo0

169.254 link#5 UCS 0 0 en1

192.168.1 link#5 UCS 4 0 en1

192.168.1.1 0:23:4:c8:2e:11 UHLWIir 18 24 en1 1107

192.168.1.4 0:1:d2:7:30:65 UHLWIi 0 0 en1 1129

192.168.1.10 127.0.0.1 UHS 1 0 lo0

192.168.1.254 0:c:30:42:15:c0 UHLWIi 0 16 en1 1185

192.168.1.255 ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff UHLWbI 0 3 en1

Internet6:

Destination Gateway Flags Netif Expire

::1 link#1 UHL lo0

fe80::%lo0/64 fe80::1%lo0 UcI lo0

fe80::1%lo0 link#1 UHLI lo0

fe80::%en0/64 link#4 UCI en0

fe80::%en1/64 link#5 UCI en1

fe80::225:ff:fe46:5fc1%en1 0:25:0:46:5f:c1 UHLI lo0

fe80::bac7:5dff:fec7:9a65%en1 b8:c7:5d:c7:9a:65 UHLWIi en1

ff01::%lo0/32 fe80::1%lo0 UmCI lo0

ff01::%en0/32 link#4 UmCI en0

ff01::%en1/32 link#5 UmCI en1

ff02::%lo0/32 fe80::1%lo0 UmCI lo0

ff02::%en0/32 link#4 UmCI en0

ff02::%en1/32 link#5 UmCI en1

ff02::fb%en1 link#5 UHmW3I en1 1416

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$

[/code]

DNS Lookup appears to be working as Ping will resolve hostnames just fine but for some reason Dig failes

[code]

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$ dig google.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> google.com

;; global options: +cmd

;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$ ping currys.co.uk

PING currys.co.uk (77.75.51.29): 56 data bytes

Request timeout for icmp_seq 0

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1

^C

--- currys.co.uk ping statistics ---

3 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

[/code] (Note Currys website doesnt ping even if you are connected and working fine.)

I even tried restarting mDNS and clearing the DNS Cache but that made no difference

[code]

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$ sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

Password:

localhost:~ mattwarrillow$ sudo killall mDNSResponder[/code]

I haven't checked with the airport utility to generate a fault report. But I did do another packat capture and I can see the AP has been spamming my macbook with ARP requests.

The only thing that I forgot to do while the wireless was broken was to run the wireless diagnostics.

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 17, 2014 1:16 AM in response to warrmr

Hi Warrmr, any news about your trouble? Me and my collegue, are experiencing a similar problem, from when we installed an MR12, in our office. The connectivity problem are not at the same time, maybe one time my mac stop browsing the web, and the other come on, and sometime the other one... so not at the same time..

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Answer 3

warrmr Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 18, 2014 2:47 AM in response to Beetlejuice01

Morning BeetleJuice,

I didnt actually get to the bottom of the problem, I have a good idea what caused it but I am no network engineer so cannot confirm.

I upgraded to Maverix still the same issue, the PSU on my ASA 5505 died and was replaced with a BT Home Hub unitl I can source a replacement PSU for my ASA. When I removed the ASA from the network I disabled VLAN Tagging on the MR12 and that seemed to sort the problem out.

What I suspect was happening was my network traffic was being tagged incorrectly so instead of sitting on VLAN 1 which has internet access via VLAN 2 it was getting lost or heading down a different VLAN.

One thing I didnt test was to turn off VLAN tagging on the MR12 and then turn eth0/1 into a access port rather than a trunk port and tag everything as VLAN 1.

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Answer 4

Feb 18, 2014 7:33 AM in response to warrmr

Ok, i previously had the interface untagged with native vlan, from switch, now i've put the interface in tagged, and changed the vlan native to 1, and tagged my wifi vlan from the AP, so it mach. Today the switch is gone in rommon, i'm not sure about the issue was caused by the mr12, but is a strange behavior. I've a customer with some MR34 0 issue... Hope it's non an MR12 issue, but i need to investigate deeper...

THX for your reply

Fabio

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