New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

Can you ping your router ? That will tell you if your connection to the router is good. If that is good, then the issue is on your WAN side with the router.

Run the new Wireless Diagnostics in 10.8.4 and that should also help you troubleshoot your issue or give you more insight.

What is the issue you are seeing and what router are you seeing it against ? Use the Performance panel ( under Window->Utility) in the new WIreless Diagnostics tool to get an idea of how good/bad your signal quality is.

wifiguru wrote:

Can you ping your router ? That will tell you if your connection to the router is good. If that is good, then the issue is on your WAN side with the router.

Run the new Wireless Diagnostics in 10.8.4 and that should also help you troubleshoot your issue or give you more insight.

In my case (MBA 13" 2012, 10.8.4) and many other cases mentioned in this thread, ping does not work.

I found an update in the appstore yesterday, and after innstalling it I havnt experienced it again. But havnt been able to play as much with it either. The biggest problem for me occured when downloading large files like WoW and Dropbox.

I've been lurking in this thread for some days now and a lot of the suggestions here got me to a point of hours of continued wifi connectivity (from max of 10 minutes initially) up until I start downloading big files, then it just stops. What resolved my issue was downloading the new firmware of my router. I thought my router's firmware was updated (I was using the router interface) but when I searched the router's site, they had a newer one. I know this might not help most of you here but it might help some.

I just had a visit by a service expert (for Apple products). Funny thing is, he used the same MBA model (2012) as I do, and - had exactly the same connection issues (wifi was generated by an Airport Express of 2012). While my iMac, iPhone etc. had perfect internet access the two MBAs lost connection to the internet repeatedly (while wifi connection with the other Macs persisted(!), just the internet got down).

Conclusion: Most probably there is a bug in one of the subsubroutines that manage internet access over wifi specifically(?) for the MBA. If a wifi environment doesn't make use of this subsubroutine everything is fine, if it does you have problems.

Apple, you have to do your homework. Now.

I would not consider Gizmodo a reliable source on anything.

Is anyone using the new Apple 802.11ac wireless router with the new MBA and is it working?

I can understand people's frustration. Apple has a real history of wireless issues so you would expect better testing. I was planning on getting a fully loaded MBA but waiting now. I expect a patch will be out to address this issue.

What update? For what?

Just occurred to me to wonder if people using Mavericks beta also have this issue.

What router were you using and which model firmware did you upgrade from/to. That kind of detail might help some of the other posters here.

Rosember,

What you are describin seems like a WAN side issue on your ISP side. If the Mac's could talk to each other within your network, then that means your internal LAN is good. What does running WIreless Diagnositcs tell you ?

General rule:

- if you can ping your router but cannot ping google.com or apple.com, then its not a wireless LAN side issue. Its a WAN side issue.

@wifiguru

As a CCNP Wireless engineer, I'd like to add my name to the list of those affected and give my thoughts as to what the problem is.

I have several SSIDs running at home, two G networks, one N network, and a new AC network. I have run into this issue connecting to all of my SSIDs, as well as a tethered connection to my Android. I can ping my wireless adapter's IP address, I show up in the DCHP server's pool, I even show up in my router's ARP table. But my laptop cannot ping it's default gateway, nor any other device on my subnet; the opposite is true.

Here are is a list of my networking gear.

APs: Airport Extreme (2012 and 2013 versions), Cisco 881w, Cisco AIR 1240 and Cisco AIR 1210

Firewalls: Palo Alto (work), Cisco ASA 5505 (home)

Multiple ISPs at work and a single at home, plus whatever Starbucks uses.

There is no way that this is an upstream provider problem. If i cannot ping my own gateway, hosts in my subnet, or any servers within my DMZs, then that should point to a hardware failure.

Hope this info helps.

Exactly. I played around with my router at home and my new air is better there, but what about all the places I go now? Are we supposed to dig into the network, router, etc., wherever we try to connect? I just tried Panera and my friend's home- kept dropping. I returned my Air last week because I thought it was a hardware problem. Will return this one as well because obviously it's more than that.

wifiguru wrote:

Rosember,

What you are describin seems like a WAN side issue on your ISP side. If the Mac's could talk to each other within your network, then that means your internal LAN is good. What does running WIreless Diagnositcs tell you ?

General rule:

- if you can ping your router but cannot ping google.com or apple.com, then its not a wireless LAN side issue. Its a WAN side issue.

Hi wifiguru, thanks for your help, appreciated. Yet, I just had a technician here, expert for all things Mac. He confirmed issues of both his and mine MBA 2012 connecting to the internet as described in my previous posts while - at exactly the same time - four (4) other Macs/iOS devices had not the slightest issue in going online. Of course, in a constellation like mine the first thought is: WAN problem. Yet, this seems to be highly improbable to me as only the two MBAs have problems (and the expert agreed with me - after checking some of his diagnosis tools which go far beyond the onboard wireless diagnostics). There is an issue at least with the 2012 MBA in certain wifi environments. I guess, it is software based as an hardware issue probably would show up in more environments. At least, exchanging the MBA doesn't seem to offer any improvement.

I now cannot use my MBA, my work horse computer (I am a medical journalist), reliably any more for more than half a year at home and at other locations. This is absolutely unacceptable, and I am in contact now with a senior support guy from Apple (after having been the ball in a LONG ping pong match between Apple and two internet providers). I definitely need a solution for this "issue" very soon. And I hope I won't have to talk to my lawyer because Apple doesn't deliver what they are promising.

Yeah, I got the new 802.11ac Time Capsule and it's working flawlessly (as expected).

But since this laptop is built for mobility, going anywhere else is a crapshoot for the time being.

Well that's interesting that the new router works. No doubt that's what they are using in Apple stores.