Q: New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

BrokeScreen

I had bought my MBA in the beginning of July right when they first cameout (or at least within 2 weeks). I took it back at the 3 week mark. My litmus test has been using my neighbors free wifi (free to me). He has an older netgear router.  My White 2008 MacBook picks up the signal pretty well throughout my house, while the Air could barely get a signal and kept dropping it. The patch helped for only a few days.

I sent the Air back and received my new one 2 weeks later. So far this one is AMAZING. Everything it was explained to be. Obviously the battery life is great, speed is great, but these days you need a GREAT wifi radio and this one has it finally.

My advice is to call Apple, talk to a manager and send it back (if it's within 30 days). There are obviously BAD MBA's out there. I'm thinking the first batch of wifi radio hardware was bad. Since everything is soldered to the mother board, they are just swapping it all out.

Get a new one. And my guess is, in about 4-6 months the Apple Store will be FLOODED with Refurbed MBA 2013 editions. ;-)

Hi albertboa,

I also bought the new MacBook Air for my girlfriend. She started to notice this wireless connection problem when she wanted to connect the laptop to my external harddisk which in turn is connected to my router. I'm using a native IPv6 router from Hitachi, at 2.4 GHz band (802.11n).

When I tried measuring the round-trip time (RTT) from the MBA to my router, I got a rather unbelieveable result. The minimum RTT was approximately 50 ms, with the maximum of 100 ms and 35 ms of standard deviation. This was really the worst result for a LAN connection. Using my old Panasonic Let's Note, the RTTs were ALWAYS under 1 ms, which was actually expected for any local wireless connection under 10 feet.

You wrote that the connection was flawless under a 802.11n connection at 2.4 GHz. Have you measured the RTT to your router? I'm rather intrigued since I actually thought that the problem was the bandwidth (2.4 GHz) my router operates at. By the way, 802.11g only operates at 2.4 GHz band. I wonder if it was just a typo from you. I also encourage everyone to measure your MBA RTT to your router by executing ping your-router-ip-address on a virtual terminal.

By the way, has anyone installed Windows (or Linux etc) using Boot Camp Assistant and still having this problem? I suspect that the real culprit is actually the driver for Broadcom WiFi adapter which the MacBook Air uses. If this is really the case, then I guess it's up to Broadcom to send a fix to Apple, and I'm sorry to say that it could take months until the problem is solved.

This is a rather embarassing failure for Apple. Why didn't its engineers test the wireless connectivity more thoroughly? If I was an Apple executive responsible for the development of the MacBook Air, I would've fired them. There is no excuse, really. This is a premium product aimed for ultra-portability. Having its wireless connectivity crippled would leave us with nothing but a rather useless brick.

Hi, just found this thread and thought I'd chime in.

Similar issues, MBA 2013, where wireless performance is poor.  Its ok but then poorly performs, though never fully loses connection.  Easiest way to see it is a ping, constant 20ms to say google.co.uk and then drops to 50ms-2000ms every 5 seconds or so.  The same in Mac OS 10.8.4 and also windows 8 in bootcamp.

I do have the new time capsule with 11ac.  Same issue if i force it to use 5ghz, general speed is better (15ms) but still huge hangs every 5 -15 pings/seconds or so.  Exactly the same issue in windows 8.

On my 3rd new MBA after checking in at the genius bar this afternoon....no "soft" fix yet.....sort of admitted that its a sporadic hardware problem They wanted me to upgrade to a Macbook pro retina, but of course I would have had to pay the difference. So far so good with #3, but I`m waiting for the drop.

HI, same problem with my new MBA. I've tested with Cisco AP's, my new Time Capsule, Fritzbox &&&

Always the same! Ping times increasing more and more... nomal it's 1 ms to the GW or AP, but from the MBA it's going to more than 200 ms. I already installed the 1.0 fix. the point is, I've not tested it before, so this update could also be the reason... anybody who has this problem also without the 1.0 updated?

THX

FWIW, I still experienced drops with the update, but then I did a PRAM reset and it all cleared up.

It's worth a shot anyway...

We use Cisco 1252 APs at our company.

A replacement working well points to hardware. Seems more & more likely. Wanting you to switch to MBPr is not foolproof; the 13"  MBPr's have fan issues. Which is why I didn't buy the MBPr. I also don't watch movies on my laptop I have a nice smart tv for that.

Agreed, the MBAs with unresolved WiFi issues will need to be returned, replaced, and refurbished. By Christmas we will see a lot of MBAs in the refurb store.

This is where soldering everything to the motherboard and not allowing user upgrades comes back to bite the engineers you know where.

C'mon guys. You messed up.  So fess up. Do the right thing. I would really like to buy my MBA sooner than later. Collate the bad AC radios to serial #'s,  recall them, and fix the darn problem already.

No. 3 and its still dropping off like the last two did. No one should even think about buying a MBA till they fix this issue. The "genius" at the Apple store tried very hard to get me to upgrade to the pro retina. If it was an even swap I probably would have. I am totally sick of this and going to explore other options.DO NOT BUY ONE TILL THEY FIX IT.

I am not surprised dogschool.

We are fairly sure this is a hardware problem. Probably one of several suppliers is producing duff wifi components or one assembly point is making errors in assembly. Either way when computers are manufactured they will be made in batches. It would make sense that when an order of 50 computers are sent to one Apple store they will be from the same manufacturing plant and in most cases from the same batch.

You buy a computer, it has a hardware fault, you take it back to the same shop and exchange it for another which is very likely to have come from the same assembly plant using the same components as the first one.

It would not be surprising if the replacement also doesn't work.

It might be an idea for anyone who has got a problem machine to exchange it at a different shop from where they first bought it.

We would have thought by now that Apple would have got to the bottom of the problem, perhaps they have but they just wish the nightmare would go away. Without action it won't.

Hi lunaticitizen ,

I'm one of these lucky people with a fully functional new MBA 13" and it appears that on the third attempt tpkirkpatrick is another (see above on this page - 70).

This thread also has one or two others posting with fully functional MBAs (I can't remember their screen names).

So.....

If this problem was ONLY related to the Broadcom driver (implying that the hardware is OK) as you are suggesting, then how do you explain that some of the new 2013 MBA 13" machines are working under all the conditions there users can find to test?

Just to add, mine has the issue, and has exactly the same issue on a clean Win 8 install as well.  Which would imply its not driver related.

Would add though, with tpkirkpatrick, it could be the his second laptop had the patch applied and the first didnt, as I'm sure the patch fixes the issue for some (I'd hope!).

As an aside, tried a SMC and PRAM reset, no change.

Hi Cloudi,

To be honest I'm also wondering about tpkirkpatrick's case. I wish he or she had written more detailed information, such as the band the router operates at, its protocol (a, b, g, n, or ac), and at least the RTT from the MBA to the router. About your case, I only read that your routers are 802.11ac ones, which implies that they only operate at 5 GHz band. Have you also tried changing your router settings so that it operates at 2.4 GHz if it is possible? How about the RTTs? I've only read posts in page 1, 69, and 70, now I'm reading other pages randomly. If people are saying that their MBAs work fine at 2.4 GHz band then my suspicion is moot.

About the problem also appearing in Windows 8 installation, well there is also a possibility that the driver for Windows is flawed, isn't there? I actually searched for laptops from different manufacturers which got the Broadcom BCM4360 built in, and I still haven't found any so everything is still too unclear. By the way I have applied the Apple patch but the problem is still unresolved.

Message was edited by: lunaticitizen because of typo

Yes, have tried on 2.4ghz as well as 5ghz (its dual band, so I've created two seperate WLAN's with seperate SID's).  Exactly the same issue.

However, have found something interesting out, though probably worrying.  Just used a USB WLAN stick on the Air (2.4ghz only).  Disabled the internal ac adaptor and tried the ping test.  Still the same thing (and everything else on the WLAN does not exhibit this behaviour).  So I'm wondering where the problem lies.  It would seem to think its not the WLAN card itself but somewhere further down the chain.  Maybe a red herring, but finding it quite odd.

Anyway, RTT results for google.co.uk

RTT for a Macbook Pro 2010 on the same network (Time Capsule 11ac) -

15 packets transmitted, 15 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 14.127/16.303/17.643/0.896 ms

RTT for a Macbook Air 2013 on the same network (Time Capsule 11ac) (though in Win 8 at the minute as unable to reboot (I am working even if the Mac isnt!))

16 packets transmitted, 15 packets received, 6% packet loss

Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 915ms, Average = 241ms

Huge difference.

Wish i could be of more help. All I know is the Netgear router (neighbor's) is an original Wireless N model. Good but not great. Again, my 'test' was the connectivity of my 2008 White basemodel Macbook. vs. the 2013 MBA. The white one beat it in connecting in general, the range, and lack of "dropping" the signal.

(interestingly enough, my iphone 4 does a better job of connecting to this router at a further range than my ipad mini or ipad 4 does...)

Regardless, I got a new MBA but upgraded to the 8gb model. Since it was "special order" it had to come straight from China (took 2 weeks, I doubt it came straight from China but could have).  Either way, it was newly assembled.

I think one thing we could collectively do, is put up the serial numbers of the working MBA vs non-working MBA.  I'm sure Apple has identified the problem, but at this point are weighing a full recall or just operating on the return policy (kind of like Ford in the 70's).

Rest assured though, a good work MBA is WORTH the money. But not worth it without the wifi.

I agree. I love everything about this machine, but the wi-fi problem. I am reluctant to upgrade to the 13"retina pro just because I like the feel,size,weight and battery life of the MBA, aside from having spend more money.How can they keep selling these?. You would think they would have suspended sales till the issue is fixed.I guess I am going to call the higher level support guys today in Cupertino and  let them know the whole batch is faulty. I wonder why they cannot overnight me a replacement from somewhere that has a tested,working one.....maybe because there are none that they are sure work?