Q: New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

<Edited By Host>

jaimehrubiks, are you saying that the new driver (6.30.223.154.45) is not working for you either?

I tested my Mavericks at a couple of new locations yesterday and no problems whatsoever.  I will state once again that some of you may have a defective hardware problem and not just software.

You know how I can tell the difference? When I had a ping lag problem like everyone else here I went to the Apple store and pinged about 10 of the demo MacBook Air and everyone one of those had the same laggy pings.  THATS how I knew it wasn't a hardware defect with my Air. I also tested a few other various models on display and they showed no lag and THATS how I knew it was a software issue.  That means that I had to wait for Apple to resolve the problem and I didn't need a replacement.

Now, I haven't had a chance to stop by Apple to run the same test since Mavericks was only released yesterday, BUT, I'm willing to bet that if I were to run the same ping tests on the Airs on display, I would no longer see laggy ping times.  I may get a chance to do that this Friday.

If any of you are near an Apple store and get the chance to stop by before then to test a few Mavericks MacBook Airs you can report back what you find.  If it indeed is fixed that means that all of you who continue to have problems should just go get your Airs replaced as you have a hardware defect that's specific to YOU.

Regarding the ping latency, I'm not able to weigh in because I cant even find the Network Tool anymore to run the ping tests.  It seems to have disappeared since installing Mavericks.  Is that the case for everyone?  Did they hide it somewhere?

tlovejr wrote:

 

Regarding the ping latency, I'm not able to weigh in because I cant even find the Network Tool anymore to run the ping tests.  It seems to have disappeared since installing Mavericks.  Is that the case for everyone?  Did they hide it somewhere?

Just go to your terminal and type: ping 192.168.0.X or whatever address you wish to ping.

Fair enough, was exagerating - I know how to ping.  The question still stands, however - what happened to the Network Tool? 

Network Utility was moved. I don't recall where but a Google search should find it.

JCC123 wrote:

 

I will state once again that some of you may have a defective hardware problem and not just software.

 

You know how I can tell the difference? When I had a ping lag problem like everyone else here I went to the Apple store and pinged about 10 of the demo MacBook Air and everyone one of those had the same laggy pings.  THATS how I knew it wasn't a hardware defect with my Air. I also tested a few other various models on display and they showed no lag and THATS how I knew it was a software issue.  That means that I had to wait for Apple to resolve the problem and I didn't need a replacement.

 

Now, I haven't had a chance to stop by Apple to run the same test since Mavericks was only released yesterday, BUT, I'm willing to bet that if I were to run the same ping tests on the Airs on display, I would no longer see laggy ping times.  I may get a chance to do that this Friday.

 

If any of you are near an Apple store and get the chance to stop by before then to test a few Mavericks MacBook Airs you can report back what you find.  If it indeed is fixed that means that all of you who continue to have problems should just go get your Airs replaced as you have a hardware defect that's specific to YOU.

I endorse this. As I have posted earlier in this thread, I was affected by the connectivity issue on my MBA 2012 for nine month first without anybody able to locate the source of the problem in the long chain between ISP, Router, MBA hardware, and MBA software. In June it was clear that my MBA was the critical part, but nobody could (or wanted to) help me. Finally, when I sent my MBA in to get a refund, the retailer found an issue with the antennas (located in the lid of the MBA). The whole lid had to be replaced. I admit that I did not have much time to test the effect of the repair as I currently work in a WiFi environment that never showed any connectivity issues. Buring my brief stay at home - where WiFi connectivity was absolutely disastrous before the repair - suddenly everything worked fine. Not a final proof of the lid as the source of the issue but my preliminary experience is VERY encouraging (after 9 months in WiFi ****).

As there does not seem to be any other solution for the connectivity problems I encourage you again to bring your affected MBA in for repair and let the service explicitly check for issues with the antenna. As the retailer told me, antenna issues occur quite frequently with MBAs although this is not officially admitted by Apple. And you have little to loose...

andQlimax wrote:

 

Ping latency is NOT the issue in this thead.

 

The issue is the connectivity DROP: suddently (every 10 / 30 minutes) you are not able to browse anymore, the wifi is connected with full bar but you have to wait from 5 to 30 seconds to have connections again or disable and enable wifi again. This is the issue that appaear with some modems/routers.

 

This is the problem people should test and really important to have it solved.

 

This weekend I'll let you know my experiece after the mavericks update.

That may have been the original problem but it's no longer a problem as most people have said that the ping problem is their main concern and can be easily reproduced EVRYWHERE, even at Apple stores with their demo units.

Also, when I updated my Air to Mavericks I had a problem that my Air refused to connect to my Time Capsule.  AppleCare had me delete my wifi network connection and some preferences plist files that were somehow corrupt causing the connection problem.  The tech said that the solution is not posted online so if any of you have connectivity problems, you should call Apple and ask about this.  The one file I remember deleting was com.apple.airport.pref.plist.

Although I don't believe that this is the problem that those of you with dropped connections have. I still think the most likely scenario is defective hardware. Just have it swapped out. It's free.

As long as there is no user visible impact on slowness, the ping latencies is a non issue. The ping latency issue by itself is a harmless artifact. If you start downloading/streaming or do any other network activity then tbe latencies disappear

Where would I find "Airport Menu Extra"?

Its the WiFi button on the upper right screen

I love wireless wrote:

 

As long as there is no user visible impact on slowness, the ping latencies is a non issue. The ping latency issue by itself is a harmless artifact. If you start downloading/streaming or do any other network activity then tbe latencies disappear

I do not agree, at least not in my case. Not everybody is just downloading or streaming. I do a lot of SSH terminal and remote NX stuff with my MacBook Air. There is no continuous stream of packets in SSH connections, so the latency issue is real for me. Every mouse move or key press then lags up to a few hundred ms.

I work around that by pinging the gateway 5 times a second, as that appears to be the minimum flow of traffic to keep the Wi-Fi card awake. I estimate it costs me about 15 minutes of battery run time, but for me it's well worth it.

I'd love to have an advanced switch somewhere in the Energy Saver Preferences Panel to just disable this power save feature. Then it will probably cost much less battery run time since the system doesn't have to handle the redundant fake traffic any more.

ok-then what?

I have not yet seen a lag when I remote in via SSH or any other program. Once you SSH'ed in and have commands going on, it should not lag anymore. Can you try on any other Mac like 2012 or 2011 Mac device and see if it has the same SSH lags as you have seen with 2013 MBA?

Can you run wireless diagnostics and get the logs and upload it somewhere and I can take a look and see if something stands out. To do that go to "Press the WiFi button on upper right corner" option click and hold it down and on the bottom it will say "open wireless diagnostics". Launch it and hit continue and that will monitor the connection till it detects a drop. Once a drop is detected, it will wrap up and save a file on the desktop and get me the file and I will be happy to take a look