Q: New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

Same wifi issues here... Have an iMac, MB Pro and now recently a MBA. All on latest software versions.

Using Remote Desktop a lot and realized that on the MBA many many times the connections get lost, where on the other Apple devices the connections are very stable. So I can confirm based on these experiences that there is some issue to solve for Apple on stability of wifi connections on the MB Air.

Apple: please do your job as we expect from such a quality brand!

Exists 6.30.223.154.45 version of the Wi-Fi driver.

Guy who has an MBA11' with this driver does not complain about any connectivity issues.

I am curious if somebody else can confirm it.

the .45 driver it's the original maverick's driver, i have it on my mba 13' but for my still the same wifi and ping issues that the .35 driver.

The best ping latency driver its the .22 but it stil with the wifi drops.

I just found out, that pings are OK when getting a lot of traffic. When I start a big download I get pings to my access point under 2ms... When download is completed, pings are getting worse up to 300 ms again... Can somebody confirm this?

(13" with Mavericks)

Yes, keeping the pings low on this MBA requires sustained traffic.

Running the following command in a terminal creates just enough traffic to keep the driver from sleeping:

sudo ping -i 0.2 8.8.8.8 > /dev/null &

Running this instantly removes the annoying jittery lag from interactive applications such as SSH, Remote Desktop, NX and games.

I keep hoping that soon Apple will release a new driver having latency as low as the original (6.30.223.74.22) driver from last June...

i'm so confused... with the .22 driver i get 1-3 ms pings but with mavericks: 100-300 both have the same random lags and drops.

MBA it's my first apple computer and it's hard to believe that my old 2005 hp notebook has a better  wifi connection (in all the routers)  than my new mba.

I'm having the exact same issue with my MBA 2012 after installing the Mavericks update.  Prior to this, no issue.  I've tried all recommendations in forum with no luck.  All other Apple devices work fine and don't drop connection.  Apple, please do something.  122 pages of customers with issues would seem to indicate there is a problem.

I forgot to mention earlier, but I took my MBA to the office, and it connected fine. So my only problem seems to be the random ping times.

BrianC6796 wrote:

 

I'm having the exact same issue with my MBA 2012 after installing the Mavericks update.  Prior to this, no issue.  I've tried all recommendations in forum with no luck.  All other Apple devices work fine and don't drop connection.  Apple, please do something.  122 pages of customers with issues would seem to indicate there is a problem.

Brian, I had exactly the same issue - also with an MBA 2012. What helped me (after 10 unbelievably frustrating months) was to have the lid of the MBA replaced. This might sound strange but the lid (a single, very expensive spare part because it holds the display panel) holds the antennas of the MBA. Furthermore, I guess the lid is exactly the same construction as in the 2013 MBA.

After a few days of intensive testing I can confirm what I preliminarily wrote in an earlier post: All my connection issues are gone!

I there fore suggest that everyone affected by connection drops (not the ping issue, don't know anything about that) should turn their MBA in and have it tested with a knew lid. The service member I had contact to confirmed this was a frequent issue with MBAs.

Your service might be hesitant to test a new lid on your MBA because it is such an expensive repair. But you should insist. The WiFi chip in my MBA had been tested before and did not have any issue. Many service providers will the check the mother board and if they would not find something damaged you'll probably get your MBA back as perfectly working but with the same issue as before. Therefore insist on checking the lid if nothings else solves your issues. It helped in my case.

Finally, I guess Apple does not admit an issue with the WiFi connectivity of the MBA because it would be such an expensive repair. Aditionnally, as the antenna problem seems to be limited to certain WiFi environments, nobody will be able to tell whether their MBA is affected or not. Therefore, if Apple admitted a possible problem with the antennas in the lid, many customers might send their - affected or unaffected - MBAs in for lid replacement, just to be sure they have a working machine when connecting to new environments (there have been some terrible stories in this thread of MBAs suddenly not connecting while the owner wanted to give a keynote at a conference). All this might result in many thousands of returned MBAs, i.e. horrendous costs for Apple. So Apple would never admit anything with respect to this issue. - My guessing.

I have a mid 2013 Macbook air. It had constant wifi issues. i thought it was related to router so i bougght a new one: D-link 850L. It didn't help- on the contrary now even the wired iMac lost connection. So I tried different router settings and finally it seems that everything is working fine. The simple solution was to uncheck 'DNS relay enable' box from router settings.

Before this solution I did these changes: support.apple.com/kb/HT4199 but those alone didn't help.

Rosember wrote:

 

BrianC6796 wrote:

 

I'm having the exact same issue with my MBA 2012 after installing the Mavericks update.  Prior to this, no issue.  I've tried all recommendations in forum with no luck.  All other Apple devices work fine and don't drop connection.  Apple, please do something.  122 pages of customers with issues would seem to indicate there is a problem.

Brian, I had exactly the same issue - also with an MBA 2012. What helped me (after 10 unbelievably frustrating months) was to have the lid of the MBA replaced. This might sound strange but the lid (a single, very expensive spare part because it holds the display panel) holds the antennas of the MBA. Furthermore, I guess the lid is exactly the same construction as in the 2013 MBA.

 

After a few days of intensive testing I can confirm what I preliminarily wrote in an earlier post: All my connection issues are gone!

 

I there fore suggest that everyone affected by connection drops (not the ping issue, don't know anything about that) should turn their MBA in and have it tested with a knew lid. The service member I had contact to confirmed this was a frequent issue with MBAs.

Your service might be hesitant to test a new lid on your MBA because it is such an expensive repair. But you should insist. The WiFi chip in my MBA had been tested before and did not have any issue. Many service providers will the check the mother board and if they would not find something damaged you'll probably get your MBA back as perfectly working but with the same issue as before. Therefore insist on checking the lid if nothings else solves your issues. It helped in my case.

 

Finally, I guess Apple does not admit an issue with the WiFi connectivity of the MBA because it would be such an expensive repair. Aditionnally, as the antenna problem seems to be limited to certain WiFi environments, nobody will be able to tell whether their MBA is affected or not. Therefore, if Apple admitted a possible problem with the antennas in the lid, many customers might send their - affected or unaffected - MBAs in for lid replacement, just to be sure they have a working machine when connecting to new environments (there have been some terrible stories in this thread of MBAs suddenly not connecting while the owner wanted to give a keynote at a conference). All this might result in many thousands of returned MBAs, i.e. horrendous costs for Apple. So Apple would never admit anything with respect to this issue. - My guessing.

That's very interesting to know, Rosember - thanks for that.

I gave an "on the road" presentation last Saturday at a college and my MBA connected as it should. Got one coming up next Saturday at a conference hotel - let's see! Nothing like a bit of added tension to spice up a presentation...

Good news! 

Got a message on my MBA that an update needed to be installed (EFI firmware update) , have done that, and since then, so far, the Wifi-connection stays alive!

Which EFI version number is it ?

Version is called MacBook Air EFI Firmware update 2.7

This is an old one, and does not solve the wifi issue:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1689