Q: New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

Are all the new macbook airs doing this? i just bought one yesterday and it is horribly slow!!!! Im going to try returning it?

Has Apple actually offered a solution to this? What have people done about this?  It's so frustrating to continually have wi-fi drop outs. 

I drastically reduced the problem by doing the following actions:

- in network preferences, where you see the list of your interfaces (wifi, Thunderbolt, etc.) remove the wifi, yes delete it, and add it back;

- reduce the MTU (wifi-advanced preferences-hardware-manual MTU) to 1492 (google it to find optimal value)

this in addition to have static ip and google DNS. the wifi drop now doesn't happen anymore, or very rarely. testing it from couple weeks.

I know how frustrating this is as I have been wrestling with wifi issues for months. It came to a head the last couple of days and I've solved it. I'm on a Retina Macbook Pro 13" (Ivy Bridge) Mavericks 10.9.5 connecting to a Sonicwall TZ100. This wireless AP is a 2.4GHz model only but does support 802.11n. The symptoms were frequent disconnections where you had to go to the network icon and reconnect to the wireless AP.

I used MacOS Wireless Diagnostics to capture the problem and MacOS Console to review the logs. I was getting frequent Airport errors logged as "AirPort: Link Down on en0.", these were mostly "Reason 2 (Previous authentication no longer valid)" but rarely also "Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving)".

I tried all sorts of solutions from the various internet forums but what has solved my issues was to change the router from WPA/WPA2 security to WEP. This is not an ideal solution for two reasons: (a) WEP is very insecure; (b) 802.11n only achieves full performance via WPA2 connections. However I'm very pleased to no longer have any dropouts. I can confirm this because I was able to reproduce the dropouts easily by uploading a large file to an FTP site. Now I can upload lots of large files to an FTP site all day with not one problem.

My suspicion of the root cause is an incompatibility between the Broadcom BCM43xx firmware/driver and the wireless AP chipset firmware/driver (Atheros 9100?). It is possible that using a 5GHz connection would solve the issue but that frequency is unsupported by the wireless AP. In addition I have no way of updating the wireless AP firmware so I am now considering purchasing a new wireless AP, I think that is the best solution for this issue.

Hello all

I have one question... Is there still the same problem with the 2014 macbook air? Anyone?

Thanks

well, let me tell you i resolved my problem by going to the router setting and changing it to channel 11. check this post guys, may help HELP me a lot.http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/68642/wi-fi-connection-randomly-disconn ects-on-2012-macbook-air

On my 2013 MacBook Air, my wi-fi problems have gone away since I upgraded to Yosemite.

Alan, that is nice to know.  My only problem at present is my recent upgrades on two phones and an Ipad2 to 8.02 has been disastrous.  Then when I upgraded Safari on my 2013 Air I began having problems with some websites where I couldn't login.  Actually reverted back to 7.0.6 to correct the problems.  I have only been using Apple products for about a little less than a year and though they have a lot of nice features, the wifi drop that has no cure, the iPad and phones that have so many problems after upgrading and being told they can't find the problem (wifi drop) at the store I am about fed up with apple.  Windows is starting to look a whole lot better.  But I think I will wait to upgrade to Yosemite, till I hear what the bugs are, seems for everything they give you, you end up with another problem.

considering this, i may update to yosemite today, then. Its kinda annoying or considering is coming next october 16, i better just wait for it, for the next thursday.

Yosemite does not help. Updated last night, everything went fine. Used it for about an hour, then went to bed.

Got up this morning to see the usual wifi issue, what a pita. For what they charge for these macbooks, they could find someone to fix it?

What a letdown.

WEll, i did a clean install yesterday and everything is fine. But before upgrading to Yosemite i changed my router and tested with maverick. I bought the oy kays e2500 and i havent notice any issues. It worth the try, it's a router with a value of 60 bucks i got it at tigerdirect (in Miami ) manufactered refurbshed for 29.99. So my small guess is that this problem is router related. With verizon router i never had this issue before either.

It's not my router, thats what apple tried to say in the beginning. I have a dozen devices on this wifi router with no issues besides my macbook air.

again, I'm not saying is my router, because i do have at my house 5 more laptops 2 desktop PC and 5 Android devices, plus my MacBook Air and iPhone 5, still the only device lag about it and having issues was MacBook Air, and this is the first time it happens, so i was skeptical as you, "is not the router" and probably is not, is just malfunction between the both, the MacBook Air and the Router, because it did works perfectly with everybody else, except MBA. So you want to finish this issue for all  ? Give it a try, it won't hurt, the worse it can happen is that it doesn't works and you take back the newly router you just bought and get a refund.

Just my 2 cents. Try it.

How long does this issue commonly take to show up? I bought a new MBA yesterday, manufactured in September 2014. It is operating perfectly, I just (10 minutes ago) updated to Yosemite & it's still all okay, no wifi issues yet but I'm now paranoid that they will appear at some stage.

It does not happen every time I bring it ouf of sleep. Happens about every other day, typically I close the lid and reopen it 5x a day. So 1 out of 10 times?

How long the lid is closed  each time is different, and I do not know the timing of each time, never thought to keep track. Mine is mid 2013 model.

Even with the wifi issue, the notebook has been great. My first mac, and I am happy with it. Knock off 1.5 out of 5 for the wifi issue. Only for the fact apple has played ignorant from the beginning and not giving a reason OR a solution.