Q: New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

I’ve received my brand new Air last week. I didn’t encounter any problem with WiFi. My connexion here at work on a 802.11n access point shows 64 Mbits/s thoughput and is stable. No worry neither with my home A.P.

Go figure.

2013 MBA / i7 / 8GB / 256GB SSD

I've seen a little of everything as I've moved around to different locations and between routers.

Home DLink DIR-655 (latest FW) / WPA2 (AES) / 2.4GHz: conitnually drops, only to be reconnected upon restart or sleep/restart (close/open lid).  All the while other devices still maintain connectivity.

Home DLink DIR-628 (latest FW) / WPA2 (AES) or (TKIP) / 5.0GHz or 2.4GHz: maintains connectivity for long extended periods, haven't seen it drop in either security or frequency setting.

Random coffee shop:  maintained connectivity

Work - Cisco enterprise environment - I believe they use TKIP - drops out like my home DIR-655. As others have noted, I can't make work IT change their routers to accomodate me.

Crashes: I've had more than a couple hangs, one of which required a power button hold shutdown, another led to a OS crash.  Seems like wifi stuff was happening around these moments (trying to jump between routers, trying to reconnect, etc)

I have a similar, though less severe problem with a six month old macbook pro retina. Randomly disconnects. Or connection gets very, very slow. Am 50 feet or so from airport router. 3 PC's and an iMac work perfectly fine in the same space. But the $2700 macbook pro has these wifi problems. Been back to mac repairs, airport card replaced, all sorts of tweaks, no help. Support, as always is prompt and helpful but they cannot fix the problem. Really *****. 

OK, it's MBA 2013 Day 2.......

Still no drop outs at home (see earlier post for my 802.11 ac setup). BTW, I don't have using Network Diagnostics.

Right now, I'm sitting in a 'Costa Coffee' and the WiFi is fine - no drop outs. Able to stream trailers in HD (720) from the Apple site for example. No cut outs. The Costa WiFi is 'open' (but requires a browser username and password).

Now I'm sitting in the same Costa, but since my 30 mins WiFi ran out, instead I'm using my HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 as a WiFi HotSpot.  That does have security, but I can't see what type - is it always the same on WP8? Anyway, I don't have any drop outs after 30 minutes or so.

So, next stop: another random WiFi somewhere else: I'll feed back this evening.

OK, I've just found out that Windows Phone 8  is using WPA 2 encryption and the 802.11n standard. My MBA 13" 2013 works fine with my WP8 phone as a HotSpot. No drop outs.

and

After having had a lot of drops I decided to buy the new AirPort Extreme.

The AirPort Extreme sends out a 5ghz AC signal and 2.4ghz A/B/N signal. My MBA connects to the 5ghz AC signal and works perfectly. Security is WPA2 Personal.

Streaming from ITunes to Apple TV works fine without drop outs.

My experience is that 5ghz is more stable than 2.4ghz, WPA2 PersonL is better than WEB and that AES is better than TKIP.

Hope the above helped till Apple fixes the issue.

By the way, I am receiving a replacement MBA on Friday or next week. Wanted to be sure although I am positive that we are dealing with a Wifi Security bug.

@themechanic152: Agreed, exactly my experience to date.

Well... well... well...

I PROBABLY found the final solution... part by chance, part by carefully looking at some of the messages from the console.

I received today my MBA 13 inches, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD (but it shouldn't make any difference...).

Just to give you a hint of environmental conditions, I've restored my MBA from a TM backup I had from my previous MBA C2D, mid-2010, without even starting up the new machine... I used the option of migrating from a previous system at first boot.

I've experienced Wifi disconnections (one every 20-30 seconds) since first minute of usage!!!

After tinkering with my new system and carefully analysing console messages I've decided to do some "weird" stuff:

I've REMOVED the wifi device from the list of services in the network pane of System Preferences!

Then I reenabled wifi from the menubar (system-wide menubar, close to audio, battery, spotlight icons "on the desktop", if you like;

Then in System Preferences, network pane, my wifi device reappeared and connected to the wifi;

Clicked "Apply" on the same pane.

NO DISCONNECTIONS SINCE THEN!

My guess is that something is broken in the plists managing wifi on our MBA's "from factory". Removing the service and letting OSX refresh its files by reenabling the service "cleans" the situation and makes everything working again.

I'll let you know if the fix "sticks" or not... but try this for yourselves... it MAY WELL solve your problems, without fiddling with potentially out of control parameters like beacon intervals, QoS, wifi channels and whatnot!

I can confirm that with a Buffalo Airstation WHR G125 running DD-WRT from 2009, switching to AES encryption instead of TKIP seems to provide my 2013 Haswell MBA with a stable connection. No internet dropouts for three hours.

Hoping that we get a real fix soon so that I can be confident of using it outside of my own home...

how does that logically coincide with those with wifi dropouts....but never any on iphone hotspoting or use of new airport extreme

it doesnt logically follow...but im glad to be corrected on same if wrong

Here at home I have a 802.11g AP with WPA personal. Works fine. The MBA may sometimes fail to connect when I bring it from outside and switch it on, but otherwise it does not limp.

Hello,

Lionel, on MacBidouille (french wesite for Mac hardware) explore a really interesting lead.

You can read it here:

http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2013/06/26/802-11ac-il-y-a-bien-un-probleme-de- pilotes

Google traduction (hem... ^^):

http://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&u=http:/ /www.macbidouille.com/news/2013/06/26/802-11ac-il-y-a-bien-un-probleme-de-pilote s

And (message # 17):

http://forum.macbidouille.com/index.php?showtopic=372096&st=0&p=3766552&#entry37 66552

Google traduction (message # 17):

http://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&u=http:/ /forum.macbidouille.com/index.php?showtopic=372096&st=0&p=3766552&#entry3766552

Vinencre wrote:

 

Hello,

 

Lionel, on MacBidouille (french wesite for Mac hardware) explore a really interesting lead.

 

You can read it here:

http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2013/06/26/802-11ac-il-y-a-bien-un-probleme-de- pilotes

 

Google traduction (hem... ^^):

http://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&u=http:/ /www.macbidouille.com/news/2013/06/26/802-11ac-il-y-a-bien-un-probleme-de-pilot e s

 

And (message # 17):

http://forum.macbidouille.com/index.php?showtopic=372096&st=0&p=3766552&#entry37 66552

 

Google traduction (message # 17):

http://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&u=http:/ /forum.macbidouille.com/index.php?showtopic=372096&st=0&p=3766552&#entry3766552

This sounds very interesting. Now the question is if older MBAs/other Macs could be affected by the driver/chip version problem, too - as I am having identical connection issues on my MBA 2012 for more than half a year (since 10.8.2 came out)...

Does this mean if I use boot camp and run Windows 7, I shouldn't have any wifi issues?

In his # 17 message, he suggests that the cause may be the "excessive" politic of Apple in power consumption reduction.

As you all know, wi-fi is one of the biggest power consumer (with the screen), they may have reduce too much the wi-fi power consumption so it result of the problem everyone describe. If that's the case, yes, Windows may resolve the problem.

It is only a new lead, this have to be confirmed, but it will explain why the window diagnostic tool open can save your connection, having your wi-fi at full powerconsumption, for diagnostics.

And if it's really the case, the patch may cause a little less autonomy than what we have now.

For full information, you can read the explanations on MacBidouille, links I post before.