ShaneD90

Q: Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 13'' Wifi Issues

My new MBPR's wifi is very slow and constantly drops the connection, although it is showing that it is always connected. If I restart the computer it fixes the problem for a little bit then it starts again. I have a 2012 Macbook Pro on the same network with no isseues, and I will have to use it sometimes just to be able to browse the web. Is there any way to fix the issue on the new Macbook?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Nov 7, 2013 7:38 AM

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Q: Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 13'' Wifi Issues

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  • by anjo108,

    anjo108 anjo108 May 25, 2014 6:51 AM in response to ShaneD90
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 25, 2014 6:51 AM in response to ShaneD90

    Do you have any antivirus installed? the "era" of a Mac-have-no-virus-attach must stop. MacOS PC can have the same attack as a Windows PC...

  • by dantart,

    dantart dantart May 25, 2014 6:55 AM in response to Marcel Martens
    Level 1 (1 points)
    May 25, 2014 6:55 AM in response to Marcel Martens

    Again Marcel, I'm NOT expecting 1300MBits, 2500 or satellite connection , I'm JUST expecting the same features at least than the same serious laptop of 6 years ago.

     

    P.D. I'm talking about 100Mbits, not 1300 , for God's sake !

  • by Marcel Martens,

    Marcel Martens Marcel Martens May 25, 2014 7:00 AM in response to dantart
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 25, 2014 7:00 AM in response to dantart

    Call AppleCare and ask for 100 MBit/s. But don’t be surprised to hear the same answer, that is what I am trying to tell you. So unless you find here someone who is willing and able to fix the current firmware/driver/OS you are out of luck with your expectations … ;-)

  • by clintonfrombirmingham,

    clintonfrombirmingham clintonfrombirmingham May 25, 2014 11:45 AM in response to anjo108
    Level 7 (30,009 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 25, 2014 11:45 AM in response to anjo108

    anjo108,

     

    If you believe that's so, cite a case in which a Windows virus has caused any damage to OS X.

     

    Clinton

  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski May 25, 2014 4:26 PM in response to anjo108
    Level 6 (15,159 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 25, 2014 4:26 PM in response to anjo108

    anjo108 wrote:

     

    Do you have any antivirus installed? the "era" of a Mac-have-no-virus-attach must stop. MacOS PC can have the same attack as a Windows PC...

     

    That's simply not true.

     

    There are no OS X viruses in the wild.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder May 25, 2014 4:58 PM in response to William Kucharski
    Level 9 (61,180 points)
    Desktops
    May 25, 2014 4:58 PM in response to William Kucharski

    This usually gets us into a shoving match:

    There are no OS X viruses in the wild.

     

    But there IS Mac Malware, so you have to be cautious and not go clicking on links in emails and go downloading stuff from Torrent sites.

     

    So-called "Virus protection" software is very intrusive, and provides no additional protection over what is already built into Mac OS X.

  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski May 27, 2014 4:38 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 6 (15,159 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 27, 2014 4:38 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

     

    But there IS Mac Malware, so you have to be cautious and not go clicking on links in emails and go downloading stuff from Torrent sites.

     

    Correct; the post I was responding to was specifically referring to anti-virus programs, which are unneeded on OS X  (and would not protect you from malware anyway, as no third party software can protect you from yourself.)

     

    This is not unlike the old joke that goes "This is a UNIX virus.  Log into your system as the superuser and randomly delete files from your disk.  Thank you."

  • by 4rk,

    4rk 4rk May 27, 2014 10:01 AM in response to lacroix88
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 27, 2014 10:01 AM in response to lacroix88

    We need to keep one thread per issue.

     

    I got involved in this thread because it was the only one that mentioned the following issue:

    When the Late 2013 apple laptop (mine is a macbook pro 15" retina) running 10.9 (10.9.0, 10.9.1, and 10.9.2 so far) goes to sleep while connected to an 802.11n network (in my case a 5ghz wpa2 network on acisco linksys ea3500) and it wakes up in range of the same network, on wake up it'll behave as though it thinks it is connected to this same network, while being unable to successfully communicate. EG pinging the first hop (router) will time out. This lasts (for me) indefinitely until the aiport is turned off and turned on again, or another network is joined and the original network is rejoined. Other work arounds have been to use a USB or thunderbolt network adapter, either wifi or wired, to reset the router (which disconnects and reconnects as switching networks would), to restart the machine, or just run windows. This seems to be at best because Apple's broadcom drivers don't exactly work for all cases of networks. Limited success is found once-or-twice in resetting the SMC, deleting plists relating to the network location and zapping pram. The wireless networks on which the Late 2013 apple laptops exhibit this behavior, do not exhibit these failings to any other devices, mobile phones, tablets, nor other computers, and otherwise would never need resetting nor replacing nor upgrading, and given that the same hardware could run windows with no other change needed, the routers are not at fault.

     

    Slowdowns, interference, channel hopping, frequency bands and selecting routers doesn't seem to be in the scope of possible contributing issues nor sollutions to the aforementioned. Work arounds involving not using the 10.9.x drivers for this broadcom chipset are, to some extent besides the point.

     

    I'm naming this issue the stuck-wifi-on-wake issue.

     

    Now something odd happened during my upgrade to 10.9.3 that has so far been resolving this issue, which is the only issue I can talk about having had. Let me update another post with that.

  • by 4rk,

    4rk 4rk May 27, 2014 10:22 AM in response to 4rk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 27, 2014 10:22 AM in response to 4rk

    So I updated to 10.9.3, mind you that I had to get the wifi connected at home in order to do that right, which is done by toggling it off and on (regarding the stuck-wifi-on-wake issue).

     

    After installing and rebooting into 10.9.3  (from 10.9.2) my Lat 2013 15" retina mac book pro did not reconnect to wifi. I again tried pinging the router locally, with no link, saw it thought it was connected to the ssid I have, and it got no traffic through for some 10-15 minutes until I rebooted.

     

    I didn't zap pram, change settings, clear the smc etc. Just rebooted, and now with 10.9.3 which had that initial disspointment, it connected on bootup. And it has continued to reconnect every time I sleep and wake.

     

    However I have not since rebooted again. Current up time (during which I've slept and rewoken about 3 times for 4-20h at a time depending, is 4 days, 12h and 15 minutes. I am affraid to reboot, or change any network settings, since, well, there's a chance it could behave again as it did on first boot, with the stuck-wifi-on-wake issue.

     

    The only thing that's changed in the wifi details is:

    CoreWLAN went from 4.3.2 (432.47) to 4.3.3 (433.48).

    This might control how the driver is told to sleep and wake. It might not. That's a guess.

    The other details are the same between 10.9.2 and 10.9.3: CoreWLANKit, Menu Extra, System Information, IO80211 Family, Diagnostics, AirPort Utility, All the details including Firmware Version on en0.

    The router was not changed nor restarted during this.

     

    I'll set a date for a couple months from now to remind myself to report back if stuck-wifi-on-wake has not recurred. If it has, I'll let you know sooner.

     

    P.S. dantart, you have more networks than a single 100mbits fibre network. One of those networks is your 802.11n network you're using with your macbook, another may be the 1gbit wired network your router bridges your wifi network to which you may not be using, and your router routes packets to your 100mbits fibre network connection. Your wifi will never be capable of 1300mbits becasue that's an 802.11ac spec, but all people are saying is that were you using an 802.11ac network you should expect to get that speed because that's what you were promissed in the specifications of the machine you bought... personally I take issue with what they were saying too becasue no one gets the max speed in practice. We know that you're not seeing those speeds, nor the 600mbits max capable of your 802.11n network. We don't know for sure if it's congestion or interference on the wifi, the router, or the fiber connection to the internet. Those tests are never quite reliable. But we do see that yes, you've tested two different devices around a similar time, multiple times, and on average yes your older macbook is working better than your newer one, and it's probably totally down to the wifi network. I think the only question is what can anyone but Apple do about it? And some suggested some kind of consumer advocate suit process. Which is close to being able to do nothing.

  • by johnniecache,

    johnniecache johnniecache May 29, 2014 11:58 PM in response to ShaneD90
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 29, 2014 11:58 PM in response to ShaneD90

    Im in my vacation place right now with a 2.4GHz (802.11g) Network.

    10.9.3 didnt improve anything. Same s**t, no reconnect after sleep, connection slows down and dies often when browsing websites etc.

     

    On my 5GHz 802.11ac WiFi at home i dont have the problems described above, only the transfer rates are half of what they should be.

     

    I bought my MBPr in Nov2013, this problem persists for 6 months now. No fix from apple.

  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski May 30, 2014 1:43 AM in response to johnniecache
    Level 6 (15,159 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 30, 2014 1:43 AM in response to johnniecache

    Does Wireless Diagnostics (Option-click on the Wi-Fi fan in the menu bar) tell you anything of use?

  • by johnniecache,

    johnniecache johnniecache May 30, 2014 1:55 AM in response to William Kucharski
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 30, 2014 1:55 AM in response to William Kucharski

    its very kind of you that you want to help out, but this is NOT a problem caused by a user configuration or local network. I recommend you to read this complete thread, many people are experiencing these problems with all kinds of networks.

     

    On the same WiFi networks, other products such as iPad, iPhone, older MacBooks, Windows PC, are not affected by these problems at all. Even the MBPr's are not experiencing problems when they run Windows.

  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski May 30, 2014 3:25 AM in response to johnniecache
    Level 6 (15,159 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 30, 2014 3:25 AM in response to johnniecache

    Then it would make sense to try and narrow down what's different between them and the hundreds of thousands of people without any Wi-Fi issues on their rMBPs (including every rMBP in every Apple Store, as they're all connected via Wi-Fi and stay that way all day.)

     

    There has to be a root cause, and often Wireless Diagnostics will report those things, e.g. Wi-Fi interference causing the rMBP driver to drop to lower and lower connection speeds to reduce net error/retransmission rates.

  • by Nick Payne,

    Nick Payne Nick Payne May 30, 2014 3:27 AM in response to ShaneD90
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 30, 2014 3:27 AM in response to ShaneD90

    Just for the record, after applying patches, deleting plists Wi-Fi got fixed on my rMBP'13 but unfortunately not on my wife's MBAir'13. She is restarting Wi-Fi and complaining all the time and I don't know how to help her.

  • by johnniecache,

    johnniecache johnniecache May 30, 2014 7:32 AM in response to William Kucharski
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 30, 2014 7:32 AM in response to William Kucharski

    1. Every MBPr user i know has some problems with the WiFi. Surprisingly most of them accept it.

     

    2. The problem has been narrowed down to the driver. Like i said, read the thread. I wont explain again.

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