Is the wi-fi on my macbook pro retina dying a slow death?

Question

Is the wi-fi on my macbook pro retina dying a slow death?

MacBook Pro Retina 13-inch late 2013

2.4 Ghz Intel Core i5

4 GB 1600 Mhz DDR3

El Capitan Version 10.11.3

I've had this macbook for roughly three years now, and for the most part I've been very pleased. However, within the last few months, I've noticed some inconsistent wi-fi performance. It used to vary with whatever browser I was using...for some reason Safari would work extremely slow while Chrome and/or Firefox would work much better. However, within the last few weeks, it looks like it's gotten to the point where I can't get a connection period- regardless of browser and regardless of wi-fi network (I've tested problem both at home and at multiple public wifi spots). When I open a web browser it remains on a black page and says "resolving host..." on the bottom of the page.

I've tried turning the wi-fi off and back on, and while that strategy seemed to help in the past, it would only help temporarily before the Internet would inevitably slow down again. It's now at the point where switching it off and back on doesn't even give me a temporary fix.

I've also tried both methods of reinstalling/reformatting the OS, which I found to be helpful in the past. Once again, however, my internet just seems to get slower and slower with time no matter what.

Other stuff I've tried- deleting cookies, clearing browser history, cache, reinstalling browser.

Does anyone have any idea? Thanks so much!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Mar 6, 2016 12:51 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 6, 2016 12:53 PM in response to Community User

Meant to add: spotify, mailbox, and all other apps requiring internet connections are nonfunctional as well...so the problem isn't limited to the internet browsers. Mailbox seems to give me issues all the time....lots of times i'll open it up and there will be exclamation points next to all my inboxes or I'll get some message about the server not working..

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Answer 2

ManSinha

Level 6

12,183 points

Mar 6, 2016 1:00 PM in response to Community User

I am posting this as a diagnostic test - one that has been asked for in similar situations - see if you can gather some information about what is going on with your WiFi

When you see a beachball cursor or the slowness is especially bad, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Launch the Console application in any one of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES▹All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

From a post by Linc Davis

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Answer 3

my ginger

Level 5

4,928 points

Mar 6, 2016 1:11 PM in response to Community User

While it is possible to have an airport card going bad. Lets try some things. Do you have access to using an ethernet plug? Just to test and see if this is just wifi. Have you tried deleting all your airport preferred networks in system preferences network advanced? If you do this also go to your utilities folder keychain and delete the wifi networks there, also. In system preferences network advanced. Make sure you have, remember networks this computer has joined ,checked. Then go to the airport icon at the top right and click on it and go to create network. Re enter your network and try it.

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Answer 4

Mar 8, 2016 9:15 AM in response to ManSinha

Thanks for your reply. As to your comment about the beachballs- I do see brief beachballs pretty much everytime I click into the web address space in my browser to type in a website...even though it only lasts a couple of seconds it's very annoying.

Anyway, here's the stuff from the Console (I found it hard to locate a definite start and end point for the issue within only 36 lines since most of the lines repeated several times over and over at the exact same time of day).

3/8/16 11:52:27.283 AM blued[84]: Save link key for device: 1c-1a-c0-ec-1c-14

3/8/16 11:52:27.284 AM networkd[165]: -[NETInterfaceManager updateInterfaces] nwi_state_copy() returned NULL

3/8/16 11:52:27.287 AM networkd[165]: nw_nat64_post_new_ifstate successfully changed NAT64 ifstate from 0x0 to 0x8000000000000000

3/8/16 11:52:27.291 AM blued[84]: Removed device :1c-1a-c0-ec-1c-14 from the blacklist

3/8/16 11:52:27.293 AM networkd[165]: __settings_changed_block_invoke networkd_privileged_copy_settings_async with NULL settings

3/8/16 11:52:27.296 AM networkd[165]: __settings_changed_block_invoke networkd_privileged_copy_settings_async with NULL settings

3/8/16 11:52:27.301 AM mds[62]: (FMW.Normal:1428) FMW 0 0

3/8/16 11:52:27.305 AM apsd[76]: Unable to bootstrap_look_up connection port 'com.apple.ak.aps' for user 0: Unknown service name

3/8/16 11:52:27.317 AM apsd[76]: Attempt to set push wake topics without dark wake enabled: ()

3/8/16 11:52:27.317 AM apsd[76]: Unable to bootstrap_look_up connection port 'com.apple.askpermission.aps' for user 0: Unknown service name

3/8/16 11:52:27.326 AM apsd[76]: Attempt to set push wake topics without dark wake enabled: ()

3/8/16 11:52:27.327 AM apsd[76]: Unable to bootstrap_look_up connection port 'com.apple.ak.aps' for user 0: Unknown service name

3/8/16 11:52:27.327 AM apsd[76]: <APSConnectionServer: 0x7f8442527910> Invalid mach port - Cleaning up this named port's topics. com.apple.ak.aps

3/8/16 11:52:27.327 AM airportd[59]: airportdProcessDLILEvent: en0 attached (down)

3/8/16 11:52:27.330 AM apsd[76]: Unable to bootstrap_look_up connection port 'com.apple.askpermission.aps' for user 0: Unknown service name

3/8/16 11:52:27.331 AM apsd[76]: <APSConnectionServer: 0x7f8442724620> Invalid mach port - Cleaning up this named port's topics. com.apple.askpermission.aps

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Setting BTCoex Profile: band:8

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Profile[0]: mode:7; desense:0; desense_level:0; chain_power_offset:0,0,0,0,

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Profile[1]: mode:7; desense:0; desense_level:0; chain_power_offset:0,0,-7,0,

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Profile[2]: mode:7; desense:1; desense_level:3; chain_power_offset:0,0,-7,0,

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Setting BTCoex Profile: band:2

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Profile[0]: mode:0; desense:0; desense_level:0; chain_power_offset:0,0,0,0,

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Setting BTCoex Config: enable_2G:1, profile_2g:0, enable_5G:1, profile_5G:0

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: AppleCamIn::initForPM

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: AppleCamIn::systemWakeCall - messageType = 0xE0000340

3/8/16 11:52:27.375 AM locationd[81]: Location icon should now be in state 'Inactive'

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: ARPT: 3.617113: AirPort_Brcm43xx::syncPowerState: WWEN[disabled]

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Down on en0. Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving).

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: Got incomplete channel sequence length 0, should be 16

3/8/16 11:52:27.000 AM kernel[0]: en0::IO80211Interface::postMessage bssid changed

3/8/16 11:52:27.432 AM airportd[59]: _handleLinkEvent: WiFi is not powered. Resetting state variables.

3/8/16 11:52:27.504 AM configd[53]: preference: no sharing preferences

3/8/16 11:52:27.504 AM configd[53]: dhcp_arp_router: en0 SSID unavailable

3/8/16 11:52:27.504 AM configd[53]: [bootp_transmit.c:213] bootp_transmit(): bpf_write(en0) failed: Network is down (50)

3/8/16 11:52:27.505 AM configd[53]: DHCP en0: INIT-REBOOT transmit failed

3/8/16 11:52:27.506 AM mDNSResponder[90]: Adding registration domain 1094406434.members.btmm.icloud.com.

3/8/16 11:52:27.515 AM configd[53]: network changed: DNS*

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Answer 5

Mar 8, 2016 9:21 AM in response to my ginger

Thanks for the reply ginger. Unfortunately I can't test my connection using an ethernet plug because my macbook model doesn't have an ethernet jack (unless there's some other way to make an ethernet connection to this macbook that I don't know about).

I haven't tried deleting the preferred networks but I will try that now and report back.

For what it's worth I wanted to add this last piece of info as well- a couple days ago I attempted to remedy the problem by doing a soft re-install of Mac OS X (i.e. re-installing without deleting any files/apps/etc). Interestingly, upon booting up following the re-install, the problem was completely gone. I was able to connect to wi-fi immediately using the same network that I was unable to connect to just before the re-install. However, by the next day the problem was back.

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Answer 6

my ginger

Level 5

4,928 points

Mar 8, 2016 9:52 AM in response to Community User

You are correct. You would need a thunderbolt to ethernet adapter or a usb to ethernet adapter. Is your network connection dynamic or static? Dynamic is self assigned. In your console report it showed the network changed the DNS. In system preferences, airport,advanced, TCP/IP. You can click on Renew DHCP Lease. Also if when having a problem, you click on the airport icon while holding down the option key.It will give you an option for network diagnostics.

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Answer 7

Mar 8, 2016 10:12 AM in response to my ginger

Could you please explain your wi-fi connection to the Internet. You have messages in this log I have never seen before, coming directly out of kernel task, which should not be concerning itself with such mundane issues.

Also, have you tried restarting your computer in Safe mode? what results?

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Answer 8

my ginger

Level 5

4,928 points

Mar 9, 2016 8:59 AM in response to Community User

If a reinstall gains you wifi use. You should do another reinstall. Confirm you internet connection works. Then go into network, airport , advanced. Take note and write down the settings in airport,TCP/IP and DNS. Then when it will not work, check and see if any settings have changed. Do you use the mail app and does this affect mail at all?

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Answer 9

Dh123450

Level 1

4 points

Oct 7, 2016 8:53 AM in response to Community User

I had this "resolving host" problem randomly coming up with my 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina and it was driving me crazy. It turns out my ISP gives out really buggy Arris modem/routers that don’t work too well with Macbooks.

I solved it by going into my modem settings, setting Starting Local Address to 192.168.1.100 (notice the last number is 100). I also set Lease Time to 86400. Hope it helps.

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