2018 MacBook Pro randomly losing WiFi connection

MacBook Pro 2018, managed to upgrade to 10.14.2 using safe mode. Continually timed out when attempting to upgrade when not in safe mode, download would not start. The internet still continues to dropout. I have tried all solutions with the assistance of Apple support, but the problem continues. One suggestion is to clear history, no benefit and all logins are gone. Need to login into all apps again. Does Apple have a remedy or acknowledgement of this issue.

I have been dealing with the intermittent wifi drop out for months now and I've tried everything. First thing you should do is test your MacBook on another router, preferably in another location. Let it run for several hours using wireless diagnostics monitoring so you can see if there's been a dropout. If no dropouts, there is probably a problem between your home router and the computer. Apple has not been able to identify the problem. The solution may be to get a new router or an additional router and try that. That's what I'm going to do next.

I am having the same problems with 2 MacBook Pro 13" early 2015. I have bought new air cards online through Aliexpress and Ebay for a few bucks only to see if that solved the problem, but that was to no avail. I noticed that the problem occurs when it is connected to the power grid. Sometimes it takes a few hours sometimes half a day before there is no reception anymore. (Note "the problem is NOT a no hardware installed problem with the greyed-out Wifi sign. It looks like it has something to do with charging. When on battery power it never loses the wifi connection. It is a pain in the neck because I can no longer reliably access my Macs remotely. Restarting always solves the problem. It is probably a mainboard problem. Buying a cheap external dongle doesn't solve the problem completely because it will not allow you to access FaceTime and other Apple services as it requires an onboard card.

Try running your MacBook Pro with wifi connected to a different router in a different location. If the problem doesn't happen there, it is probably some weird issue between the particular kind of router you're using and/or the location. My laptop works fine in other locations or with an old AirPort Extreme but not with my Xfinity Gateway Router, although 12 other devices in the home work fine. Maybe it's sun spots?

Facts: Other devices during outage (icmp to 1.1.1.1) work normally using the same router. Facetime continues to work during outage. Communicating with router (TC7200 from UPC) on 192.168.0.1 works normally. Network monitor (osx tool) is stable. No logs shown during outage. Enabled debug logs using SHIFT+Command click on wifi menu icon Sierra. I have not faced issues at other locations (other routers).

Update: I captured packets using Wireshark. Few seconds after ICMP timeout there are still some open connections that continue to communicate. After a second Mac tries to retransmit open TCP connections, it sends new DNS requests. However, there is no reply from router (which is strange cause I can connect to 192.168.0.1). Connection resumes when Mac sends out ARP request. Before I forced refresh using DHCP renew (System Preferences -> Network -> Wifi -> DHCP).

Next to try: arp table, delete entry to see if it is going to have any effect. So far no idea

You can try and see if DHCP renew lease button restores connection. https://imgur.com/a/KMEkI4L Report back.

In my case Macbook 2015 unable to see ARP broadcast - reboot solve the issue. Before reboot I tried to kill all services (no success to see broadcast).

To remedy the issue (which appears after wake from sleep) - arping to default gateway "arping 192.168.0.1" (I installed arping using brew.sh)

Small update from me. After nearly 24 hours without a connection lost, it happened again. The interesting thing is: awdl0 seemed to reactivate itself automatically. I deactivated it again but a few minutes after that, the disconnect from WiFi occurred.

I renewed the DHCP Lease and started a new protocol.

How does a non-techie disable awdl0? I've been dealing with this problem for months. Apple tried to help in many ways, but the problem persists. I do not lose connectivity with an old AirPort Extreme, but the speed is slower. All my problems occur when on a Comcast Gateway router. Thanks for any help on how to disable awdl0.

@FirenzeMedia

Just see this post a page before:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8531525?answerId=250310375022#250310375022

Alternatively you can download the little tool "WiFriedX" from https://medium.com/@mariociabarra/wifriedx-in-depth-look-at-yosemite-wifi-and-awdl-airdrop-41a93eb22e48

This is very strange because I had the Tx Rate degradation issue with the UAP-IW-HD running the same firmware 4.0.21. It has the same chipset as the NanoHD. My MacBook Air was about 16 feet away from the IW-HD and on battery power the Tx rate (and the Rx rate as seen in the UniFi controller) would drop to 13 Mbps. The same thing is now happening with the AC-HD.

I would say I have a defective MacBook Air, but you had the same issue with the Synology with your current MacBook Pro but the same laptop is not having this issue with the NanoHD.

For the first time in my life I regret getting a Mac.

So, I am trying to resolve the gradual access rate degradation problem and the sudden loss of IP connectivity problem. I’m using the 2018 MacBook Air with Ubiquiti access points. Particularly, two models of acess points: UAP-AC-HD and UAP-IW-HD.

When I first got the 2018 MacBook Air, I was using two UAP-IW-HDs, and the MacBook Air would suddenly lose its association on a known SSID. The Wi-Fi icon on the menu bar would go gray, and the MacBook Air wouldn’t try to re-associate on that SSID or on another SSID that it also had in its list of known SSIDs. I would have to manually select a known SSID for it to re-associate with the UAP-IW-HD. That was happening in late December 2018 and in early January 2019.

Then, some time in mid January 2019 that problem went away. My 2018 MacBook Air no longer lost its association with the known SSID. Instead, it would lose its IP connectivity to the network while still associated with the UAP-AC-HD on a known SSID.

There was a macOS update and a watchOS update (I believe), but there were also a few Ubiquiti firmware updates between late December 2018 and mid January 2019. During that period, the other issue - the gradual degradation of access rates remained.

I raised these issues with Ubiquiti support and engineering, and they tried to reproduce this in their lab, but could not. Finally, in frustration, I replaced one of the UAP-IW-HDs with a UAP-AC-HD, which is a more powerful and more expensive AP that uses a different chipset (Qualcomm instead of Mediatek). I installed the USP-AC-HD about 12 days ago. Since then, I haven’t experienced the sudden loss of IP connectivity issue, but the gradual degradation of access rates still occurs. I noticed that the acess rates stay high for longer periods of time, but eventually the Tx rate degrades down to 13 Mbps. This affects the throughput, because when the Tx rate is 13 Mbps, the upstream throughput is capped at 10 Mbps, which is bad. When the acess rates are at 866 Mbps or 780 Mbps, the throughput reaches 484 Mbps. I am using the 80 MHz channel width on the 5 GHz band.

I have read the post suggested here about the effect of the AWDL (Apple Wireless Direct Link) on the Wi-Fi connectivity that was made a few years ago. That post mentioned an “attack” on the MacBook Pro by the Apple TV. The post mentioned that even when Airdrop is disabled, AWDL is still being used for other purposes, and the attack by the Apple TV was mentioned as an example of such other applications using AWDL. The post also mentioned that AWDL uses channel 149, which happens to be in the range of the 80 MHz channel width that my SSID is on.

So, I ran my 2018 MacBook Air with the AWDL interface turned off (Using the AirFriedX utility by the author of that article) for a few days. At the same time, I kept wondering what would be causing all these Wi-Fi issues with my 2018 MacBook Air and why was it that Ubiquiti couldn’t reproduce my issues even though they were so apparent and easily reproduceable in my environment.

Additionally, there’s a thread on the Ubiquiti forum about these Wi-Fi issues with 2018 MacBook Pros, where half of the posters confirm that they are having these issues with either 2018 MacBook Pros or 2018 MacBook Airs, while the other half insist that they are not seeing any issues.

It was then that it dawned on me that it could be the Apple Watch that I wear that causes the Wi-Fi issues via the AWDL communication with the 2018 MacBook Pro/Air. In the past few weeks, I’ve had a few occasions when the auto-unlock stopped functioning. Once I even had to restore my Apple Watch from its backup to make that feature work again, as no other method would fix the auto-unlock.

All if thise circumstances triggered a link

in my mind between the Apple Watch and the 2018 MacBook Air Wi-Fi issues. I looked up what protocol the auto-unlock with Apple Watch feature uses, and sure enough, it’s AWDL.

This may explain why some people are seeing these Wi-Fi issues with the 2018 MacBook Pros/Airs while others see no issues whatsoever.

I’m still trying to collect the data if the folks who have the Wi-Fi issues wear Apple watches. So far, only a few responded on the Ubiquiti forum, and with the little data that I have so far, my suspicion appears to prove true. Therefore, it would be nice to get the feedback here as well.

Do you experience the Wi-Fi issues described in my post?

What type of Mac (model and year) do you have?

What router/AP do you use?

Do you wear an Apple Watch?

Is there a person in the vicinity with an Apple Watch?

Thank you in advance.

Good to know. But I only have an old ATV3. There's no such option like "allow nearby...", just a binary option "airplay On/Off" ^^.

I got a call from Apple because of my support ticket. They assume that some software, like Avira Antivirus and some VPN software is causing the Wi-Fi issue. Besides that they recommend that I should do a clean install on a new partition. Well,

I told about our findings with awdl0/maybe Apple Watch unlock and send them new protocols while I do the tests with auto unlock disabled before I remove Avira or do the clean install.

Sirohza, one thing I find interesting is you're experiencing a gradual loss of TX speed, right? I wasn't. On the 2600, TX rates would go from 1300mpbs to 13-14mpbs in an instant - like a cliff. Usually TX would stick slow. Sometimes recover into the 100-200mps range but still be shaky and fall back to 13 often. A handful of times it would recover to full strength on it's own, usually over the course of 1-2 minutes with a gradual rise back to 1000mps+. Sometimes it would be stable for a while, sometimes it would fall off again. Very frustrating.

And I never actually would lose the Wifi connection- it was just the rate slowdown.

Troubleshooting is awesome, and I hope we can figure something out. But I don't think this is a problem with ATV's or Watches. I think it's more likely Apple borked something in the OSX Wifi driver stack with the new 2018 chipset or has a defective batch of Wifi chipsets floating around.

Still rock-solid with the NanoHD. Don't want to say that too often for fear of jinxing it!

After all the attempts to resolve the issue with all the options provided, the only one that has continued to work so far was to disable the unlock with Apple Watch feature. I also installed the WiFriedX tool and it worked alone for a short period of time before my connection slowed to nothing.

My resolution seems to be the Apple Watch unlock disconnect. We shall see if it lasts.

@glim0

What exact Wi-Fi problems are you experiencing?

What Mac (year and type) do you have?

Do you have an Apple TV nearby? If so, please try to follow my instructions for the Apple TV posted above.

Apple TV trying to establish an AWDL connection to the Mac may also be the cause of Wi-Fi problems.