2018 MacBook Pro randomly losing WiFi connection

What version are you running on the NanoHD?

How far is your MacBook Pro from the NanoHD? Are they in the same room?

Have you paid attention to the Tx rate on the MacBook Pro when it’s on battery power and especially after being on battery power for 30-40 minutes while associates with the NanoHD? My TX rate starts degrading and gets as low as 13 Mbps.

What problems were you having on the MacBook Pro with the Synology router?

Thank you.

NanoHD firmware is 4.0.21.9965. Just the default latest from the 'check firmware' on the controller.

For a few days the Nano just sat on a desk in the room with my WAN access, exactly where the RT2600ac sat and TC still sits. That's about 25' away but through three interior drywall walls. ~867-975 w/ blips to 1170. TC is usually 650-867 from the same spot. RT was 867 with blips to 975 when it worked - see other thread below. Since with the flexibility of having an AP away from router/switch, I've put the Nano in a more central location, now sitting on a bookshelf in the same room about 10' away from my MBP. Solid 1300mbps, two, 5-second blips to 1170 in the past hour.

That TX rate issue you describe is what I experienced with the RT2600ac. Though for me it didn't matter whether battery or AC, sleep-resume or fresh boot. I haven't done a ton of sleep/wakeup tests on the Nano, but I spent most of yesterday working on battery. That would involve an hour or two of work, close lid for a break, come back 15 minutes later, etc. I didn't notice any speed problems. On battery while I type this, solid 1300mbps unless I lean a certain way and block LOS with the Nano, then it drops to 1170.

The only 'custom' thing I did on the Nano was widen the channel width to 80. 5Ghz spectrum reports very clear, 4% utilized. 2.4Ghz spectrum is busy, ~40% utilized.

See this thread for details with my Synology RT2600ac problems. 2018 15" MBP + Synology rt2600AC = super-slow 802.11ac. 13Mpbs, MCS=0

Do you experience the Wi-Fi issues described in my post? Wifi stops to goes so slow

What type of Mac (model and year) do you have? 2018 MacBook Pro Mojave 10.14.2

What router/AP do you use? Need to check, all other items have no problems connecting Samsung tablet and phone. Same issue with another WiFi setup.

Do you wear an Apple Watch? No

Is there a person in the vicinity with an Apple Watch? NO

Having a 20+ years of engineering work experience, I would say that this is "too good to be true," but we shall see! Please keep us updated.

If this was, in fact, the solution, I would be very pleased.

@Mac-Trek:

So, we don't know what may have fixed your issue:

1. Turning off the Auto-unlock with Apple Watch, or
2. Turning off AirPlay on your Apple TV3 (and perhaps by doing so disabling AWDL on the Apple TV3).

@sirozha: Well, I guess it's the auto-unlock. If I remember correctly I activated it a few days after setting up the new MacBook Pro and had no issues the first days. The next thing is that we don't know for sure if AirPlay works the same way on the old ATV3 as it does on the ATV4 and ATV4 4K. ATV3 doesn't have the nearby function, neither does it have tvOS.

Edit: I'll reactivate AirPlay on my ATV3 tomorrow afternoon and check if it makes a difference.

@Mac-Trek

The article that was linked to earlier in this thread that clued us in to AWDL mentioned an "attack" by Apple TV, using AWDL. That article was posted in 2014. Apple TV4 (the first Apple TV with tvOS) came out in 2016. So, the Apple TV referred to in the article must have been an Apple TV3.

https://medium.com/@mariociabarra/wifriedx-in-depth-look-at-yosemite-wifi-and-awdl-airdrop-41a93eb22e48

I have the same problem, no Apple Watch. I'm about to throw this computer by the window. I paid 4k for a computer that can't even connect to the wifi more than 3minutes. We should all ask for a total refund. Since Steve Jobs is not here anymore, this company turned to be a total scam.

No, never use the microwave and it's pretty far away from both router and laptop. TV is off, but near the router (and connection is fine in the TV room). Signal strength before the drop is a full 4 bars.

This didn't help and we still have connectivity issues with the macbook air just dropping connection to the router and refusing to connect to not just the router, but any other device (such as a mobile hotspot) too for varying amounts of time

Same issue here. Brand new Macbook Pro (15-inch, 2018) right out of the box as of yesterday. I started having this issue almost immediately.

I tried several of the suggestions in this thread.

• was already using 5Gz
• only other Apple product I have, my older work laptop, has never had issues on the same wifi connection
• I have no Apple Watch or iPhone or Apple TV
• bluetooth is off but I do have bluetooth devices around (like a PS4 controller, for example)
• laptop is new, so there's no saved wifi entries to delete
• power connected on the right side away from the antenna. No other USB device connected
• Comcast-provided router, haven't messed with it yet

The odd thing I noticed is that when the wifi icon goes gray and I select my wifi network to reconnect, it is back immediately. There's no "handshake" animation on the wifi icon as if it is connecting to a new wifi connection. If I'm talking to someone on Discord and the connection dies, and if I notice quickly and reconnect, the other person doesn't even know I was gone.

Few more observations on my situation:

I left the laptop on all night. It was still connected to wifi when I got up. Then within 45 minutes of me using it, I had lost the wifi connection. So it may be triggered by activity rather than inactivity.

Thanks for the recap. I have Wake For WifI Access disabled. I also have bluetooth disabled, so AirDrop is disabled as a result.

When I try to disable awdl0:

$ sudo ifconfig awdl0 disable

ifconfig: disable: bad value

I reported similar problems on 25 June 2019 (see above).

I will add that if, in my Safari window environment, I choose 'Latest Gloucestershire news' using https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/ I am guaranteed that the wi-fi connection will be lost and that I will have to restart my Mac.

Perhaps the technical experts can see what it is with https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/ that collapses the wi-fi link, as opposed to other links such as UK - BBC news ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/news/uk ) and Yahoo Mail (http://mail.yahoo.co./d/folders/1 ) which seem to be well behaved.

John_of_Gloucester

01 August 2019

Dear BDAqua et alia,

Thank you very much for your email posted to me on 1 August at 16:21 regarding my problem of frequent wi-fi drop outs with OS Mogave 10.14.5 .

 On my MAC, my more knowledgeable IT son took and implemented the advice you suggested, but unfortunately it didn’t solve the problem with a ‘guaranteed’ drop out occurring after shutting down ‘Latest Gloucestershire News’ (https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/ )  when using the Safari web browser.

Still using my Mac, he then set up for me Google Chrome web browser and then successfully and repeatedly  accessed and left https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/ 

The problem had gone!

My particular fault therefore occurs with MAC’s Safari web browser (version 12.1.1 (14607.2.6.1.1) and not in Google Chrome (version 76.0.3809.87 (64 bit)).  IT experts may want to investigate this.

Regards,

John_of_Gloucester

03 August 2019

References

1      Email, 25 June 2019 at 4:32 am

2      Email,  01 August 2019 at 1:58 am