2013 MacBook Air WiFi Problems (high latency, dropped connections) [Updated]

Update (3/4/14): Mac OS X 10.9.2 seems to fix at least the latency issue—and possibly dropped connections as well, at least for most users I've spoken with... We'll see!

Update 2 (11/25/14): If you're having trouble with iOS 8 and/or Yosemite, it could be related to AirDrop services over WiFi. Please see WiFried: iOS 8 WiFi Issue

For the past few months, I've been battling my 2013 11" MacBook Air's WiFi problems. I've taken the MacBook to the Genius Bar twice, and have attempted dozens of fixes. Judging by the number of individuals who have posted to this thread on Apple's Support Communities forum, among many other similar threads, I'm not the only MacBook Air owner suffering from WiFi issues like high latency, slow throughput, connection dropouts, and other random problems.

Here are some of the symptoms I and others have encountered:

  • Terrible latency: while sitting in one location, the Air might have ping times ranging from 30-4000ms, with many dropped packets. This makes things like connecting to a remote server (either with SSH or via VNC or RDC) a painful experience, and causes some applications (like streaming video or VPN connections) to drop and reload, also contributing to the pain.
  • Dropped packets: sometimes, when loading a web page, part of the page will load, then the connection seemingly drops for 5-30 seconds, then finally, the rest of the page loads. It's almost worse than being connected to a 56kbps dial-up modem!
  • Unstable throughput: When using a bandwidth-measuring tool like SpeedTest.net, bandwidth on a very stable connection can vary between 5-40 Mbps (while another Mac or PC sitting right next to the Air reliably gets 40 Mbps).
  • Dropped Network Connections: Sometimes, WiFi signals can simply drop off for no reason, even if the connection seems very strong (full bars in the menubar, and RSSI > -50).

I've done literally hundreds of tests to diagnose, reproduce, and (in some situations) solve these problems, and I'll recount some of these things here, for the benefit of the many others having these issues, and possibly for an Apple engineer tasked with fixing the issues.

These two graphics below show some of the investigation I've done (using ping and Apple's Wireless Diagnostics tool:

Bluetooth affecting Google Chrome WiFi Connectivity
This graph shows signal strength over time, with Bluetooth enabled (but not paired with anything), on a 2.4 Ghz 802.11g network.

Gogle varying latency ping times on AirPort 802.11g network
This graph shows the latency for a 1 second ping to google.com—and this was one of the best runs—while connected to an 802.11g network with Bluetooth enabled. If I DoS my router, this evens out to around 31ms.

Also, as a point of reference, I had my wife's 2011 13" MacBook Air and an old Dell Latitude laptop next to me for almost all these tests—they never showed any drop in performance (throughput, latency, or connectivity)—not once. So I can guarantee it's not the network that's having trouble.

Theories

After trying many of the 'fixes' below, my best bet is that this issue is related to the power management Apple is using in Mavericks (or possibly in the driver used for the AirPort card). Additionally, antenna location may be a contributing factor, since disabling or changing the way Bluetooth works can have an affect on signal strength.

It seems to me that the WiFi driver and/or Mavericks' power-saving features might be too aggressive—it seems the WiFi chip is put into some low-power state if it doesn't have constant activity (like a ping every 1/5th of a second), and this is causing signal strength and stability issues.

Also, perhaps the WiFi antenna(s?) is too close, or oriented poorly, in comparison to the Bluetooth antennna(s?). Disabling Bluetooth often leads to a more stable connection, and some Bluetooth applications (like Knock, which keeps a constant low-power connection to an iPhone) can practically disable WiFi.

Finally, these are the three major reasons I know there is a problem with WiFi/AirPort in my 2013 MacBook Air running Mavericks, and it's not just my imagination:

  1. I have tried using an external USB WiFi adapter, and never had any of the issues I have with built-in WiFi.
  2. I have tried using Apple's USB wired Ethernet adapter, and never had any of the issues I have with built-in WiFi.
  3. I have done all these tests while sitting next to a 2011 MacBook Air and a 2010-era Dell Latitude, and neither laptops ever experienced any drop in bandwidth or latency.

Now, on to the fixes...

Band-aid fix #1: DoS a router to keep the connection stable

The most telling fix I found, and the reason I think this entire problem could be power-management-related, is that, by simply pinging some external address at least 5 times per second (every 0.2 seconds), latency goes from wildly random (anywhere from <1ms to 1,000+ms), to extremely stable (a ping to my router stablized at ~0.3ms, and a ping to www.google.com stabilized at ~31ms, at least on my home network).

To test if this fixes the latency problem for you, open up Terminal (inside Applications > Utilities), and enter the following command:

ping -i 0.2 [your router IP address]

Your router IP address can be found by going to the Network preference pane, clicking on WiFi, then clicking the Advanced... button, and then clicking on the TCP/IP tab.

Open a separate Terminal window and type in ping www.google.com (this will ping Google's server every second). It should be a stable amount of latency for each ping (the last value in the line). If you go back to your first window and type in Control-C (to exit the ping utility), then see if the latency times for your Google ping start varying again.

This fix could work for a home network, maybe, but definitely not in a corporate environment—you're effectively sending tons of junk traffic at the router, for no good reason (except to tell your Mac's AirPort card to stay in some higher-power state).

Band-aid fix #1-a: Do something else that saturates your wireless connection

Another way to keep the latency low is to use your Mac with an Apple TV and mirror your display (this will keep a constant, high-bandwidth connection to your Apple TV, keeping the wireless interface happy), or to download giant files (like when you run a Speedtest.net speed test)—both of these activities keep your wireless card in a normal/on state, and make it work like it should.

Band-aid fix #2: Switch your router to 802.11n / 5 Ghz-only

One solution which is amenable at home (but impossible at work, because I have no control over my employer's access points or purchasing decisions) is to upgrade the WiFi network to 802.11n-only (or 802.11ac, if you have a fancy—and expensive—new ac-enabled router) on the 5 Ghz band.

I have a few older devices at my house that only work on 802.11g, so I was fortunate to have an extra g-only WiFI router sitting around; I now use my AirPort Express as an 802.11n-only 5 Ghz router, and set the old router to 802.11g-only on the 2.4 Ghz band.

As long as I set my MacBook Air to only use the 802.11n network, I have good throughput, and low latency. However, this comes with a major downside; WiFi range is reduced dramatically, and I can only get about 40-50' away from the router before the connection drops (or gets very slow). On the 802.11g network, I can get up to 80-90' away before the connection drops (meaning I'm covered in every corner of my house).

I'm considering buying an AirPort Extreme and then having it in one part of the house, and my existing Express in another part, but that's a fairly expensive fix for this problem!

Band-aid fix #2: Disable most Bluetooth accessories/applications

At work, my desk seems to be close to one of the 802.11g-only routers, so the signal strength is usually great (at least, as it is reported by the MacBook Air!). However, I found that certain Bluetooth-enabled applications caused the WiFi to be excruciatingly slow.

One app, in particular, that caused this issue was Knock, an app that keeps a constant, low-power connection to your phone so you can tap it twice to unlock your Mac. With the app running and connected to my iPhone, download bandwidth over WiFi went down to ~0.8 Mbps on a network that usually gets 15-20 Mbps. If I quit the app, the bandwidth went up to 6-8 Mbps.

Sadly, due to this behavior, I have had to stop using Knock. It was a handy convenience app, but alas, it is not for me :(

Band-aid fix #3: Disable Bluetooth entirely

Some people have reported that disabling Bluetooth entirely fixed their problems. Unfortunately, that's not an option for me; I would take a slower internet connection over not being able to use my Magic Mouse. Also, I sometimes use an external Bluetooth keyboard, or some other Bluetooth accessory, and that convenience is worth a ding in my Internet speed (sadly... because usually, with Apple products, I can have it all).

With Bluetooth disabled, my connection does seem to be perfectly stable, though it's usually stable even if I just have my mouse paired with my Air. I'm not sure why Knock's pairing with my iPhone harms the connection more than a mouse (which is constantly sending tracking feedback wirelessly), but that's how it is, at least in my testing, so I guess I'm glad the mouse works better than Knock.

Things that don't work

I also tried a bunch of other things that had no effect whatsoever, but seemed promising:

  • Deleted all WiFi networks in System Preferences, then added them back in.
  • Disabled Power Nap (in the Energy Saver preference pane).
  • Tried using an AirPort Express in mixed mode (b/g/n - 5 Ghz + 2.4 Ghz); in this case, the Air seemed to prefer using 2.4 Ghz connections because that signal was usually stronger.
  • Tried using a Netgear WRT54G router (b/g - 2.4 Ghz).
  • Completely erased hard drive and did a fresh reinstall of Mavericks. Didn't help at all.
  • Had the Genius Bar completely replace the AirPort card with a new one. Didn't help at all.

Troubleshooting tools

In troubleshooting these problems, I've found the following tools and methods to be the most helpful:

  1. ping in the terminal.
  2. Hold down the option key while clicking on the AirPort menu—this way you can see what frequency WiFi is using, as well as the channel and RSSI for your connection (often useful for troubleshooting).
  3. Apple's Wireless Diagnostics (option-click the AirPort menu, then select "Open Wireless Diagnostics...", type in your admin password, and click View > "Hide Utilities Toolbar", then show it again, to open up the WiFi Performance graph).
  4. iStumbler helps identify all the WiFi signals your computer can see, in excruciating detail.

Summary and non-Conclusion

I'm still (as of early 2014) trying to find a permanent fix for this issue—as are hundreds of people in various Apple Support threads (one fix that some have reported to work is to roll back the AirPort driver to an older version, downloaded from some random forum, but I'm not trusting enough to try that). I will continue to update this post with more info as I can find it, and please feel free to comment with any findings of your own!

Further reading

mac
macbook air
wifi
interference
bluetooth
802.11n
802.11g
apple

Comments

Very informative. I returned a new Air a month ago for wireless problems. I'd love to buy another if they'd fix this. Question. I've never used an external wifi adapter. Are you saying this can also be a fix for this for $30 until apple figures it out. If so I may take a chance on ordering another. Thanks.

Yes, but it's not an ideal solution, because you're stuck using the wifi card manufacturer's (usually) terrible application to manage WiFi connections. But it is an option.

A few posters in the Apple support forum (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5100655?start=1935&tstart=0) have commented that upgrading to Mavericks (10.9) has "fixed" their MacBook Air WiFi connectivity (& other) problems. What's your opinion on upgrading to Mavericks to see if this would work (i.e. upgrading from 10.8.5 to 10.9) - to see if it would fix or improve WiFi connectivity? Thanks!

For my particular laptop (2013 Air), it seems Mavericks made the problem worse, but it could've been firmware or something else, too. I don't think it could hurt to upgrade, if you're already having trouble under 10.8.x.

Another question: In one of your Apple support forum postings, you mention creating an alias for this terminal command: nohup ping -i 0.2 10.0.1.1 > /dev/null 2>&1&

Can you describe what command will do? How to create an alias for that command? How to disable it?

Many thanks.

nohup = no hang-up - keeps running after you close terminal.
ping = sends packets to a destination and records the time it took for a response.

-i 0.2 = interval of 0.2 seconds

> /dev/null 2>&1 = hide the output of ping on a pipe. Unix stuff happens to the text usually printed in the terminal.

& = fork the job

Sorry for all of the rapidfire questions - regarding your terminal commands and ping workaround methods - would it be possible to create an AppleScript to execute some form of ping (to ping router every 0.2 seconds) when you're using WiFi on the MBA actively? It would be great to just execute an AppleScript to start the router pinging every 0.2 seconds when you're actively using WiFi for whatever reason on the MBA, and then just end the AppleScript process to stop the frequent router pinging.

This might work:

tell application "Terminal"
    set currentTab to do script ("nohup ping -i 0.2 10.0.1.1 > /dev/null 2>&1&;")
end tell
tell application "Terminal"
    quit
end tell

That command uses 'nohup' to redirect stdout (the output of the ping command) to a place of our choosing—in this case, we use the greater than sign to 'pipe' that output to the path /dev/null, a special route in Mac OS X (and other unix-y systems) that's a kind of 'black hole'. Then the last strange looking bit at the end tells the terminal to just jump back to the command prompt (so it doesn't get stuck).

Finally, we tell Terminal to quit, so you can just run the AppleScript and be done with it. Do this once at the beginning of the time you start using WiFi, and you should be good.

To quit the ping, you will simply need to use ps aux | grep ping to get the 'pid' (process ID) of the command you started earlier (it will be the one that says something like nohup ping ... at the end of the line), and then type in the command kill [pid], where [pid] is the process ID you got from the ps aux command.

Awesome and thanks for the quick reply. Since my feeble brain is very new to AppleScript (I've only used it a few times - always using step-by-step tutorials I've found on the web), is there another AppleScript that can be created to automatically kill the Ping process that the first AppleScript initiated? Or if the process ID (pid) changes every time the AppleScript is run, what are the terminal commands? At the terminal prompt, would it be (basically I'm trying to make sure I know exactly, verbatim what I type at the terminal prompt):

ps aux grep ping

kill [pid]

(with [pid] obtained from the first terminal command) Thanks again!

The pid will change every time you run the AppleScript, unfortunately, but you could probably get the pid automatically some other way—I don't have time to work on a specific solution, but you'd basically need to do ps aux | grep ping, and parse out the pid from there, then pass it to kill [pid].

To add some fuel to the fire I posted this on Apple's support community
This is an issue that Apple should fix. I have a case that was opened on December 6th. I had 3 MBA's side by side and also a Dell win 8.1. #1 was an 2011 model with Mountain Lion. #2 was an mid 2013 model with Mountain Lion. #3 is mid 2013 model with mavricks. #4 is windows 8.1. The ping times for #1 and #4 are very consistent 1-3 ms to access point. #2 and #3 had ping times from 1-250ms but mostly 60-90ms. I tried this configuration on 3 different brands of access points with the same results. Apple's response is they will send the case to their senior engineers tmay have a fix for it in the near future. This was in mid December. Still waiting for that fix.

I figured out that it needs traffic for ping times to become low as normal.
For me what worked best funny enough was to mirror my screen to an Apple TV then everything started working as one would expect. But as soon as you disconnect the screen everything is laggy again with random & high ping times.

I also have a MBA -13 suffering from the same WIFI issues. I'll be evaluating the ping-workaround, as well as trying to configure my Airport Extreme to only use N and a dedicated 5Ghz network (which kind of sucks for my other Mac's) .

One thing I noticed though, that might interest you, is that while running the 0.2sec ping-hack, I could repeatedly force the connection to slow down if I Alt+Clicked the WLan icon in the menu bar. Give it a try, it is indeed a very strange behaviour. As if the WLan chip itself needs to slow down to give me the info that I need. I really don't know what to think of all this and will be in touch with my local apple retailer tomorrow to get some answers.

I thought that I should give you all an update on the matter.

I called my local apple tech support today and they confirmed that this was to be classified as a hardware fault. The only two hints they offered were resetting SMC and installing the WiFi firmware fix (both of wich have done nothing for me).

As such my only alternative was to leave the machine to a certified apple tech and have it sent for repairs/replacement.

So people - make haste and get your computers replaced before your warranties run out! And if they already have run out, state your case to apple, and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for an extended period of warranty for you guys.

Thanks for the update! Will you be getting a replacement MacBook Air, or are you able to get a different model computer that might have a better chance of not having this problem?

Sorry for the late reply. We'll be getting a replacement Air - no need, or possiblity to get a Pro at the time of writing. We haven't turned it in yet, been using it for work, and these new 10.9.2beta updates seem quite interesting, perhaps I should try that before we send it in?

Jeff,
Thank you so much for posting this. Very informative. Is it worth it to install the 10.9.2 beta?

Cheers!

Richard

For my purposes, very much yes. Without the update, my experience using my MacBook Air was abysmal on both my home and work networks (but was fine on some other networks). With the update, I have no issues using my MacBook Air, and enjoy using it again as I did when I was on 10.8.x.

Well, I'm on 10.9.2 Latest Beta and still plagued with this, so will try the Geektool option to see if it helps, bit ridiculous though that despite the number of complaint that Apple hasn't actually fixed it.

Thanks for this Jeff,

Switching to 5Ghz was a partial fix but not practical for public wifi or even home as a housemate has a non-compatible laptop - With that switch speed swings wildly between 7 and 15 Mbit/s instead of reliably down at 0.2. That's still not a patch on the steady 33Bbit/s all the other computers in the house get.

Pinging didn't seem to help but did help confirm the extent/variability of the problem and speedtest itself did start slowish and ramp up which gives support to your theory. (interestingly the pinging severely harmed the numbers I could get from speedtest if I did them at the same time.)

Considering all the talk in this thread of it being marked up as a hardware issue, two Qs;

I got this MBA for a really good price 2nd hand but can still return it.
1) Is using a netgear wifi dongle a practical if inelegant solution?
2) You say this new Beta fixed you up. Are you now pretty convinced apple are going to be able to software patch this for everybody?

Most people who have had issues with the 2013 MacBook Air have had the issues resolved after updating to 10.9.2, so I think it's a pretty good bet that the fix is in there. I really wish Apple would just release it, so I don't have to keep helping people get access to the beta!

I had the exact same issue and went through the exact same solutions. Until I found this article and stumbled upon the hint with bluetooth devices. As problems started this was the only thing I changed. I installed an app which constantly keeps a connection to my phone via bluetooth like the "knock" app mentioned in the article. Turning that app off helped for me.

Hope this helps others too.

Apple is not going to fix this problem. I have had a level two case open case which was started in november 2013. I call every month (used to call weekly) and they report int may be fixed in the next software release. A new computer has not been an option offered to me. Apple has done a pathetic job in resolving this and do not expect them to anything further. It is a design flaw and they are just waiting for people to drop the issue or your computer goes out of warranty. I can't understand why people think Apple is great. Shame on Apple!!!

Hi,
I found this thread while trying to find out more about the WiFi issues in MacBook Air. Mine was bought in August 2013 and is currently running OSX 10.9.2. So effectively I have the latest software and fairly new hardware. Still I have been running into WiFi problems. Specifically, when I put the lid down and open it agin after about 5 minutes, the WiFi connection refuses to reconnect to my home router (LinkSys E1500, running 1.0.03 version of the firmware). Distance does not matter because the problems happen even if I am 15 feet away in line of sight of the router.

My older MBA (2 years old) runs fine, as do my Roku, WiFi equipped Blu-ray player and three iphones and an IPad.

After reading this thread I turned off the BlueTooth connection on my new MBA (had been using it for streaming music to my Jam Classic speaker). This seems to have fixed my problem. So perhaps it is indeed a hardware issue.

I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence, but I tried a bunch of fixes for this and haven't had much luck. But I just recently deactivated the "requiring password after screensaver" feature and when I open up my Macbook now it searches and finds the router within 5 seconds. I re-enabled the password after screensaver and had the same issue once again. Deactivated and it was fixed.

I'm not too program-tech-savvy, but thought I'd throw it out into the ether.

Jeff, thank you for this blog post!
Our MacBook Air actually started having trouble reconnecting to WiFi upon wake from sleep after we upgraded it to Maverick. Tried many suggestions on other blogs and finally found this post and turning off Bluetooth "solves" the issue. We've recently purchased a 802.11ac router that has 5MHz support and now we can use Bluetooth again. Thank you for sharing your research.

I have this problem on a mid2012 Pro running 10.9.2. Seemingly INTRODUCED by Mavericks. Getting packet loss of 20-30%. Pages load like old, bad dialup. Safari bar moves like molassses, often stops.

Other machines on this network are fine; this machine on other networks has the same problem.

Your Ping fix helped somewhat, but only somewhat: after 5 minutes it now seems as bad as before.

What else should I try?

--Nick

ok, I'm wrong about the router ping--it made no difference when I did your Google test.....

So sitting here testing this on my late 2010 MBA and I'm noticing that every time I reenable the Wi-Fi, it goes almost exactly 60 seconds with normal pings to my router before missing a couple and then showing RTT over a second. If I disable and reenable it, the clock starts over. If I let it keep running the rtt gets longer and longer and my other devices stat having problems. Radio noise?

Hello, great help page here... I have done so much troubleshooting (even had apple help), and never saw the Knock app solution. Did some testing with killing it (in the middle of connecting to remote desktops, etc) and saw immediate results. You can even use the graph in the Wireless Dx tool, launch and kill Knock and see the affects it has on the signal.

So there is credence (for me anyways) to the Knock app causing interference with the MBA wifi. Thanks for the helpful hint!

I wonder who should report this to the Knock dev....and why it just recently started happening?

I believe I have the same problem after an upgrade from stock 10.8.2 to 10.8.5 (combo update) on mid 2012 MacBook Air 11" . My compromise/solution seems to be a switch from 5Ghz to 2.4Ghz band. I also used to have both bands using the same BSSID. I've reconfigured my router to have two different BSSID's for both bands. However, contrary to your observations I've experienced spontaneous high latency and packet loss even when streaming radio broadcasts non-stop and actively using Internet. Typically, a simple turning off/on of WiFi interface solves the problem but only for a short while. Even a simpler method of clicking WiFi icon in menu bar and then clicking on an already connected to network name removes the problems. It is a reproducible behavior and /var/log/system.log confirms that OS X attempts to reconnect but then stops informing that you're already connected to the selected BSSID. So, again, this attempted reconnection alone can remove latency and packet loss issues, but only for a short period of time as they eventually would always come back. Sometimes rather quickly, sometimes after a longish while but in 12 hrs of a typical usage of the computer during a day the problem would inevitable manifest. Hasn't happened yesterday even once after I had switched to 2.4Ghz band. Not critical for me, but surely is frustrating not to be able to use 5Ghz band considering I'm the only one around with the router that advertises 5Ghz network.

I must admin first, that I've read this complete articles before asking here:

- 2013 MacBook Air WiFi Problems (high latency, dropped connections) [Updated]
http://www.midwesternmac.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/2013-macbook-air-wifi-…

- New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems (the 141 pages all of them)
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5100655

- How-to Fix OS X 10.9 Mavericks – Wi-Fi Issues
http://howtoapple.com/mavericks-wifi-issues-fix/

- Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 13'' Wifi Issues (the 44 pages all of them)
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5535320?start=630&tstart=0

- And some other pages looking for "macbook pro late 2013 network issues"
https://www.google.es/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=macbook+pro+late+20… k+issues

I have my "old" 2008 Macbook Pro, and I've bought a new one (late 2013 version). I've experienced serious network issues, not only WiFi as everybody is claiming on the Internet, but also ethernet network issues, and I'd like to share here my benchmarcks.

I've tried everything described in those articles and others I found, as to:

- clean PRAM
- reset SMC
- delete System Configuration folder (bluetooth and/or wifi and/or complete folder)
- upgrade to 10.9.3
- change order (to put Wifi first) in network preferences locations
- disable iCloud completely
- disable "Wake for Wi-Fi network access" in Energy Saver
- disable bluetooth
- create a little script to ping every 0.2 the router
- reinstall everything (fresh install 10.9)

All tests were done in a clean environtment (just the current testing device connected to the network), and even reseting router in each test. My network is a 100Mb fiber optic. (I performed other tests in 3 other 100Mb networks and in a 50Mb network, and results are the same). I also did tests with a Windows 7, and Windows 8 laptops and have no problems at all (obviously).

I did all tests with http://testvelocidad.eu, a page when you can check network speed.

TESTS WITH MACBOOK PRO 2008

Ethernet. Speed shown in tests (in Mbps): 74, 79, 71, 82, 74, 81, 89, 70, 25, 76, 81, 83, 77, 79 (average 74.3, top of 89!)
Wifi. Speed shown in tests (in Mbps): 45, 48, 50, 44, 41, 47, 39, 45, 43, 36, 41, 42, 49, 50 (average 44.2, top of 50!)

NOTES:
- This Macbook connects to my WiFi with 802.11n
- Bluetooth does not affect the tests at all
- The graph grows normally and test is running well

TESTS WITH NEW MACBOOK PRO LATE 2013

Bluetooth OFF

Ethernet. Speed shown in tests (in Mbps): 43, 45, 42, 40, 40, 30, 35, 44, 37, 35, 39, 48, 37, 36 (average 39.3) << SLOW !! Top 48
Wifi. Speed shown in tests (in Mbps): 24, 23, 18, 21, 24, 25, 22, 23, 20, 24, 19, 23, 21, 20 (average 21.9) << SLOW !! Top 25

NOTES:
- New Macbook connects to my WiFi with 802.11g, impossible to get a "n" connection even touching everything in router. I had an option to just connect to "n" networks, and then WiFi does not even recognize my network.
- I tried with DHCP, and static IP (both in WiFI and ethernet tests)
- I tried changing the MTU manually to 1453 as some forums said (in WiFi test) (https://www.google.es/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=macbook+wifi+issues… tu+manually)
- It's curious when running the test (both in WiFI and ethernet tests), the graph is growing and after 4/5 seconds, it shows flat line for the rest of the 10 seconds test, never grows again (http://cl.ly/image/1w473J0L0J2I)

Bluetooth ON

Ethernet. Speed shown in tests (in Mbps): 41, 45, 40, 39, 47, 46, 46, 43, 42, 41, 46, 47, 49, 47, 42, 44 (average 44) << SLOW AGAIN !! Top 49
Wifi. Speed shown in tests (in Mbps): 3, 5, 4, 3, 2, 4, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3 (average 3.3) << DRAMATICALLY SLOW !! Top 5

NOTES:
- It's curious when running some of the tests, that after 2 seconds, the graph is frozen, does not move at all for 3/4 seconds and then the test finishes suddenly, it seems the network hangouts for a while!

Summarizing questions happening JUST IN NEW MACBOOK PRO:

- Why Bluetooth is affecting drastically the WiFi performance ? (from average to 25 to 5)

- Why even turning off Bluetooth I can't get the same network Wifi speed as old laptop does ? (from average to 44 to 21)

- Why I can't get the same network ethernet speed as old laptop does ? (from average to 74 to 44)

- Why can't Ethernet connection can't get more than 45/50 Mbps in all cases ?

- Why can't I connect to 802.11n networks (more people happening, http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/131455/why-doesnt-my-macbook-p… -connect-to-802-11n) ?

I know I can change the laptop for other new (store staff told me so, and I have Apple Care too), but I think this will happen again, since it's a hardware/software issue from Apple.

Thank you for any help

Hi

HAve a Macbook Pro 13 early 2011 which got this wifi bug today, dropping wifi connection after 10 seconds and had to manually click on my network every time.
Connects to a Airport Extreme.
My two iPads, two iPhones, apple tv, samsung 46 8000 series tv all work great on wifi but my macbook with Mavricks 10.9.3 just dropped the connection. As Permalink above did, pretty much tested all "normal things" like resetting smc, PRAM, deleting networks, creating locations, changing which connection should be fist, deleting com.apple.bluetooth in preferances, deleting system configuration folder, nothing at all seemed to work.
Read from a page that the problem is related to Bluetooth and specifically the sound protocol. This makes sense since I yesterday evening hooked up my mac to a bluetooth soundbar.
So two things was done, 1. paired again the bluetooth devices, and this time disconnected them instead of just shutting the lid as I did yesterday. Then deleted them.
Got stable enough connection to use airport utility to hook to my airport extreme, turned of guest network and activated 5 GHz band. Also changed channel for both 2.4 and 5 GHz even though no other wifi networks can be located. (live in a house with a large garden...).

Without even turning off the computer after last changes, I have been surfing for 30 minutes without dropping connection AND had time to write this.
So best bet, if you have a ad2p system in your house, connect and delete and check you airport, even though rest of your gadgets are working perfectly.

I have been having this problem for months and simply got used to turning the wifi on and off to get it reconnected every time. Wish I had read this page earlier! Anyway I have now turned off Bluetooth completely and wifi seems a lot more stable. When my MacAir comes out of sleep it connects to my home router quickly. I hope it stays this way!

I had this issue and for me the fix was setting my router (latest Airport Extreme) to use channel 36 for the 5ghz radio instead of automatically selecting. I hope this helps!

Changing control channel from default to 36 didn't solve the problem. However, I have gone for 2-3 weeks without any latency and packet loss problems on 2.4Ghz. It only happens for me when I switch back to 5Ghz. If you missed my earlier comment, this is MacBook Air 11" mid-2012 connected wirelessly to ASUS RT-N66U with the latest firmware (had to upgrade from stock firmware in hope that it will fix the problem but it didn't make a difference). Sometimes the problem may not manifest for almost a week but eventually it comes back. On 2.4Ghz, however, I've been able to work without such problems for 2-3 weeks already. I'm glad it can work at least on 2.4Ghz.. but of course it's not something one would expect from Apple.

Thanks....this explaines a lot! we've had a tech pout to the house who says our wireless signal is superb until he gets within 2 feet of my macbook running Mavericks. not sure what to do....but explains very slow upload and download speeds

Hey guys, I had this problem when I first bought my macbook air a little over a year ago. But in July 2013, apple fixed the problem with a software update (software update 1.0). Since the last update the problem, for me, has returned.

I have this issue with the latest updates. I also have the newest airport extreme. Hopefully the pix fix will work. Is there a way to automatically start pinging when starting up?

I bought Mac air last week and started to have
A problem opening wifi safari and other web
Sometimes it open and some times does not
Open i went to best buy and they did not know
What is going on but told me i have to restart
It every time it happen then they offer to exchange
It wich i did but i had the same issue with the wifi
they asked me to check my internet wich i did
And it was great speed as my other computers
Working without any difficulties so finally i returned
It back .It was very frustrating for me since this
Is the first time with Mac air

I this same problem on 2011 MBP, 15" dual core i7, and recently upgraded to a ssd with two partitions, one running 10.7.5 and one running 10.9.4, so that I could keep my legacy projects and apps but also do app development with Xcode 5 on mavericks.

When I boot off 10.7.5, wifi internet access is solid and normal.

When boot off mavericks, my system manifests all the problems described here - laggy, dropped connections, unreliable. Some of the fixes described in other forums such has deleting the config folder, deleting the wifi access preference and reading it, seem to work for a short time.

Given my dual boot, and that my Lion system works fine but Mavericks does not, I have to say that this does not seem like a hardware problem.

i tend to prefer my old macbook pro, because it doesn't have the connectivity issues that my 2013 air has. Im really disappointed with the air.

Thanks !!! It was surprising but disabling my bluetooth the wifi works like my windows laptop !! I was absolutly lost before your post

just an update, and to review: on my macbook pro dual boot lion and mavericks. As noted before, wifi access browser loads on mavericks are unreliable - hi-latency - with dropped http sessions, while lion works flawlessly.

I found that consistently flushing the dnsresponder (dns chache?) frees up the pages to load, by running this command in the terminal:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

sometimes it takes several repeated executions of that command in a row. My guess is because pages may have many http requests on them. But this procedure does consistently seem to allow pages to load.

For example, I enter a url to this web site into safari in mavericks. Nothing happens, and the page looks like it is trying to load in the URL address progress bar, but after say a minute still nothing. I execute the command in the terminal, and viola - the page loads. Again, sometimes I have to execute the command several times in quick succession, but the procedure works in total, every time.

This leads me to believe that the issue, in my case anyway, is almost certainly tied to how mavericks handles dns resolutions...

I'm not a network engineer, so perhaps someone can enlighten us about what might be going on and how it can be fixed.

I spent about 4 days troubleshooting the wifi issue with Cisco (my office has 4 APs) and after hours of sifting through frame captures and scenarios we narrowed it down to this. OS X 10.9.4 with the latest updates will drop the wifi association randomly for another AP with lesser SNR. Although I have the same SSID for all APs, the wifi will drop the connection to a -57 dBm signal for -93 dBm which is horrible. I'll have to open an issue with Apple now and present the data but doubt anything will get fixed in the near future.

The one fix that does work for me is disabling the bluetooth on the MBPs.

Any other suggestions?

Can anyone confirm that the 2014 model of the Mac Air exhibits the same connectivity issues as the 2013?

Someone suggested running tcpdump on an Apple forum, and when I run it all problems go away:
sudo tcpdump -ennqti en0 \( arp or icmp \)
Running 2009 Mac with 10.9.4 and all updates...none of the other solutions worked (pings, disabling bluetooth, etc). It seems when tcpdump is active all problems are gone for me.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been working with Apple and Cisco the last two weeks on the issue and it seems to come down to the Mac client (10.9.4) is Roaming to another AP (which is weaker) on the same network with the same SSID and when it tries to re-associate with the stronger AP it fails to respond to authentication requests from the AP and so the AP drops the connection. Cisco suggested I try extending the response delay time (which I have not done). I'm waiting for Apple's response to the frame capture I sent them showing the client's failure to 'finish' associating with the AP.

Apple also had me take in the laptop to a retail store for diagnostics (which it passed) and the genius said all he could do it revert to 10.8 or wait for 10.10 but he doubts Apple will put out a 10.9.5 update. I'm hoping my case worker at Apple can get the developers to admit there is an issue and come up with a patch since this issue is happening on 5 other OS X 10.9.4 clients I have in the office.

Another suggestion Apple had for me was to remove all other known networks in the preferred networks of the wireless preferences which I don't think really helped because of moving between networks.

Finally, I found that activating the 5GHz radios on the APs and connect on 802.11a seems to have stabilized the connection, as of yesterday afternoon. Today will be the real test of the stability but I hope Apple is willing to resolve the issue.

Well, the "genius" didn't know apparently that 10.8.5 is affected too. However, I didn't have these problems on 10.8.2 which is what I had on my Macbook Air out of the box.

would
ping -i 0.2 127.0.0.1

fix it? then you are not messing up the corporate network
i'm having this issue come up a lot.
the only other thing that seems to help is turning off pacemaker and adding a bunch of timeservers and a driftfile to my ntp.conf

Deleting the following files did a complete network reset on my MacBook Air on 10.9.4. Reconecting to the wi-fi works perfectly afterwards:
Delete:
com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
com.apple.network.eapolclient.configuration.plist
com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist

On:
Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration

This has been driving me batty, so thank you for your efforts to solve/explain. I want to add that I experience difficulties primarily while at home in the US and much less to when I take my Mac Air traveling in Europe. So maybe the fault lies partly in our Internet providers? At home in the US our latest iPads and the most recent Mac Air have terrible connectivity problems.

Hi, until last week I was using a 802.11 N router at home and also using my Macbook Air (mid 2013) in closed clamshell with an apple bluetooth keyboard and touchpad. No problems faced until this week, when I needed to start using a 802.11 G router. It has been impossible to work since then. My iPhone, iPad and an Asus laptop, they all work fine connected to that router, except the Air, which is my working laptop. I tried the first band-aid and it didn't solve the problem at all. Disconnecting the bluetooth devices is something that will have an impact in my work.
I have Mavericks 10.9.4. Did anyone test this issue with Yosemite? I'm hoping this will be solved with it. If not, should I activate the warrant and try to get my Air replaced?

Ive had this problem since purchasing my 2013 MBpro and never been able to fix it despite calls to Apple service, ended up running Win8.1 through bootcamp with no problems, one thing I did find was if I activated the guest account or created a new account the problem was not present when logged in to those accounts, however logging back into my own account the problem was back again.Ive just given up on the MBpro now and run Windows on it exclusively, very disappointing this machine..

Any luck here? I don't want to buy a new laptop, but my MacBook Air is almost unusable because of this.

I have osx 10.9.4 and the problem is almost the same. I have found a stable connection with a WPA2 key and a completly non working connection with WEP keys. Yes I have routers with WEP keys, yes it is very insecure, but who cares, it does connect with them but doesn't receive anything at all.

I had a similar issue my wireless was extremely slow and I could only find a connection if I was directly next to my router. I had my keyboard replaced and it turned out the connector internally to the wireless card got disconnected when the technician placed the back casing on. The result was that the wireless was detected by the antenna was not connected to the card resulting verrrry slow connection.

Thanks so much for this post - hugely useful. I've been suffering precisely the problem you describe. Pings to www.google.com range from 40ms to 1000ms and I have huge drop rates (30%+). The first method you described above didn't fix the problem - pinging my router every 0.2 seconds didn't make the pings to www.google.com any more consistent. But switching to 5G on my home router did fix things. It's now consistent and low latency. Having said that, 5G won't be an option when I"m out and about using someone else's WIFI, so my MBA is still fairly crippled by the problem. Any other thoughts on fixing this would be hugely welcome! I've reported this all to Apple as others requested above.

I have a 2013 Macbook Air and what drives me insane is that when I come out of and extended sleep mode, my wifi connects but nothing updates. All email accounts have "!" next to them. My imessage does not update either. I have to restart and then I can function again. If I don't, I miss all messages and emails coming through. This sucks. I do not have this issue on my earlier model Macbook Pro. Both running exact version of the OS and software. Had I known this, never would have purchased the AIR.

Add my 2cents to this. My wife 2013 MBA will not connect ( password wrong or timeout) to hotspots setup on our Verizon or ATT phones. Her MBA works fine on "regular" wifi, just is crap on these 2 carrier hotspots. My new MBP works fine. So does our iPads Her MBA is at 10.8.5, Im at 10.10

Hi, I had the same problems as you. My Wi-Fi on my MacBookPro early 2015 would often stop sending/receiving data for a few seconds then come back. It was still connected to the SSID. Eventually I found that it was an app I had installed called whatpulse. It monitors internet usage. It was obviously creating some kind of network buffer. Removing the app solved my issue 100%

Hello from 2018! After updating my MBA (early 2015) to High Sierra, I've had nothing but issues with WiFi after resume from sleep (802.11g network). Won't connect, tells me the password is wrong, huge latency/packet loss. Eventually connect after the 5 turn off/on. My phone and other Acer laptop use the WiFi with no issues. Plug in a TB to Ethernet and everything works again. Tried deleting profiles, clearing out the System plist files, same crap every other day. I use this MBA as it's a company assign. I personally wouldn't use the thing as a paperweight (or, based on this fiasco, any other Apple product). How can Apple, that controls the entire hardware/software stack fail to get a 25+ year old technology to work reliably.