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Help wifi problem

R

rms3205

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 13, 2015
2
0
Halifax, England
Looking for a solution to my wifi problem.

I have just bought a new MacBook Air. I already own a 2007 model.

I live in France for 6 months of the year. Where I live, I have wireless wifi access, which is restricted to 2 devices. Needing more than that, I got around it using the old MacBook with an Engenius EUB9801 USB dongle. This let me use the MacBook as a wifi hotspot.

When I plugged the Engenius into the new MacBook......nothing, its not even recognised.

Question is, has anyone found a way to make the MacBook Air into a hotspot? Please bear in mind, I am accessing wireless wifi, not accessed by any hard wire. There is no ethernet socket on the new MacBook.

Any ideas?
 
Don't know a massive amount about this, but have you tried:

1. Looking to see if there are drivers and/or software for the USB wifi dongle that might get it working again.

2. There might be another USB wifi adapter that would work for you.

3. Is the restriction to two wifi devices a limitation by the internet provider, or by an old router? If it does have an ethernet port, you could connect an Apple router, like an airport extreme, and use that for wifi duties.

David
 
Hi David.
Already searched for updated drivers, nothing past 10.6. Like I said, the USB doesn't even light up, or get recognised.

Just wondered if anyone out there has the same problem as me, and already found an alternative USB?

The 2 device limit is imposed by the ISP, I get the signal wirelessly, so no Ethernet connection anywhere.

Someone out there will have a workaround for this....just hope they're on this forum!

Ray
 
My month old MBA has majorly slow WiFi. It takes about 45 seconds for Safari to open Google. Opening the App Store fails two out of three times. Two apps are trying to update now. They went on for hours before I shut it down. I am not sure how to cancel the update. I have no need for whatever iMovie or iPhoto do anyway.

I have not changed anything. Ok, well I snarled Garage Band, Message, and FaceTime, but it was slow before that. I have not downloaded any apps (too slow to bother). I will go buy an Ethernet adapter, but really I expected WiFi to work.

I bought this thing because of battery life, portability, relyability, etc. I only plan to run Linux in a VM, and use my Office 365 subscription. The rest has no value. But if the WiFii is sort of important.

My other devices have no problem with Wifi (Including the iPad I am using to type this). I could never consider watching YouTube on it.
 
Last edited:
Linuxpro said:
My month old MBA has majorly slow WiFi. It takes about 45 seconds for Safari to open Google. Opening the App Store fails two out of three times. Two apps are trying to update now. They went on for hours before I shut it down. I am not sure how to cancel the update. I have no need for whatever iMovie or iPhoto do anyway.

I have not changed anything. Ok, well I snarled Garage Band, Message, and FaceTime, but it was slow before that. I have not downloaded any apps (too slow to bother). I will go buy an Ethernet adapter, but really I expected WiFi to work.

I bought this thing because of battery life, portability, relyability, etc. I only plan to run Linux in a VM, and use my Office 365 subscription. The rest has no value. But if the WiFii is sort of important.

My other devices have no problem with Wifi (Including the iPad I am using to type this). I could never consider watching YouTube on it.
Click to expand...

What have you done to debug the problem?

----------
rms3205 said:
...
Question is, has anyone found a way to make the MacBook Air into a hotspot? Please bear in mind, I am accessing wireless wifi, not accessed by any hard wire. There is no ethernet socket on the new MacBook.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Dunno why your wireless dongle would have stopped working. I guess you could try a different one, since they're so cheap. You could also get a cheap ethernet-to-USB dongle. The Apple one isn't super expensive ($29?) but you can also get basically the same thing from other manufacturers for under $15.
 
I am only using the built in Wifi as of yet. Had not tried to debug it yet. My old Samsung had the same problem, but it got better with the OTA update.

The 3Com Wifi routers will get a software update tonight (workplace). I will see if it works better tomorrow.
 
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Linuxpro said:
I am only using the built in Wifi as of yet. Had not tried to debug it yet. My old Samsung had the same problem, but it got better with the OTA update.

The 3Com Wifi routers will get a software update tonight (workplace). I will see if it works better tomorrow.
Click to expand...

So wifi is important to you but you've gone for a month with it being unusable but have done nothing to diagnose the problem. Interesting.
 
motrek said:
So wifi is important to you but you've gone for a month with it being unusable but have done nothing to diagnose the problem. Interesting.
Click to expand...
I did not take it with me. It has not proven itself usable enough to score space in my carry on.

I have been back only since Monday.
 
Linuxpro said:
I did not take it with me. It has not proven itself usable enough to score space in my carry on.

I have been back only since Monday.
Click to expand...

Interesting that you've only barely used your MBA and have spent no time or effort investigating the problem but you automatically assume something is wrong with the laptop.
 
motrek said:
Interesting that you've only barely used your MBA and have spent no time or effort investigating the problem but you automatically assume something is wrong with the laptop.
Click to expand...

I guess the fact that four other devices, in my cube, do not have the same problem counts for nothing?

Whatever the problem is, I am sure there is a "workaround". Honestly "workarounds" are expected if you are using a Windows, or Android device. We pay a premium for Apple devices. I agree the quality is better than say Dell. When I pay a premium for Apple I expect not to have to seek "workarounds".

With regard to the problem, our routers were updated last night. Evidently some incompatibility was fixed. This morning Google comes up faster (four seconds or so) on my MBA, (almost half as quickly as it does on the Windows machine issued by my boss). .

There is still a problem. When I have time, I will go get a USB Ethernet adapter and try it out.

The Apple GUI is excellent. The energy management is excellent. The MBA goes into hibernation instantly, and recovers nearly instantly. Even cold boots are very fast.

The WiFi is somewhat lacking.

Overall I give the MBA a B+. It is only a Wifi away from an A.
 
Linuxpro said:
I guess the fact that four other devices, in my cube, do not have the same problem counts for nothing?

Whatever the problem is, I am sure there is a "workaround". Honestly "workarounds" are expected if you are using a Windows, or Android device. We pay a premium for Apple devices. I agree the quality is better than say Dell. When I pay a premium for Apple I expect not to have to seek "workarounds".
...
Click to expand...

That's interesting that some of your devices work but it doesn't prove that the router is working correctly. It may be implementing the wifi standards incorrectly, but incorrectly in such a way that it's still compatible with some devices.

Where do you live that you can't just take the laptop to a Starbucks and see if it works there?
 
motrek said:
That's interesting that some of your devices work but it doesn't prove that the router is working correctly. It may be implementing the wifi standards incorrectly, but incorrectly in such a way that it's still compatible with some devices.

Where do you live that you can't just take the laptop to a Starbucks and see if it works there?
Click to expand...

I emigrated from California to Singapore three years ago (Citizenship not changed yet). Internet in Singapore is equal and often better than in North America.

I have a 300MB fiber connection in my flat, with a T-Link router. The problem exists there as well. Here at the office I have a T3 line with 3COM routers. I have not taken the MBA to Starbucks. I can try this weekend.

Thx
 
Linuxpro said:
I emigrated from California to Singapore three years ago (Citizenship not changed yet). Internet in Singapore is equal and often better than in North America.
...
Click to expand...

I don't see how any of that is relevant to a discussion about wifi.

If you've tried the laptop with two different routers and it has the same problem with both then I agree, it might be the laptop.

Although if one of the routers got updated and it mostly fixed the problem, that points to a problem with the router(s).

It's possible that there's a problem with the laptop but you must understand that it would be a problem with your laptop in particular and not every single MBA, right?

I mean, Apple sells tens of millions of these laptops. If nobody could use them to watch a YouTube video I think we would have heard about it by now.

So either fix your router situation or get your laptop fixed but please stop whining about the MBA's wifi being slow.
 
When I first bought my MacBook Air 2013 I had really bad wifi speeds. It kept cutting out, slowing down, etc. Then I noticed it kept defaulting to my 2.4GHz network instead of the 5GHz one. I disabled the 2.4 (which apparently the MBA hated) and haven't had one problem since.
 
I am getting a screaming 200 Kbits (not Mb) per second. From what I have been reading on Google, a lot of people are having this issue. The machine sitting right next to it is getting 45Mb per second on the same router.

Based on what Rawbert said, and a dozen other posts (read on Google), Yosemite has a bug that causes issues with 5Gb Wifi. At least for now, I am going to assume that it the problem.

Had I not mentioned Singapore having good internet, someone would have said it is the local internet.

I just have to figure out how to disable the 5Gb Wifi to find out. I think I will have my answer the weekend.
 
Last edited:
Linuxpro said:
I am getting a screaming 200 Kbits (not Mb) per second. From what I have been reading on Google, a lot of people are having this issue. The machine sitting right next to it is getting 45Mb per second on the same router.
Click to expand...

And I get megabytes per second with my MBA. If you're trying to argue that MBAs have slow wifi, how can mine be fast?

Linuxpro said:
Based on what Rawbert said, and a dozen other posts (read on Google), Yosemite has a bug that causes issues with 5Gb Wifi. At least for now, I am going to assume that it the problem.
...
I just have to figure out how to disable the 5Gb Wifi to find out. I think I will have my answer the weekend.
Click to expand...

Please stop calling it "5Gb." It's 5GHz, i.e., gigahertz. That's the frequency. Completely, completely different from Gb which stands for gigabits.

And if you re-read RawBert's post, you will see that he was having problems with the 2.4GHz frequency, not 5GHz.

And how much do you really have to figure out to disable one frequency or the other? That's usually front-and-center on router configuration pages.

I'm sorry if I seem snippy. It may have to do with the alias you've chosen on this forum. I don't know what you meant by "Linuxpro" but it sounds like "Linux professional." If you do make your living using Linux I would have expected a certain amount of technical proficiency.
 
motrek said:
And I get megabytes per second with my MBA. If you're trying to argue that MBAs have slow wifi, how can mine be fast?



Please stop calling it "5Gb." It's 5GHz, i.e., gigahertz. That's the frequency. Completely, completely different from Gb which stands for gigabits.

And if you re-read RawBert's post, you will see that he was having problems with the 2.4GHz frequency, not 5GHz.

And how much do you really have to figure out to disable one frequency or the other? That's usually front-and-center on router configuration pages.

I'm sorry if I seem snippy. It may have to do with the alias you've chosen on this forum. I don't know what you meant by "Linuxpro" but it sounds like "Linux professional." If you do make your living using Linux I would have expected a certain amount of technical proficiency.
Click to expand...

Yes, I mistyped it. I am using my iPhone. Obviously I meant 5Ghz. I mistype things all the time. It gets me called, "stupid", "uneducated", and lots of other things. Anyway, it does not justify a personal attack.

I am a Linux professional (professional by definition, means it is my profession, not my hobby).

I will be the first to admit that I made a very expensive mistake buying a macbook. I thought I was getting a mature product that was relatively bug free. But I see that OS-X is just about as problematic as ios8. At this point I am wishing I had my iPhone 5 with ios7 back, and never bought the iPhone 6+ as ios8 is terrible, but that is another story.

I will keep trying to make it work. In the end I may just blow out OS-X, and install Linux.

Obviously this site is not for me.
 
Linuxpro said:
Yes, I mistyped it. I am using my iPhone. Obviously I meant 5Ghz. I mistype things all the time. It gets me called, "stupid", "uneducated", and lots of other things. Anyway, it does not justify a personal attack.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you "obviously" meant. You're the same linux professional who logs in as root (?!) and seems to think that disabling a frequency band on his router is a weekend project, when that's really one of the first things you should have tried and you could have done it in the amount of time it took for one of your YouTube videos to not load. I'm not going to make any assumptions about what you do and don't know about technology.

Linuxpro said:
I will be the first to admit that I made a very expensive mistake buying a macbook. I thought I was getting a mature product that was relatively bug free. But I see that OS-X is just about as problematic as ios8. At this point I am wishing I had my iPhone 5 with ios7 back, and never bought the iPhone 6+ as ios8 is terrible, but that is another story.

I will keep trying to make it work. In the end I may just blow out OS-X, and install Linux.

Obviously this site is not for me.
Click to expand...

Of course OS X and iOS are going to have bugs. Calling them terrible is an exaggeration. As I said, Apple sells tens of millions of these things, and their customer satisfaction numbers are through the roof. I don't think that would be possible if they are really "terrible."

I have been using Linux for various purposes since before version 1.0 of the kernel. It has suffered from some pretty spectacular bugs and incompatibilities over the years. I wouldn't call it terrible though.
 
Ok, now a accept this might be a hardware problem, so I will go get some "Apple care" this week. I have to take a day off work, to do that.

Today (Sunday), I cannot get better than 1.88MBPS though Wifi, even though my iPhone can get better than 40MBPS when using the same hotspot. :apple: I bought a my cheapo ($15) Wifi to USB adapter. It results in 48.24MBPS. Google Chrome, YouTube and my Microsoft 365 cloud work better than they do on the Dell (Windows) Latitude. I have never watched Youtube on a macbook :apple::apple::apple::apple::apple:

I tried using my iPhone as a hotspot, but the connection drops after about four seconds.

With regard to the hardware, I give the macbook Wifi range :apple::apple::apple::apple::apple:. I can see hotspots quite a distance away. Too bad I cannot get data! :apple:

I rate things on a scale of 1 to 5 :apple:'s, just for run. :p
 
You've got an odd issue, but things occur and need to be addressed. FWIW my mid 2013 MBA running Yosemite 10.10.2 is on my 5 GHz wifi homenet, 2.4 GHz is disabled. A wired connection gets 57.4 Mb/s down and 12.6 Mb/s up, while the MBA gets 58.3 Mb/s down and 12.6 Mb/s up. That's the limit of my Komkast bandwidth.

Since other devices on your network are seeing their correct performance numbers, I'd perhaps be suspect of something in hardware.

As an aside, that's some nice bandwidth you're seeing.
 
My aftermarket bluetooth mouse eveidently causes the problem even if bluetooth is not active on the mac.

If I switch off the mouse, and wait about 10 min, the Wifi works.

If I turn the mouse back on, and connect it to my Dell, the mac Wifi goes haywire!

I bought the Apple bluetooth mouse, and my Wifi is happy.

I cannot use the cheap $20 iHome mouse with my Dell if my mac is close by.

I have a lot of bluetooth devices. I guess I have to test each of them near the mac.
 
Linuxpro said:
My aftermarket bluetooth mouse eveidently causes the problem even if bluetooth is not active on the mac.

If I switch off the mouse, and wait about 10 min, the Wifi works.

If I turn the mouse back on, and connect it to my Dell, the mac Wifi goes haywire!

I bought the Apple bluetooth mouse, and my Wifi is happy.

I cannot use the cheap $20 iHome mouse with my Dell if my mac is close by.

I have a lot of bluetooth devices. I guess I have to test each of them near the mac.
Click to expand...

This sort of wireless interaction is not unusual between devices, doesn't matter if it's an Apple device or a MacBook or whatever.

I know a guy who was an electrical engineer for a car stereo that would stop working when a cell phone from a particular manufacturer was in the car. Electromagnetic waves are tricky. Doesn't mean Apple did anything wrong or that MacBooks suffer from a design flaw.

Quick question--bluetooth is obviously 2.4ghz. Did you ever disable the 2.4ghz band on your wifi router to force devices onto the 5ghz band? This should have sorted of almost any unintentional interactions between bluetooth and wifi. Or were you too lazy to figure out how to do this simple thing and just wasted your time going to the Apple store?
 
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