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M2 MBA drops Wifi connection every 60 minutes 😭

beansbaxter

beansbaxter

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 2, 2015
85
23
Seattle
A few weeks ago, I purchased a new M2 MBA and love it, however the only annoyance is Wifi keeps dropping every hour.

This happens with every Wifi connection, from my home router to coffee shops to business Wifi connections. I set a timer on my phone when it happens, and the drop occurs exactly at 60 minutes. Frustrating, to say the least.

This never happened on previous Macbooks. Is this happening because Wifi 6 (802.11ax) on the M2 is not compatible with most routers? Or is this a known issue with the M2 MBA?

If it matters, I'm running the latest macOS Monterey 12.6.2 (21G320)
 
beansbaxter said:
A few weeks ago, I purchased a new M2 MBA and love it, however the only annoyance is Wifi keeps dropping every hour.

This happens with every Wifi connection, from my home router to coffee shops to business Wifi connections. I set a timer on my phone when it happens, and the drop occurs exactly at 60 minutes. Frustrating, to say the least.

This never happened on previous Macbooks. Is this happening because Wifi 6 (802.11ax) on the M2 is not compatible with most routers? Or is this a known issue with the M2 MBA?

If it matters, I'm running the latest macOS Monterey 12.6.2 (21G320)
Click to expand...
No issues at all with mine and I’m running the latest Ventura update. No issues prior on Monterey.

I would suggest updating to Ventura as if you call apple about the issue, that’s the first thing they will tell you to do.
 
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I'd also run the built-in Wireless Diagnostics utility. Let it monitor in the background. Save the report after it logs an error and send this to Apple to narrow the issue down.

Edit: Also, you can start in Safe Mode to see if the problem remains.
 
Last edited:
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As above, run the wireless diagnostics tool and report the error back to Apple when it drops. And/or Google the error to see if anyone else has reported similar.
 
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Thanks everyone. In all my years of using Macbooks, I never knew about this Wireless Diagnostic tool because I never had any Wifi connection problems 😂

Will give this a try, and see if this helps.

Cheers!
 
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I used the Wireless Diagnostic tool, which just said your Wifi dropped connection and to show the diagnostic file to an Apple Support technician.

In the /var/tmp folder is a 400MB WirelessDiagnostics.tar.gz file... after I unzip this, what file(s) should I look for to see what's causing the problem?

Did some Google searches, but cannot find anything to help with reading and understanding these diagnostic reporting archive files...
 
Haven't solved the problem, but turns out it's probably more software-related than hardware.

I gave up trying to understand the Wireless Diagnostic archive of files.

Looked in System Information, Wifi Logs, and I can see the errors happening every hour.

Code: 
Fri Dec 23 13:21:01.080 <airport[381]> ERROR: rapportd (552) is not entitled for com.apple.wifi.join_history, will not allow request
Fri Dec 23 13:21:01.086 <airport[381]> ERROR: sharingd (596) is not entitled for com.apple.wifi.join_history, will not allow request
Fri Dec 23 13:21:01.637 <airport[381]> -[dpsManager handleDPSEventWithType:eventInfo:networkName:BSSID:channelInfo:isCriticalAppInUse:]_block_invoke: Ignoring non-dps events while not in monitoring period/ Ignoring DPS event while in monitoring period

Searching for similar errors, I see this is a common issue many people are having with Monterey. More people having the same errors and exact same problems:
I really don't want to upgrade to Ventura, to see if this fixes the problem 😭
 
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As a LONG winded test, reset the unit to factory. Perform the same test with your timer on your phone.
Then see what happens.

PS: I would NOT restore from a backup, I would set up as new...
 
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circatee said:
As a LONG winded test, reset the unit to factory. Perform the same test with your timer on your phone.
Then see what happens.

PS: I would NOT restore from a backup, I would set up as new...
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's my plan! And I never restore from backups, always do factory resets with all my hardware, when I need to set them up.

The first thing I did after I unboxed my MacBook, was update to the latest macOS Monterey, and then did a factory reset, fresh and clean, and start setting it up.

Moving forward, my plan is to try a few different network changes, followed by a factory reset, followed by a Ventura update.

I have less than 4 days before my exchange window closes at the local store, so I'm trying to troubleshoot and solve this as fast as possible.
 
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Before wiping the whole machine, which is a massive disruption, I'd suggest making a brand new user account, rebooting and logging into only that account. You don't have to log into it via iCloud or anything, just keep it simple and vanilla. See if the problem recurs. If it does, it's something in your own user account that's causing the problem.
 
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ignatius345 said:
Before wiping the whole machine, which is a massive disruption, I'd suggest making a brand new user account, rebooting and logging into only that account. You don't have to log into it via iCloud or anything, just keep it simple and vanilla. See if the problem recurs. If it does, it's something in your own user account that's causing the problem.
Click to expand...
Brilliant idea. Another idea, is to merely uninstall all non-standard applications, and see how the WIFI tests go...
 
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Found many more reports of this issue happening, with feedback from developers going back to when Monterey was in beta. And the dropped Wifi connections problem was never fixed with future updates of Monterey.

Two possible solutions, that are last resort is 1) disabling Location Services, and 2) upgrading to Ventura.

This is everything I've tried:
  • Booted in Safe Mode. Waited a few minutes before booting normally.
  • Using Google DNS in Network Settings.
  • Change Network Location from Automatic to my own profile.
  • Change IPV6 in Network Settings to Link-local only.
  • Removed Wifi in Network Settings, rebooted, and added it back again.
But the problem still persists.

Now will trying changing the MTU packet size, manually deleting network plists, and I love the easier idea of adding a second vanila user for troubleshooting purposes...

Appreciate the feedback and ideas from everyone!
 
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It sounds like somehow the length of your DHCP lease has been set to exactly 60 minutes.
That would do it
I have seen something similar on a router and that's usually where the problem is although clearly not in your case
I'm not knowledgeable enough about this to give you reliable advice, I'm just suggesting it as something to check.
Reearch suggests it should be found in /var/db/dhcpclient/leases directory
and the values will be in seconds so yours would somehow be set to 3600.
Good luck
 
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Ruggy said:
It sounds like somehow the length of your DHCP lease has been set to exactly 60 minutes.
That would do it
I have seen something similar on a router and that's usually where the problem is although clearly not in your case
I'm not knowledgeable enough about this to give you reliable advice, I'm just suggesting it as something to check.
Reearch suggests it should be found in /var/db/dhcpclient/leases directory
and the values will be in seconds so yours would somehow be set to 3600.
Good luck
Click to expand...

I had similar thinking, and clicked the "Renew DHCP Lease" button in network settings, about 30 minutes into my session, and the Wifi continued to drop at the original 60 minute mark.

And thanks for your suggestion. I'm an admin of my own machine, but when trying to access that folder, I'm given this error message, "The folder “dhcpclient” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents."

I still have multiple things to try. Having to wait every 60 minutes to see if things work makes this a slow troubleshooting process 😂
 
beansbaxter said:
Thanks everyone. In all my years of using Macbooks, I never knew about this Wireless Diagnostic tool because I never had any Wifi connection problems 😂

Will give this a try, and see if this helps.

Cheers!
Click to expand...
Yer, it's certainly not the most prominent utility. But especially this, and channel scanning software in these times of households having so many WiFi devices. Obviously more so if living in dense apartment buildings.

It sounds like you've pretty much done everything humanly possible re diagnostics. Do send the report to Apple so they can accumulate data. I know you preferred not updating to Ventura and working short of the return period but be interesting to see if the same issue occurs under the latest OS.
 
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Well, unless I post otherwise after this post, I've solved the problem.

After reverting my previous network changes, I realized it didn't matter after deleting my Network plist files here:

Code: 
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration

macOS allowed me to physically delete every file in this directory, with the exception of one file (com.apple.Boot.plist). And this completely cleared out all Network configuration settings. Rebooted my computer, enabled Wifi, assigned DNS to Google, and some of the errors went away in the Wifi logs. The Wifi did not drop at the 60 minute mark, and I thought the problem was solved, until it dropped around the 80 minute mark.

Now the problem was still happening, but it was not every 60 minutes like before.

But now I feel 99% confident about the cause of this problem, after the notes shared in the PSA alert from Meter. Opened Terminal, and ran this command to disable AWDL (Apple Wireless Direct Link):

Code: 
sudo ifconfig awdl0 down

And now it's been three hours, and Wifi has not dropped 🎉

According to that PSA bulletin, AWDL will be enabled again after rebooting macOS. They provide a method to permanently disable it as a background task.

And while I'm not complaining, what I don't understand is what functionality am I losing by disabling AWDL. Looking online, this is what controls the Airdrop function, and the PSA mentions keeping Bluetooth and Airdrop disabled. With AWDL disabled, I have Bluetooth and Airdrop enabled, and I was still able to successfully send and receive via Airdrop between my MBA and iPhone.

The errors in this post are still shown in Wifi logs, anytime I enable my Wifi connection. But I'm not dropping a connection anymore... will update this thread if things change.

Hope that helps out others who may experience the same problem.

And I appreciate everyone who helped with troubleshooting.

Cheers!
 
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Quick follow up...

After running this script to disable AWDL at startup, I rebooted and connected to Wifi. Stayed connected for around 6 hours before Wifi dropped. Did not reboot, connected to Wifi again, and stayed connected for around 7 hours before Wifi dropped. Although I wouldn't necessarily call the issue completely resolved, it's good enough for me.
 
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