MacBook Pro (retina) 'drops' home network connection

[Joe Dyble]

Hello

Sorry if this has been posted elsewhere... I did have a good look around.

I'm running MacBook Pro w/ retina display, BT infinity 2 with homehub 4, wireless speakers, apple tv and a WD nas drive.

Every once and a while, the macbook will 'drop' it's connection to the NAS drive, the internet will stop, connection to the wifi speakers will go down. However, the WiFi signal says it's still strong.

The only test I've been able to think of myself is to check the 'speedtest' app on my iPhone whilst this is happening... the iPhone works fine. This leads me to think it's the macbook rather than homehub.

I appreciate this could be a few things... does anyone have any 'diagnostic tools' of sorts that will help me work out what it is?

At the moment I have to restart the macbook which always seems to resolve the problem

Thanks!!

 

[Bruno09]

Hello,

you can test the connection between your wifi access point and the MBP.

Use Network Utility (Apps / Utilities), ping tool.

Ping continuously your access point (AP) : you should get something like this, with a short ping time, and more important, a time that is almost constant.

PING 192.168.1.50 (192.168.1.50): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.586 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.574 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.680 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.443 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=2.632 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=2.417 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=2.488 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=2.379 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=2.526 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=2.607 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.50: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=2.554 ms

If the time varies a lot (i.e 2 to 20 or 50ms or more), or if you have "request timed out" from time to time (=no connection), then try changing the wifi channel of your AP.

 

[Joe Dyble]

thank you... pings are in progress...

 

[yokken]

This happened with my late-2008 MBP and Mountain Lion. The wifi signal would say it's still going strong but all connections would drop. Strangely, I could still send and receive pings. It seems like the TCP stack just... borks. I tried everything... even swapped in drivers from Snow Leopard. I could not fix it. On top of other problems I just restored back to SL. The wifi drops sometimes happened once an hour, sometimes 5 times an hour. It was infuriating to say the least.

Search Apple's support forums, there's plenty of others just like you... sorry bud.

 

[Joe Dyble]

Typically, I've now had constant connection since the pings have been going. I'll let you know if I find some sort of fix.

 

[Bruno09]

You could try changing the wifi channel of your access point.

If you want to see all the networks around and the channels they use, use iStumbler, then choose the best channel (the less used).

Also you can use "Wifi Signal" (App Store) which will suggest the best channels to use if you have some interferences issues.

Also you could try this : on the MBP, turn wifi off, in system preferences / advanced, delete your network, then turn wifi on and reconnect.

Further steps exist :
- step 2 : do step one without turning wifi on, plus go to Keychains, delete your network in system AND user.
Then turn wifi on, and connect, you will be asked the network password.

- step 3 is step 2 + deleting all network related .plist files in HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.

 

[case2001]

If it only does it with you home network. I would bet money on the router as the issue. I had similar issues with my macbook pro "stuttering" if you will with loads and larger file transfers on my network to my NAS. I lived with it. But my wife's ThinkPad would not just delay but drop network connectivity intermittently. No signal. It would take 5 to 10 seconds to re-establish. I checked all of her settings and everything good. Finally, tried it on a different network WIFI and no problems.

My router had no reports of these issues that I could find, however when I looked at my home network traffic I decided to move up to a much more robust wireless router.

Problems have disappeared. I was shocked at the improvement in my local network through put as well as improvement in internet transfer speeds. Before, I simply thought these were limitations with my WIFI and network traffic. But upgraded router has made a huge improvement.