M1 MacBook Pro 13-inch Wi-Fi stops working during heavy use

[advantechnica]

My brand new MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 is having issues maintaining Wi-Fi connectivity during heavy use. I notice that the Wi-Fi drops out when I push over 30-50MB/s down. All other devices on the same AP here at the office seem to be working fine, so it's definitely isolated to the M1 Mac.

Things I've observed:

1. Wi-Fi doesn't disconnect.
2. The DHCP lease is still active.
3. Traffic completely stops moving.
4. I can't ping, so I know it's not DNS.

The only resolution I've found is rebooting the machine. I'm now trying to reinstall Big Sur as a latch ditch effort, but of course, the network keeps dropping out before it can even download the recovery image. I guess if I get desperate, I'll use an ethernet adapter.

Is anyone else having similar issues?

 

[anubis1980]

careful with reinstalling big sur... I did this yesterday cos I messed up my Mac playing around with it, and even though I was on 11.01 I got the personalisation error. apple were no help. their instructions didn't work in the end I had to erase it via iCloud and that seemed to fix it so I could reinstall. anyway sorry for off topic just don't want to see you end up like me spending hours trying to fix it when reinstalling it!

I haven't had what you have described I've downloaded lots of stuff and its been fine, sorry. hope you sort it.

 

[advantechnica]

careful with reinstalling big sur... I did this yesterday cos I messed up my Mac playing around with it, and even though I was on 11.01 I got the personalisation error. apple were no help. their instructions didn't work in the end I had to erase it via iCloud and that seemed to fix it so I could reinstall. anyway sorry for off topic just don't want to see you end up like me spending hours trying to fix it when reinstalling it!

I haven't had what you have described I've downloaded lots of stuff and its been fine, sorry. hope you sort it.

Yea, it's a nightmare. Seems to be working fine over ethernet, Wi-Fi is just broken though as far as I'm concerned. Debating about swapping out the machine, but again, this is a new platform for Apple so there are probably a ton of bugs to work out.

 

[advantechnica]

Yea, it's a nightmare. Seems to be working fine over ethernet, Wi-Fi is just broken though as far as I'm concerned. Debating about swapping out the machine, but again, this is a new platform for Apple so there are probably a ton of bugs to work out.

Update - Tried to reinstall OS X using this guide: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211983 and followed the terminal instructions.

 

[ArPe]

You shouldn’t need to reinstall. That should always be the last solution. First check your network, sites you interact with and other cross check with other Macs (if you have any). Second create a new user account to see if that is affected. If that user is unaffected then you might have some rogue daemon or app.

Reinstall should be when everything else fails.

 

[advantechnica]

Another update: I managed to fix the issue installing Big Sur. The trick is to delete all partitions, format Macintosh HD and rename it to "Untitled" without quotes. No need to go into DFU mode or run terminal commands. Be sure to unmount and drop the "Data" partition if you haven't already.

 

[intrivil]

Another update: I managed to fix the issue installing Big Sur. The trick is to delete all partitions, format Macintosh HD and rename it to "Untitled" without quotes. No need to go into DFU mode or run terminal commands. Be sure to unmount and drop the "Data" partition if you haven't already.

Is the issue with wifi still the same?

 

[torncanvas]

I reinstalled clean and had the same issue with dropping WiFi. Specifically I saw the issue while downloading the installer package, when the display turned off and then I’d wake it up. A few seconds after waking the download would stop, as if WiFi cut out. It happened several times, but not every time.

I ended up adding a flag to curl like so:

curl -L -o [output file path here] -C - [Apple CDN url here]

This allows you to resume a dropped download.

I posted what I did in the personalization error thread, which has several good recommendations, the Apple help article didn’t work for me.

 

[DeanL]

I have that issue too, and had it with my 2019 MacBook Pro. Often it occurs when videoconferencing: the Wi-Fi will disconnect for a few seconds then reconnects.
I'll try a clean install.

 

[smoking monkey]

Just to clarify.
OP: you did a clean install with no partitions and that solved the wifi issue? Or you were able to resolve the issue of installing Big Sur?
Torn Canvas: you reinstalled clean, then had issues or you had issues and then reinstalled?

Thanks.

 

[torncanvas]

Apologies for the confusion, I experienced issues with my download suddenly stopping while I was reinstalling Big Sur. I only noticed that’s what was happening because I was using curl in Terminal to perform the download, since erasing with Disk Utility in Recovery seems to temporarily “brick” many M1s, even in 11.0.1, with that personalization error. Curl can show the stats during download so I could see right when it would stop.

It could be I’ll continue to have issues moving forward, so I’ll keep an eye on it now that I know to look for it.

 

[intrivil]

My issue is that while the downloading is stopped, and all other internet access is cut off, it is still shown as connected on the Wifi icon. It will not get reconnected automatically, but all I have to do is turn off wifi and turn it on again, the problem would go away.
Extremely frustrating. It happens on both 5ghz and 2.4ghz, and only while downloading a large file that the issue appears. This is my first macbook and it sucks.

 

[mbirth]

For the record: I have a similar issue - but with Ethernet. I've got an Anker PowerExpand that has the same Realtek 8153 chip like the Belkin adapter Apple is selling. It works just fine for about 3-4 hours (maybe it's by amount, or by time - don't know) but then it will suddenly stop transferring any data. You can unplug the Ethernet cable and replug it and it will properly detect the cable status - however, no DHCP address and no traffic at all.

Unplugging the whole adapter and plugging it in again makes it work for a few hours again.

No issues with WiFi, though.

 

[dieselm]

My issue is that while the downloading is stopped, and all other internet access is cut off, it is still shown as connected on the Wifi icon. It will not get reconnected automatically, but all I have to do is turn off wifi and turn it on again, the problem would go away.
Extremely frustrating. It happens on both 5ghz and 2.4ghz, and only while downloading a large file that the issue appears. This is my first macbook and it sucks.

Did you every fix or find the source this problem? It's happenning to me.