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Why, oh why hasn't El Capitan fixed Mac's most infamous WiFi issue after all these years!!!
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It's the Arris TG1672 wireless router provided by my cable company, and I use the DHCP server that is included on that device. Yes, for kicks, I once configured my Linux box to act as DHCP server for the LAN, and yes, the rMBP still had issues. I've also tested the rMBP in multiple wifi networks each with different access point hardware and configurations, and sometimes the issue persisted, other times it went away, sometimes with different results for testing in the very same wifi network. This is clearly a very complex problem, otherwise it would have been successfully patched by now (Apple has "fixed" the problem multiple times now; read the OS X patch release notes) or it would be troubleshoot-able by people who know networking.
I'm not really expecting to find resolution to the problem here; I just registered and posted to express my frustration with the denial that this is an issue, when it's a documented problem which Apple keeps issuing patches to fix -- it it's all just make-believe in out heads, why does Apple release patches for it? hmm -- yet which never goes away. If it hasn't struck you or your setup, just be glad, because for those of us that it does affect, no amount of "fixes" and troubleshooting every resolves the issue. If I didn't so like everything else about my rMBP, this would have been a return.
Wifi problems are indeed rather complex and difficult to troubleshoot. It even gets worse if you have many different kinds of devices, brands, etc. on your network. What works for a particular brand will break things for another. It's a never-ending nightmare 
Good luck though!
Good luck though!OK. Firstly most of your post is unintelligible to me; not having the technical background that you obviously have. So. From my point of view your points are not only beyond me but at the same time almost a proof of my position
.As I tried to read and comprehend the examples you present and also the many others I have read over time it struck me again how varied each problem seemed to be with singular problems being describes by each poster/author. Even the most knowledgeable seemed to drift towards some unknown factor being causal in their case. It is this almost infinite variety of detailed explanation that forces me to look at an overall picture for a reasoned response to a problem that seems universal and individual at the same time
.Accepting the massive variation of detail in each case as overwhelmingly complex with one solution working for some but not others and so on I am forced to conclude that each solution is solving a problem that does not exist for other users.
From this I approach the stated problems, not from the individual differences, but from whatever common ground can be found. Basic set up. Hardware in use. Local geography (electrical).
By approaching the stated problems from this (simplistic if you like) direction more solutions seem to be found, from my experience so far.
By the by, I am not saying software glitches do not exist, just living today proves this otherwise
.As an aside it does seem to me that many responses to requests from people with problems (wifi or other) glean responses initially from people with a depth of software/hardware knowledge followed by a-another similar with a contradictory solution. A basic look at set up and UI usage would reduce, IMHO, the problem to either a solution or at least a focussed, manageable problem that may attract a solution more efficiently. It just struck me that what I am advocating is a form of "Triage".
Regards
Sharkey
OK. Firstly most of your post is unintelligible to me; not having the technical background that you obviously have. So. From my point of view your points are not only beyond me but at the same time almost a proof of my position
As I tried to read and comprehend the examples you present and also the many others I have read over time it struck me again how varied each problem seemed to be with singular problems being describes by each poster/author. Even the most knowledgeable seemed to drift towards some unknown factor being causal in their case. It is this almost infinite variety of detailed explanation that forces me to look at an overall picture for a reasoned response to a problem that seems universal and individual at the same time
Accepting the massive variation of detail in each case as overwhelmingly complex with one solution working for some but not others and so on I am forced to conclude that each solution is solving a problem that does not exist for other users.
From this I approach the stated problems, not from the individual differences, but from whatever common ground can be found. Basic set up. Hardware in use. Local geography (electrical).
By approaching the stated problems from this (simplistic if you like) direction more solutions seem to be found, from my experience so far.
By the by, I am not saying software glitches do not exist, just living today proves this otherwise
As an aside it does seem to me that many responses to requests from people with problems (wifi or other) glean responses initially from people with a depth of software/hardware knowledge followed by a-another similar with a contradictory solution. A basic look at set up and UI usage would reduce, IMHO, the problem to either a solution or at least a focussed, manageable problem that may attract a solution more efficiently. It just struck me that what I am advocating is a form of "Triage".
Regards
Sharkey
What I would say though is that the common factor is a Mac running OS X through a wifi connection. There are a lot of variables in play as to why exactly OS X can't reliably maintain a connection, but basic troubleshooting involves isolating the problem. Back in the days of CD/DVD-ROMs, and floppies before that, if you ever stuck a disk in and it didn't read, you tried several other disks which you were 99% certain worked, and if those all failed to read too, then you knew it had to be a problem with the disk drive, rather than the disks. Likewise, Bootcamp allows you to try isolating the problem by running a different OS; that worked for me, but of course I didn't spend the Apple premium to run Windows as my primary operating system on my rMBP. That evidence, along with the same experience from others -- including in this very thread -- and along with the fact that the rMBP is the only device in my LAN having this problem, all very strongly suggest that we're dealing with an operating system bug in OS X that has cropped up from time to time over the past 14 years but which was made drastically worse by the release of OS X Yosemite. Now again, because of the complexity of the problem, I can't say for 100% certain it's OS X -- just like in the disk drive example it would be possible, but extremely unlikely, that all of your disks spontaneously failed -- but all signs point to OS X as being the culprit, because it is the common factor.
In the absence of a patch or OS update that actually fixes the problem, all I can do is keep trying different configuration tweaks, and keep Googling for ideas.
The problem is that the Mac with OS X is also the only component, meaning, that most don't have another device running something completely different. That means that we cannot establish any conclusion at all. I think Reality4711's post sums things up very well. You need to look at it individually due to all the various things that are at play and the fact that there simply is no common denominator (besides wifi).
Apple wouldn't devote the kind of engineering resources that they have to patching a non-existent problem. It boggles my mind that Apple can release multiple OS updates with release notes like "Fixes WiFi connectivity issues related to waking from sleep.", where it's abundantly clear that Apple has identified a commonly reported problem and is trying (and failing) to fix it, yet there are still users that will say "Well, I'm not convinced OS X is the issue here." A subset of Apple fans may think OS X is blameless in the problem -- I would imagine these are the same users who think it's technically impossible for OS X to get malware -- but Apple's OS X engineering team clearly disagrees. This is why Apple users get stereotyped as cult members/abused spouses.
It's clear that a fix isn't going to be forthcoming from this forum, so this is my last post here.
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For the most part my Yosemite Wifi problems have been fixed with El Capitan. I used to get intermittent Wifi outages on my home network but I haven't noticed this occurring again as yet.
That would be because Apple is set on wireless and they have been for years. They were one of the very first to adopt wifi and put it in their notebooks. They haven't got much choice. Any wireless technology has a lot of issues because it can be easily influenced by external factors. It makes wireless tech very very hard and complex. You need to stay on top of things.
You clearly haven't seen any change logs of non-Apple devices and firmware updates from wifi routers and access points (both for consumers as well as for businesses). There hardly are change logs that don't mention that they "fixed wifi issues with <insert_device_of_whatever_brand>". Anyone actually managing a wireless network with devices from various brands will tell you the same thing. After each new OS release from whatever brand there will be tremendous amounts of troubleshooting, debugging and trying out new settings (which usually cause problems with other brands). Try using something like WPA2 plus psk and aes and be amazed at how many devices work fine with that and how many will have a boatload of issues. WPA2 in the enterprise is another famous one. The software you use for RADIUS can greatly determine if it will be somewhat of a success (WPA2+RADIUS support is rather crappy on lots of devices) or an utter disaster.
If you don't read the forums then no, there won't be any fixes. If you do read the forums you'll find plenty of fixes. The only problem is that wifi problems are rather individual and thus not every fix will apply to your situation or even none of them. I'd say that the only real solution to this would be to ditch wifi and start using network cabling again. That just seems to work and is much easier to troubleshoot when it doesn't.
My 2010 MacBook Pro will not auto connect to my WiFi when waking from sleep. The cause is El Capitan because it had ZERO problems with the WiFi before I updated, and it has had the problem since I updated. With a bit of luck Apple will fix the fault.
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I have similar problems with my mbp13. It fails to reconnect after sleep(*), I have to turn off the wifi and turn it on again for it to reconnect. I also have a plethora of other wifi problems, most often the laptop just loses connection and it has to reconnect again (manually). Just today I had to reconnect something like six times. It happens with every router I've tried.
My impression is that these problems become worse after major upgrades, once the .2 release is out, the wifi problems become less noticeable. For the record, my machine also suffers from random freezes that happen several times a month, so it might be a hardware problem. Yep, my faith in the brand has pretty much hit rock bottom.
(*) It doesn't happen every time, though. Only sometimes.
My impression is that these problems become worse after major upgrades, once the .2 release is out, the wifi problems become less noticeable. For the record, my machine also suffers from random freezes that happen several times a month, so it might be a hardware problem. Yep, my faith in the brand has pretty much hit rock bottom.
(*) It doesn't happen every time, though. Only sometimes.
I think it has a lot to do with your router. I had the issue with several computers and several routers (cheap ones, to be precise) and several versions of OSX over many years. Finally, I decided to bite the apple (!) and buy an airport extreme. That solved the problem.I can't be the only one.
Given that wifi is inherently problematic it is not surprising Apple spend a lot of time,effort and money on sorting it. They are are however limited to to mass changes , mass fault finding and fixing. Being an individual I see this as a positive without it being a total success. My last post on this subject.
The problems seem to me a constant mass of variables that despite many blanket solutions still bug some of us individually. So let us accept there are problems and sort them out with a case by case methodology. Otherwise revert to cable
.No more to say. Its a universal problem across all manufacturers and users. Digital does not solve all.
G'night
Sharkey
Exactly what is happening to me! I have even performed a clean install of OS X same thing happens.
Their will be a patch released at some point to fix it. It has nothing to do with routers. Apples software quality control isn't the best these days, look at iOS.
The WIFI issues I have experienced on mac have been intermittent connection losses. I have tested it several times by performing a constant ping and observing the drops, though it usually comes back on after about 1-2 minutes, unless I manually turn WIFI off and on again. I think this is software related as this happened with my MBPr 13" as well running Yosemite, right now it is also happening on my 12-inch MBr though it was recently upgraded to El Capitan. Going to attempt a clean install of El Capitan to see if that resolves it. I also have an Airport Extreme router.
Is there a site somewhere that has put together a systematic look at this problem (other than the discoveryd fiasco, which was another problem altogether)? I tried to recreate it on an MBA with Mavericks and then Yosemite and now Mavericks without success (or perhaps "without failure" is more appropriate). I've run on AC and on battery, with Bluetooth on and off, and never had a reconnect problem after waking from sleep. My local network uses a Mac Mini for both dhcp and DNS and an older Airport Extreme for wireless (I use the 2.4 GHz channels). I'd like to know if someone has tried to systematically sort through all of the variables involved to see if there is a setup that never fails to fail regardless of the computer (not router) hardware involved. Someone other than Apple, that is, who will share their results.
The MacBooks have aluminum shell which can act as a shield, or an additional antenna, or even a reflector. Your reception also depends on electronic "noise" such as other routers, phones, etc. That's why sometimes stupid cheap plastic devices behave much better than the expensive unibody MacBooks.
The rumors that I've heard say that beamforming, routers with active signal management, and 5GHz channels can help with the wifi, but that's just rumors. 5GHz isn't always available and routers that perform beamforming and actively manage the wifi signal are expensive and few.
The problem is with 2.4GHz being overcrowded. It is a frequency free to use for anybody which is exactly what is happening. This results in many things running on the frequency from garage doors to wifi to rc cars/helis/etc. to communication devices and so on. This has a major effect on wifi where only 20% of packages being transmitted actually containing the data. The other 80% is purely overhead for creating and maintaining the connection. There are now various studies that are looking into these things seeing if they can improve wifi (usually by changing some of its algorithms).
The 5GHz frequency doesn't have that issue as it isn't used that much and it can get easily blocked by doors, walls, windows, etc. It allows for higher speeds but you need more access points in order to cover every part of a building. In businesses and such that is no problem since you already need a much higher density network than at home due to the amount of wireless clients (20 to 25 would be the general max of 1 access point). At home this will be a problem since most people are used to having 1 access point instead of multiple ones.
Other features like beamforming help no matter which frequency you use.
@jasnw: you usually start out with doing a wifi survey. You can use the free version of Netspot to do this. If you want more info about troubleshooting wifi issues I'd suggest checking out forums of some manufacturers of wifi equipement such as Ubiquity. There will be a high amount of very technical stuff.
The 5GHz frequency doesn't have that issue as it isn't used that much and it can get easily blocked by doors, walls, windows, etc. It allows for higher speeds but you need more access points in order to cover every part of a building. In businesses and such that is no problem since you already need a much higher density network than at home due to the amount of wireless clients (20 to 25 would be the general max of 1 access point). At home this will be a problem since most people are used to having 1 access point instead of multiple ones.
Other features like beamforming help no matter which frequency you use.
@jasnw: you usually start out with doing a wifi survey. You can use the free version of Netspot to do this. If you want more info about troubleshooting wifi issues I'd suggest checking out forums of some manufacturers of wifi equipement such as Ubiquity. There will be a high amount of very technical stuff.
I have this issue on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)... It happened occasionally with Yosemite... I would have to turn my wifi off and on to get it to reconnect to my network... now with El Capitan EVERY time my computer goes to sleep and wakes up it is disconnected and I have to toggle wifi off and on, sometimes that doesn't even work and I have to restart my computer and then it works fine. Super frustrating
I had this same issue on a 2011 27" iMac -- I was able to fix it by changing the DNS server in the wifi settings to 8.8.8.8... I haven't tried that yet
Yes I am experiencing this problem on my iMac which I purchased 5 months ago. I updated Yosemite to 10.10.5 - no change. Then I installed El Capitan - no change. The work around for me is to toggle wifi off and back on again.
Hey I'm reading this thread for a while and finally decided to signup just to write my rant too.
Bought a mbp retina 2015 few months ago with pre-installed Yosemite and had a lot of wifi drops, when the macbook woke up after being in Stop mode. I had to toggle the wifi on and off to restore the connectivity, but then it dropped again after 10-15 minutes. I did ALL Yosemite updates and none of them fixed this issue.
Then finally I installed El Capitan 3 days ago and everything worked fine. I've tested it a lot, putting the macbook in Stop and waking it up. The problem was gone.....until today!!
I'm loosing connection again, but this time even without putting the macbook in Stop. Toggling WiFi off and On again helps to get connection but it drops again after a while.
Compared to Yosemite seems a lot better, since I had 3 days without a single drop, but I wish Apple could definitely fix this damn issue.
Some other useful info:
I have a macbook 2009 with Snow Leopard which is working just fine with no drops at all (since 2009!).
I also have iPhone and iPad and their wifi is good too.
My wife has a macbook air with Mavericks and it's running fine too.
I've tried to turn off every device to see if there was an improvement but that didn't fix the drops in both Yosemite and El Capitan. Even if the macbook is the only one turned on it shows the wifi issue.
Unfortunately I can't do tests on my router because it's provided by my ISP and it's blocked, I can't access the full settings page.
Do you suggest me to buy an Airport Extreme?
Bought a mbp retina 2015 few months ago with pre-installed Yosemite and had a lot of wifi drops, when the macbook woke up after being in Stop mode. I had to toggle the wifi on and off to restore the connectivity, but then it dropped again after 10-15 minutes. I did ALL Yosemite updates and none of them fixed this issue.
Then finally I installed El Capitan 3 days ago and everything worked fine. I've tested it a lot, putting the macbook in Stop and waking it up. The problem was gone.....until today!!
I'm loosing connection again, but this time even without putting the macbook in Stop. Toggling WiFi off and On again helps to get connection but it drops again after a while.
Compared to Yosemite seems a lot better, since I had 3 days without a single drop, but I wish Apple could definitely fix this damn issue.
Some other useful info:
I have a macbook 2009 with Snow Leopard which is working just fine with no drops at all (since 2009!).
I also have iPhone and iPad and their wifi is good too.
My wife has a macbook air with Mavericks and it's running fine too.
I've tried to turn off every device to see if there was an improvement but that didn't fix the drops in both Yosemite and El Capitan. Even if the macbook is the only one turned on it shows the wifi issue.
Unfortunately I can't do tests on my router because it's provided by my ISP and it's blocked, I can't access the full settings page.
Do you suggest me to buy an Airport Extreme?
Hey I'm reading this thread for a while and finally decided to signup just to write my rant too.
Bought a mbp retina 2015 few months ago with pre-installed Yosemite and had a lot of wifi drops, when the macbook woke up after being in Stop mode. I had to toggle the wifi on and off to restore the connectivity, but then it dropped again after 10-15 minutes. I did ALL Yosemite updates and none of them fixed this issue.
Then finally I installed El Capitan 3 days ago and everything worked fine. I've tested it a lot, putting the macbook in Stop and waking it up. The problem was gone.....until today!!
I'm loosing connection again, but this time even without putting the macbook in Stop. Toggling WiFi off and On again helps to get connection but it drops again after a while.
Compared to Yosemite seems a lot better, since I had 3 days without a single drop, but I wish Apple could definitely fix this damn issue.
Some other useful info:
I have a macbook 2009 with Snow Leopard which is working just fine with no drops at all (since 2009!).
I also have iPhone and iPad and their wifi is good too.
My wife has a macbook air with Mavericks and it's running fine too.
I've tried to turn off every device to see if there was an improvement but that didn't fix the drops in both Yosemite and El Capitan. Even if the macbook is the only one turned on it shows the wifi issue.
Unfortunately I can't do tests on my router because it's provided by my ISP and it's blocked, I can't access the full settings page.
Do you suggest me to buy an Airport Extreme?
I think it seems limited to people who use third party WIFI access points.
I don't know why, and yes it sucks, but i have made the problem go away for my ex by just replacing her AP with an airport express. You can try and diagnose it, whine about it sucking, etc. or just bite the bullet and buy an airport express. At least then you can point the finger at Apple and demand they fix it, with a third party access point they'll just (possibly rightly so) blame the other device; if they're both apple it is definitely their problem to fix.
I haven't had any issues with my all-airport setup for years, other than a beta of Mavericks a while back.
I suspect the above is why - Apple Airport network?
As per my post above, i fixed a similar issue for my ex by installing an Airport Express.
Yup, it sucks, but it did fix the problem, and they aren't that expensive and at least as far as I have seen, they make the problem go away. And if it doesn't go away, you can 100% blame apple and hassle them about it.