Wifi issues? M1 Macbook Air or Pro

[heisenberg832]

I had Wi-Fi issue on my 2010 16” and 2018 13”, traced it down to unlock with Apple Watch. I have a rock solid Wi-Fi since turning it off.
Maybe it’s the same with M1 model.

Reference thread

Holy sh*t! You may be onto something. I disabled it and so far so good, and my internet speeds have went up significantly. I'll keep you guys posted. I ordered a USB 3.0 wifi adapter last night out of frustration so I'll send it back if I don't need it but if the issue continues, I'll try using that and report my findings.

 

[tommy7600]

I ordered a USB 3.0 wifi adapter last night out

Did the same, however for mine there are no drivers for BigSur and M1. Does your support M1 and Big Sur?

 

[heisenberg832]

Did the same, however for mine there are no drivers for BigSur and M1. Does your support M1 and Big Sur?

I'm not sure, its an ASUS USB-AC68 AC1900 Dual-Band USB 3.0 WiFi Adapter, guess I'll find out if I need to use it. I downloaded MacOS drivers from Asus but I'm not sure if it's M1/Big Sur compatible. If it turns out this Apple Watch thing fixes this problem and/or this adapter isn't compatible, I'll just return it, it's Amazon so no problem. So far I've been using this MacBook since 9AM so...4 hours and not one interruption without Apple Watch unlock. If this turns out to be the problem, I'm clueless as to how that would be causing it but I won't argue with an easy fix to this frustrating problem.

 

[tommy7600]

I have this feature disabled form beginning, so it's not an issue in my case Hope it will help to resolve yours.

 

[nepe]

Holy sh*t! You may be onto something. I disabled it and so far so good, and my internet speeds have went up significantly. I'll keep you guys posted. I ordered a USB 3.0 wifi adapter last night out of frustration so I'll send it back if I don't need it but if the issue continues, I'll try using that and report my findings.

I'll try this to see if it helps. I've had issues with the apple watch connection, but didn't link the two things. I'll let you know if it works for me. Thanks!

 

[hi_robb]

I am a first time Mac owner and I have an M1 MBP and an Asus GT-AX11000 and experiencing the same issue, having to disable/re-enable wifi constantly to get it working again. I am always streaming video in multiple windows like YouTube, Hulu, and an RDP connection to a Windows machine that controls my surveillance cameras and randomly all my video streams, web pages, RDP connection start buffering endlessly before the WiFi icon starts animating and telling me there's no internet connection while there are no issues with any other device, including an iPad, iPhone, Windows PCs, etc. I contacted Apple support and they were of no help. I don't know what to do, I read everything I could about this online and I haven't found a good fix. I see a common denominator with this issue appears to be Asus Wifi 6 routers which is troubling because I paid like $500 for my router and I'm not about to sell it and spend more money to downgrade.

Hello,

Exact same hardware here, M1 MBP and a Asus GT-AX11000 router. I'd constantly be getting issues where data flow would just stop. The MBP would stay connected to Wi-Fi but, the throughput would just die a death. So I had to turn Wi-Fi on and off again to get it going again. I tried turning Wi-Fi AX off, setting manual channels and all sorts to no avail.

Every other device in the house including, hue lights, sky tv, the telly itself, , an Apple TV 4K, Alexa, 3 games consoles, my work laptop and several iPhones were absolutely perfect. Just the MBP with issues.

Thought I'd finally fixed it by assigning a static IP address to the MBP and all seemed good over Xmas. Though all I was doing was browsing the web and light tasks like that.

However, this morning, thanks to Native Instruments finally releasing a Traktor beta which runs on the M1, I attempted to download my iTunes library from the cloud to the MBP and unfortunately, the issue was back with vengeance. I have several thousand songs in my library and every few songs, the throughput would just die again. I reset Wifi about 10 times before I became sick of the issue and started looking at both MBP and router settings. It would have taken me ages to just sit there constantly turning Wi-Fi on and off again every few songs to get my library.

I did wonder if it was to do with Wi-Fi channel width and started having a play, and I found something quite interesting!

Setting the 5Ghz 1 and 2 radios to use the 20/40/80/160 Mhz option (it defaults to 20/40/80) seems to have completely cured my Wi-Fi issues. The MBP pro is still only connecting on the 80Mhz channel width but it's ultra stable at 1200 Mbps. The throughput drops have now gone. It's almost like the MBP Wi-Fi speed was causing the router to hit some sort of rate limit at the 80mhz setting and give up, but setting it to the highest option gave it more headroom.

Thankfully, once done, I was able to download my entire iTunes library without a single further rate drop.

Try it yourself, see if it works for you. Do remember though, that it may cause issues with other devices on your network which don't like that setting. Thankfully all my other devices are quite happy to play along with it set on.

 

[heisenberg832]

Hello,

Exact same hardware here, M1 MBP and a Asus GT-AX11000 router. I'd constantly be getting issues where data flow would just stop. The MBP would stay connected to Wi-Fi but, the throughput would just die a death. So I had to turn Wi-Fi on and off again to get it going again. I tried turning Wi-Fi AX off, setting manual channels and all sorts to no avail.

Every other device in the house including, hue lights, sky tv, the telly itself, , an Apple TV 4K, Alexa, 3 games consoles, my work laptop and several iPhones were absolutely perfect. Just the MBP with issues.

Thought I'd finally fixed it by assigning a static IP address to the MBP and all seemed good over Xmas. Though all I was doing was browsing the web and light tasks like that.

However, this morning, thanks to Native Instruments finally releasing a Traktor beta which runs on the M1, I attempted to download my iTunes library from the cloud to the MBP and unfortunately, the issue was back with vengeance. I have several thousand songs in my library and every few songs, the throughput would just die again. I reset Wifi about 10 times before I became sick of the issue and started looking at both MBP and router settings. It would have taken me ages to just sit there constantly turning Wi-Fi on and off again every few songs to get my library.

I did wonder if it was to do with Wi-Fi channel width and started having a play, and I found something quite interesting!

Setting the 5Ghz 1 and 2 radios to use the 20/40/80/160 Mhz option (it defaults to 20/40/80) seems to have completely cured my Wi-Fi issues. The MBP pro is still only connecting on the 80Mhz channel width but it's ultra stable at 1200 Mbps. The throughput drops have now gone. It's almost like the MBP Wi-Fi speed was causing the router to hit some sort of rate limit at the 80mhz setting and give up, but setting it to the highest option gave it more headroom.

Thankfully, once done, I was able to download my entire iTunes library without a single further rate drop.

Try it yourself, see if it works for you. Do remember though, that it may cause issues with other devices on your network which don't like that setting. Thankfully all my other devices are quite happy to play along with it set on.

View attachment 1709586

My router's wifi settings were already set up the way you have it. I think I may have fixed the issue using a previous poster's advice on disabling unlocking the MBP using my Apple Watch and I haven't experienced a single disconnect for two straight days now even when transferring a lot of data. My speed test numbers increased as well since I disabled this. Time will tell if this is just a weird coincidence that it just happened to stop after the watch setting but I doubt it since I haven't had a single day since I bought this laptop where I didn't have to toggle my wifi at least once every hour or two. Fingers crossed. I'll continue to update this thread, even if the issue doesn't resurface for a few days.

 

[homonto]

I have M1 since November 2020
My wifi disconnection issues started just few days ago
My router is BT (british telecom: Firmware version: v0.24.04.11017-BT)
Default setup is the same SSID on both 2.4 and 5 GHz
Random disconnection on both bands
It must be something related to bluetooth - I see some relation to connecting to my bluetooth headphones and/or DAC.
Still fighting with the problem
Oh, my M1 was never installed fresh - it was migrated using Time Machine from my previous Macbook Pro
I am not even thinking about reinstalling all as vanilla - too many settings there (few years), too many apps but if the disconnection will not be solved by tweaking here and there... I will have to ;-)
I am going to observe this thread ... unfortunately it is about the same as I have problem
Guys, when you narrow down let us all know how to solve it
Seeing that it happens for different routers and different webpages I would rather say it is our M1 and our Big Sur issue than anything else

 

[thadoggfather]

Anecdotally- I have had zero wifi issues at coffee shops or at home with my Airport Extreme

11.0.1, base Air.

 

[hi_robb]

Just a quick update,

Still zero issues since changing the channel width on my router. However I’ve seen a few people say that disabling the Apple Watch unlock of their MBP has fixed the issue for them.

I don’t have an Apple Watch to try that too. I’m much more a proper non smart watch person!

D

 

[rasenderhase]

I solved the Wifi issues by using the 5 GHz band of my wifi network.
Here is an instruction how to set up a separate ssid for 5 GHz: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/switch-on-5ghz-macbook-3796245/

 

[heisenberg832]

Day 4 with not one wifi disconnect since disabling the Apple Watch unlock. It's too bad this isn't the universal cause for everyone's M1 wifi issues or this would be an easy fix for everyone. I'd still like to see how people fix their own M1 wifi issue. I tried the channel width too, disabled 160 MHz and switched it to 20/40/80 and that did nothing. Also tried disabling 802.11ax completely, tried disabling IPv6, and so many other things. Surprisingly, disabling wifi 6 made the MBP completely unusable as the wifi stopped working every 60 seconds.

 

[hi_robb]

Day 4 with not one wifi disconnect since disabling the Apple Watch unlock. It's too bad this isn't the universal cause for everyone's M1 wifi issues or this would be an easy fix for everyone. I'd still like to see how people fix their own M1 wifi issue. I tried the channel width too, disabled 160 MHz and switched it to 20/40/80 and that did nothing. Also tried disabling 802.11ax completely, tried disabling IPv6, and so many other things. Surprisingly, disabling wifi 6 made the MBP completely unusable as the wifi stopped working every 60 seconds.

Thanks for the update Sir,

I agree that it's a shame there isn't a one size fits all fix. Disabling the watch unlock seems to be a good place to start for most people though. I tried most of the things you did on my router to. Though I have IPv6 disabled anyway as I've found it to cause issues in the past with other things (like the work windows laptop). Disabling wifi 6 didn't make things any worse for me but it did drop the speed the laptop connected at. I've no idea why upping the channel width fixed thing for me, but I'm happy it has so far.

Kind regards

D

 

[hi_robb]

Another update from me....

Unfortunately my issue is back. It seems like as long as I do nothing too strenuous from a sustained usage point of view, I'm fine, but the minute I start doing anything involving sustained data then the issue returns.

Just out of interest, today I went through some further testing of downloading large test files. I actually more done this to test my fibre internet connection was working at full bandwidth (300Mbps). I visited the site below and started a 10GB test file download.

Speedtest Files | IP-Toolbox.com

The IP-Toolbox.com Speedtest Service helps you test your Internet connection speed. Download a Speedtest File via your Browser to test your Connection speed.

www.ip-toolbox.com

The good thing is that I started and managed to sustain a 330Mbps download with no issues, but once I hit about the 2.6GB of data downloaded, the throughput started dropping and died a death again :-(

Seems I just got lucky with my iTunes library completing ok and jumped the gun thinking I'd fixed the issue.

I'm going to do some more investigation and try and narrow it down. This will take a while as I'm going to reset my router to factory defaults, try a beta firmware for it and start looking at packet captures in Wireshark. I'm particularly interested in what end Wireshark says in effect stops either sending data or acks that it's received the packets.

I'll keep you all updated on any findings, but this might take a few days.

Kind regards

Dave

 

[DatGronk]

Set up an account to reply here that I am having similar issues:

MacBook Air M1 (8 core).

For me though, when I use Zoom or Teams Video I get very short 2-3 second drop outs of the wifi then it reconnects. I can see the wifi icon do the reconnecting animation.

I am also having similar bluetooth dropouts to my Magic Mouse and magic Keyboard. Very frustrating, computer is a week old.

I called Apple, they got me to reinstall the OS. Didn't change anything.

My router is made by our ISP. It has always been decent and works with every other Apple product we own (MBP 15" 2015, MBP 13" 2017, 2x iPads, 2x iPhones). Router doesn't have 160Hz options an is set to Auto: 20/40/80.

I DO use unlock with Apple Watch, and have just disabled it 20 minutes ago as per this thread...so far so good, but haven't had a Zoom meeting yet...

Will report back. Otherwise I guess it's off to the Genius Bar ?

 

[DatGronk]

1GB test file posted above downloaded fine...

 

[slicktromboner]

I set up a separate SSID for both 2.4 and 5GHz and turned off band steering. Seems to work fine if connected to either SSID now, but the random dropouts when downloading large files begin again if I have a single SSID for both bands and band steering enabled.

 

[DatGronk]

Nope, still having issues. To the Genius Bar I go... will report back. Will probably have to swap the laptop.

 

[nepe]

Tried turning off the Apple Watch unlock and at first it seemed to help. However, now wifi not only doesn't work when waking from sleep stage, it randomly goes out when using the MBA. Again, my wife's 2019 MBA has no problems with the same router. I have rebooted router to be sure that there are no glitches there. The big difference between the two MBAs is the ax wifi 6 capability. It's beginning to look more and more like a chip issue with the newer MBA.

 

[tommy7600]

Did anyone test the beta2 of 11.2?

I saw that they downgraded the WiFi fw from:

- wl0: Dec 8 2020 23:40:39 version 18.27.2.0.7.8.102 FWID 01-be15e2c1

to:

- wl0: Dec 31 2020 21:39:03 version 18.20.222.20.7.8.104 FWID 01-1b2645bc

 

[heisenberg832]

It happened to me again yesterday three times while I was on a FaceTime call with someone. It's weird because what happened was the image froze, and neither I or the other person were able to see each other anymore but we were able to hear each other. Toggling wifi off/on fixed the issue each time. The frequency of this happening definitely went down since the Apple Watch option was turned off, but since this happened again, I don't know if that was coincidence or what. The only thing I was doing at the time of the FaceTime call was I had my Remote Desktop connection opened up on my secondary monitor. Maybe it got overwhelmed with a lot of data coming in from two video streams at once. I just upgraded to Big Sur 11.2 Beta 2 in hopes that I see a difference. I'll continue reporting my findings.

 

[homonto]

I have M1 since November 2020
My wifi disconnection issues started just few days ago
My router is BT (british telecom: Firmware version: v0.24.04.11017-BT)
Default setup is the same SSID on both 2.4 and 5 GHz
Random disconnection on both bands
It must be something related to bluetooth - I see some relation to connecting to my bluetooth headphones and/or DAC.
Still fighting with the problem
Oh, my M1 was never installed fresh - it was migrated using Time Machine from my previous Macbook Pro
I am not even thinking about reinstalling all as vanilla - too many settings there (few years), too many apps but if the disconnection will not be solved by tweaking here and there... I will have to ;-)
I am going to observe this thread ... unfortunately it is about the same as I have problem
Guys, when you narrow down let us all know how to solve it
Seeing that it happens for different routers and different webpages I would rather say it is our M1 and our Big Sur issue than anything else

UPDATE: I think my problem is solved by deleting all files from /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ as per https://macreports.com/how-to-reset-network-settings-on-mac/
Fingers crossed

 

[heisenberg832]

Try to use QoS on your router and limit bandwidth to 500 mbps on M1.

I'll try that now, If someone told me to jump into a sewage pipe fix this permanently.

 

[geejay9876]

The MBA M1 WIFI seems to be very sensitive to noise from USB 3.0 devices. I had to clamp a ferrite bead on the connector cable of my USB hub to get WIFI working at all.

 

[jeroneanderson]

I bought the M1 macbook air in part because it was the first Apple computer to FINALLY support 802.11ax/WiFi 6. It is frustrating to find that when connected to my WiFi 6 router, the connection is slower than when connecting with 2.4GHz 802.11n. All of my other WiFi 6 devices connect much faster in the same location.... Is this an Apple hardware problem? or something that can be fixed in an OS update?