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I have a regular white macbook and my wifi says it has a full connection, but my internet won't work at all. My iTunes store wont work, my email won't work...NOTHING WORKS. I have tried everything, turning off my router, calling the apple store, restarting my computer, resetting my PRAM, nothing is working, yet all 5 other apple computers and laptops work in my household. I'm very confused as to what's going on, HELP!

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Can you add some more details about your setup, router etc.? – patrix♦ Oct 14 '12 at 12:43

closed as not a real question by Mark, bassplayer7, bmike♦ Jan 12 at 15:54

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

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I have the exact same problem with my 11" Air. I show full bars, option-clicking the wifi indicator shows -76dB which is actually a pretty decent signal, and no traffic flows. I do get a DHCP address, so I know some of it's working. My iPad3 does not have this issue sitting 6 inches away from the Air.

The kicker? This ONLY happens on my 5GHz network. I have a triple-channel, simultaneous dual-band router (Netgear WNDR4500). If I use the 2.4GHz network it works great. I know that 5GHz propagation is not the same as 2.4GHz propagation, so I expect that while the status bar shows a great signal, it's actually not so great. I am only guessing, but I've come to the conclusion that the wifi driver is misreporting the signal strength. The Wifi Diagnostics Tool in OSX doesn't give much more insight than option-clicking the wifi signal meter in the status bar.

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This isn't a comment, so I'm leaving it as an answer with the leading text clipped out. – Jason Salaz♦ Oct 3 '12 at 8:56
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I had a similar issue I was able to fix this morning.

I had an Airport Extreme connecting my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and Windows PC. All the sudden the PC will not browse or surf the net at all. It can ping websites and IP addresses, bit no surfing. The MacBook and iPhone can surf the net just fine even from the same location. Signal strength was maximized. Channel interference was not the issue. I even formatted the PC and the problem persisted.

Of course a simple router restart and a quick reset did not solve the issue. It turned out the router needed a hard reset by holding the reset button and unplugging it. Of course you might need to consult your router's manual for hard reset instructions.

Hopefully this will solve this issue for you.

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