MacOS – How to diagnose connection timeouts when connecting to a WiFi hotspot

airportmacoswifi

I am having difficulty troubleshooting this error message:

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I don't get any indication any details about the failed connection attempt.

How can I diagnose such timeouts and resolve the connection issue?

I am aware of and have tried methods like rest your airport, reset the computer, delete profiles, down to install new operating system and rather than have people guess (and then vote for) specific causes like has happened on this thread, I'd like to know how to pick apart the connection process to know where the problem lies.

When I successfully connect, system information has excellent details:

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However, without changing anything, at a later time, I will time out again when joining. Can I see the details of the process for the connection and find what is making it fail? What would it take to create or access a log file of the wifi connection process?

Best Answer

Don't have the solution but have interesting observation!!

My WiFi scan shows the SSID that I want to connect to

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and in Terminal the Airport -s shows same SSID

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I was monitoring the Console during the event.

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The Associate event still shows the Correct SSID

<airportd[535]> associate: INFO: airportd associate: network=<CWNetwork: 0x7fec12802ce0> [ssid=Eurona900850808-81, bssid=02:0c:42:39:95:94, security=Open, rssi=-80, channel=<CWChannel: 0x7fec12802cf0> [channelNumber=7(2GHz), channelWidth={20MHz}], ibss=0], is8021X=0, remember=1

After few lines of other WiFi activity this comes up:

<kernel> Searching for networks with ssid Eurona900850808-8

WAIT: where did the last digit go, it supposed to be the Eurona900850808-81, but it shows Eurona900850808-8

Here is the rest from the Console:

Fri Sep 13 23:22:55.92  <kernel> Searching for networks with ssid Eurona900850808-8
Fri Sep 13 23:22:57.488 <kernel> No networks found. Please check if the network exists and is in range
Fri Sep 13 23:22:57.488 <airportd[535]> _WiFiMT_LogAssocTimeoutFail: MT** Assoc Timeout
Fri Sep 13 23:22:57.488 <airportd[535]> associate: Apple80211Associate2() failed with error -3905

Clearly the SSID lost the last digit somewhere in the process, and that leads to the Famous Timeout Error at least in my case.

While Apple provides great tools to analyze the WiFi, it is lacking bit more descriptive Error messages, like in my case saying there is no such network available since it clearly knows that in the Console report.

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