Q: OSX Yosemite Wifi issues

sternd wrote:

 

Update:  I noticed that's enough to turn off all Bluetooth devices to re-establish the internet bandwidth. Bluetooth can be activated as long you have no device connected. If I turn on the mouse or the keyboard the drop occurs again.

That does sound like interference, ironically coming from the mouse and/or keyboard!

I did some experiments with this and my Macbook Air with OS 10.10.5. At home, turning bluetooth on or off had no impact on the 60 mbps internet downlink signal we get  through a wireless router WRT160N which seems to go up to ~ 100+ Mbps as best I can determine informally with large file copies via wireless between different computers in the house.

At work, with bluetooth off I see 300 Mbps up and down (both directions). With bluetooth on, if the wireless connection is at the 5GHz signal, I see no impacts. If the wireless access is at 2.4 GHz, then using the bluetooth mouse + keyboard seems to cut the downlink from ~300 to ~ 150 Mbps, although strangely enough the uplink remains at 300 Mbps. (I don't know the exact routers in place at work but I think they are Cisco units.)

So I can see some minor-ish impact from two nearby bluetooth devices (mouse + keyboard) for one direction, but it's still pretty fast. It might be device dependent, my mouse and keyboard using bluetooth are Apple devices.

Finally, note this discussion of bluetooth interfering with WiFi

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153009/bluetooth-and-wifi-interfering-w ith-one-another-since-yosemite

I should also point out that (a) people have also reported bluetooth and WiFi interference issues with Mavericks

(see http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/120512/workaround-for-mavericks-bluetoo th-wi-fi-interference )

before Yosemite even came out; and (b) the first link above claims that discoveryd was the culprit and that is now gone and thus the problem is supposedly fixed. But reports persist about this problem under Yosemite and El Capitan, so clearly there is more to this than just that.

If the bluetooth devices are interfering, one could elect to simply stop using them -- but this seems wrong as it's an advertised capability, and wireless keyboards and mouse are convenient, especially with laptops. Or try the higher WiFi frequency (5 GHz), or try a different make of wireless mouse and keyboard.

steve626 wrote:

That does sound like interference, ironically coming from the mouse and/or keyboard!

 

 

That's exactly what I thought, perhaps it's the mouse and the keyboard ( btw. all Apple products ). Both of them interfere. For the moment I have no chance to try out another device set, but perhaps somebody could confirm this by using another brand than Apple.

And finally, what does this mean? Are the external devices defect?

steve626 wrote:

 

Finally, note this discussion of bluetooth interfering with WiFi

 

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153009/bluetooth-and-wifi-interfering-w ith-one-another-since-yosemite

 

 

Thanks for the link, really the discussion that explains my problems best. So the drivers are probably the bad guys.

After trying everything, I fixed my problem: reverted to Mavericks!

Ironically, Windows 7 Pro in Boot Camp has been stable through it all. Now, Windows 10 Pro runs like a dream. I broke down and performed an install of El Capitan on my erased HD. El Capitan runs great. I was bent on keeping Mavericks, but, El Capitan supposedly has all the "stuff" of Mavericks and dumped discoveryd. All is well!!

Cheers

10.10.4 had already dumped discoveryd for mDNSresponder ... yet I still had problems. So I'm sticking with Mavericks.

Hmm I see 'branched into a new discussion' at the top of the thread, but clicking the link gives me a 'you are not authorized' error message.

What gives?

That’s where the moderators move posts that don’t comply with the terms of service. If you get a message from the moderators that your post has been removed, that’s where it went. None of us can see them anymore.

it was very helpfuL THANKS!!!!!

In all honesty, all these Network issues with OS X Yosemite are a TOTAL JOKE.

I've pretty much had it with all the problems. Nothing but issue after issue after issue. Sometimes a fix works, for a while. Sometimes it doesn't. There are constant problems with WiFi still and Apple still can't fix it. People are having to tweak Bluetooth, or delete files, or reset their network settings, or create new locations... CONSTANTLY. This is a complete waste of time and patience. OS X has turned into a totally unusable operating system for anything serious at this point for me.

And now... enter the irony. The most completely absurd part of the whole thing is the fact that if you have a Bootcamp partition, and login to Windows ON YOUR MAC, everything works perfect. WiFi, direct Ethernet connection, etc. There's never any drops EVER, at least in my experience. I am referring to Windows 7 here as well, an OS which is 6 years, 1 month, 26 days old. What a crock of ****.

Clearly, OS X has basic problems. Problems that somehow a multi-billion dollar company can't resolve. How is this even possible? It's almost 2016. WiFi was first available to consumers in 1997. Since then, many companies have developed hardware and software that works extremely well with WiFi. How is it that Apple cannot achieve the same results?

Mind-*******-blown.

TL;DR

Use Windows instead on a Bootcamp Partition.

i finally just weren't back to Mavericks. and doubt I'll ever "upgrade" again. If they would just actually fix the problems, it would be one thing, but they don't seem to want to be bothered by any of it

is there a solution from Apple for this Windows 10: BCM43xx S3 resume firmware initialization problem (MacBook Pro 15 mid 2014) annoying problem?

Hi,

Unfortunately I have yet to see a firmware push of any kind in over a year. I purchased my Mac Mini late 2012 and got a firmware push when first powered up out of box. EFI or UEFI ( I can't remember ) that was late 2014. I got a firmware push for my Thunderbolt Display around that time as well. Boot Camp Driver package 6.0 is all we got to make Windows 10 work. In short, no. There are no known firmware updates for hardware from Apple to my knowledge at this time. Just work-arounds.

Cheers!!

Have a look at my MBP 15'' mid 2014 built-in Apple Airport device hardware id (Windows 10 x64) before and after Sleep, especially the SUBSYS value.

Device hardware id before Sleep mode:

PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_43A0&SUBSYS_0134106B&REV_03

Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:0134]

Device hardware id after Sleep mode:

PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_43A0&SUBSYS_0112106B&REV_03

Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:0112]

It smells like **** because the left hand of Apple doesn't know what doing the right hand in certain illustration of test. So which one device is the built -in Apple Airport adapter? This is my question to the Apple, but without an answer...

So I have been struggling with this for over a year. In my house we have 4 Macs of one for or another and an Apple Airport Extreme base station with 802.11/ac. My laptop is the only one with 802.11/ac the rest are 802.11/n. I am the only one who has any trouble.

My setup is: Computers -> Airport Extreme in Bridge Mode (but that doesn't actually matter) -> Virgin Media cable modem (in the UK) in router mode.

I can ping my airport extreme's IP address with zero packet loss. When I ping the cable mode just on the other side of it (i.e., connected by ethernet cable as one does), I get close to 50% packet loss. When I cannot ping my cable modem I also cannot reach the internet. I definitely cannot make new connections but sometimes I think that existing connections are still working.

While suffering from this problem, and pinging various endpoints continuously, I can successfully ssh into my wife's laptop on the same in house network, and run ping on her laptop, and it pings without dropping any packets both the internet and the cable modem.

If I run "netstat -an | grep SYN_" I often see tons of TCP connections in SYN_SENT mode, which means they are trying to establish a connection but getting no answer. For a year at least I thought THAT was the issue and it never occurred to me to see if I could actually ping my cable modem. So this long term SYN_SENT symptom is just a side-effect of the actual underlying networking problem.

If I shut off wifi and turn it back on, all the stuck connections are fixed, and pings work again for a while. If I shut off wifi, delete 4 or so airport configuration/preference files, reboot, then turn wifi back on and reconnect to my airport, everything works flawlessly for several days.

Today I did a SMC reset and a PRAM (I think) reset with a senior apple support person on the phone, and removed one of my applications just in case it was causing trouble (iStat Menus - doubtful as all my other computers are in fact running the same software), and since that reboot 2 hours ago my laptop has been fine, and I am getting blazing speeds (150 mbits/second from virgin, the rated speed).

I have opened a bug with apple and am in contact with them. They have suggested (within the last week) that this issue might be one that they will have a fix for in the next major release. If they have a fix now, how dare they not put it in El Capitan, after all, this is wifi networking, it's supposed to work!

Meanwhile, I left off the best piece of information: I have two routers in my house. If I connect to the other router, which only does 802.11/n and is in general way slower than the Apple one, I drop no packets. None. 100% success rate. It's a buffalo brand, nothing special. I usually use it to VPN in to the United States.

So this bug is literally between me and the airport extreme base station, except actually it's between me and the cable mode IFF I connect via the Apple router (fine if it's another router instead), it's the same if I am in front of the router in the same room or on the other side of the house, it's only me and nobody else in the house (but again, only I have ac networking) and if I reset a few files on my computer and reboot, the problem disappears for days at a time.

It seems like people here might be having the exact same problem: when you experience packet loss, things get slow :-) If you are dropping packets when you click on a link in the web page, it might seem slow until all of a sudden it's fast, and that's the same thing: dropping packets until suddenly not dropping them for a few seconds or minutes.

I hope Apple fixes this. So many things about the Apple software and the OS in particular are just dead-on perfect, but things like this can ruin an otherwise great experience.

JP

PS: Forgot to mention that I have a Retina MacBook Pro 15" with 802.11/ac from Mid 2015. Also forgot to mention that within the last two weeks I did a fresh OS re-install w/out restoring from Time Machine backup just in case that was the issue. Problem re-appeared within 3 to 5 days.