WiFi slowdown (or cap) on Catalina 10.15.2 - but not with SafeBoot and iPhone

About two weeks ago I upgraded all the 7 Macs in our little film production company to the newest version of MacOS X Catalina, 10.15.2. From that moment on, something odd happened that we haven't been able to resolve to this day: the Macs were suddenly "capped" on the company WiFi, which is a Mesh3 created by 4 white Tenda Nova MW6 cubes.

All the Macs are capped to download only at speeds of 18-20Mbs, compared to the 65-70 normally available. However, all IOS and mobile devices do not have any problems and still achieve normal speed rates.

We have tried many different solutions but none until now has brought us closer to a solution. Now this morning in a desperate attempt, we tried booting one of the Macs into SafeMode (for those who don't know what SafeMode is, please look here) - and voilà, all problems gone, WiFi speed is perfect.

Should I just line up with the many others who are complaining to Apple and Tim Cook about the crappy Catalina OS and its updates - or does anybody have an idea how to resolve this strange problem?

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Jan 14, 2020 9:31 AM

Top-ranking reply

Dirk van den Berg Author

Level 1

69 points

Posted on Jan 14, 2020 11:54 PM

EtreCheck report

As a precaution, before the EtreCheck test I removed the third party extensions Little Snitch and PreyProject (an anti-theft utility that already helped me get back my stolen Mac in 2018). However, I want to say to peter_watt that the anathema "third party extensions are no good" is not always true. I have been using LS and Prey for MANY YEARS, and they worked fine on Catalina 10.15 and 10.15.1 without ANY problems, so IMHO they won't suddenly be creating a problem.

As suggested this is the EtreCheck report, plus a screenshot of the Network section.

In addition to this, I have played around with ActivityMonitor and discovered an interesting fact: force-quitting "mDNSReponder" once after a reboot… resolves the problem completely. I did this around 2 hours ago, and a SpeedTest now gives me absolutely perfect results (screenshot nr. 2):

View in context

32 replies

Jan 14, 2020 10:45 AM in response to LD150

Why should I get rude…???

I habitually have Little Snitch installed (see here) to protect me from things connecting to other things on my machine without me knowing it. But of course the very first thing I did when this started to occur was to disable it. I still have CleanMyMac installed (latest iteration, paid version) but nothing else that leaves traces deep inside the system.

Still not getting why I would get rude…

Jan 15, 2020 4:27 AM in response to dialabrain

"…seeing your WiFi speed is normal in Safe Mode, that means one or more of the third-party apps when loaded in normal mode are causing a slow down" - I completely agree.

I know that force-quitting "mDNSResponder" is not really a viable solution. My problem is that I am unable to find out which one exactly causes the slowdown since Catalina's last update to 10.15.2 (because again, I had NO problem whatsoever before that). Plus, the problem does NOT exist with Ethernet - isn't Ethernet also using the mDNSResponder protocol…?

Anyway, I would pay for a software solution that can monitor the network and then tell me what exactly is slowing down my Wifi...

Jan 18, 2020 6:15 AM in response to Dirk van den Berg

Now hello to the Apple moderators - TWO of my recent entries about the same problem (but with other details) within the last 24 hours completely disappeared from here. COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED as in, when you connect to the URL that you remember / had saved, it says ACCESS DENIED.

Is this CENSORSHIP or is it a GLITCH or what is it?

Anyway, since I opened a case with Apple about the mDNSResponder problem and there seem to be other people with the same issue (see here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251014838) I am not going to step down. If whoever deleted my two previous posts continues to do so, I will continue to repost, day after day after day. THIS IS AN ISSUE.

Jan 18, 2020 6:26 AM in response to dialabrain

Maybe, but no, this is not true, this forum is FULL with post on the same issue with people calling their posts differently.

I would accept this if there were a transparent policy when a post is deleted and why it is deleted. But to just discover your forum entry has vanished into thin air is frankly unacceptable.

LD150

Level 10

100,137 points

Jan 18, 2020 10:08 AM in response to Dirk van den Berg

I already suggested to you on page 1 that being rude was counter productive. The final sanction is for the moderators to suspend your account.

Your threat to spam will also have been noted.

This woke nonsense getting outraged on other peoples' behalf is unnecessary. Worry about your own problem on your own thread - this one. We are trying to help.

Jan 20, 2020 6:19 AM in response to LD150

Dear Peter, you might be a Level 5 and have 4400 points, but when you begin a conversation with a complete stranger, aka me, and in the very first sentence you say "now don't get rude", you set the tone. I am not American (!) and I don't react well to being treated with what for me feels like "pseudo-polite passive aggressiveness". And talking about "final sanctions" does not make things any better.

But let's move on and focus on the issue at hand.

Apple Support service has called back already twice with interesting propositions to resolve the issue - that they are very much aware of. They logged onto my machine (last time 30 minutes ago) and together we went through several steps (terminal commands and more). Until now we haven't resolved the issue. But I have been told that the case is getting noticed. Of course, I will post any and all solutions and positive progress here.

Thank you, Peter.

LD150

Level 10

100,137 points

Jan 20, 2020 7:51 AM in response to Dirk van den Berg

Lets not move on.

Firstly I am not American either. There are other nations who respect politeness.

You started with...

"..Should I just line up with the many others who are complaining to Apple and Tim Cook about the crappy Catalina OS and its updates - or does anybody have an idea how to resolve this strange problem?..."

You set the tone, I was simply warning you that if you are rude about Apple, Catalina or its CEO you are not inviting help from the Apple enthusiasts.

You later said

"...Is this CENSORSHIP...I am not going to step down. If whoever deleted my two previous posts continues to do so, I will continue to repost, day after day after day. THIS IS AN ISSUE."

You are SHOUTING, questioning the Moderators who respond to complains, and then you were threatening to spam the forum until somebody sees to your needs.

I was simply and politely warning you that you are close to the sanction of being barred from posting here. Believe me, it does not take many complaints for that to happen.

I hope you resolve your problem with your user profile

Jan 27, 2020 6:03 PM in response to Dirk van den Berg

I have the exact same problem on my

Macbook pro Late 2013 and i dont know what to do. I have tried a clean install on Catalina twice but always the same issue and my wifi speeds are capped at 18MB/s while before the update it was around 130MB/s and this is not just for the internet but it is also the same issue for my network shares and it has become intolerably slow to copy data to and from my network drives. Please help

Jan 28, 2020 10:09 AM in response to LD150

I am not implying that catalina is killing the wifi on each and every mac there is . I am just saying that in my instance the installation failed to install or initialize the wifi adapter / stack properly and now i am stuck with a faulty machine that i cannot repair or downgrade and have to wait for another apple update in hopes of rectifying the issue. This was not a beta program it was a full final release of the celebrated MacOs which should not have caused these issues. Thank you for your interest in this matter ,. I leave you with this screenshot of my Macbook which shows my router transmit rate of well above 800Mbps but i am only getting a max of 130Mbps due to this issue and am forced to manually upload or download data from my Network shares via USB drives.

Jan 15, 2020 4:53 AM in response to dialabrain

Thank you, I did that already ;-)

dialabrain

Level 10

135,857 points

Jan 15, 2020 4:53 AM in response to Dirk van den Berg

You're welcome.

Jan 15, 2020 5:02 AM in response to Dirk van den Berg

Hi , I have the same problem on my MBP mid 2014 ( 16 GB of Ram , 512 SSD ) . I hope that this problem will be solve with next update .

Jan 15, 2020 8:05 AM in response to Birkhoff92

I did. Had installed it only a week ago for the first time since I've always used Onyx and TinkerTool…

From the way you write I deduce that you don't recommend CMM; any specific reason for that?

dialabrain

Level 10

135,857 points

Jan 18, 2020 6:19 AM in response to Dirk van den Berg

FWIW, You are not supposed to post multiple times for the same issue. If you have further details to add you can do so in one post.

dialabrain

Level 10

135,857 points

Jan 18, 2020 6:31 AM in response to Dirk van den Berg

Suit yourself.

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WiFi slowdown (or cap) on Catalina 10.15.2 - but not with SafeBoot and iPhone