10.15.3 and 10.15.4 Catalina Persistent Wi-Fi Speed Drops - Tx Rate Drops
Hello,
I've recently started to notice severe speed drops with the Wifi on my Mac. I've narrowed down the problem to some kind of a software issue with OS X Catalina. I've updated from 10.15.3 to the supplemental 10.15.4 update today however it made no difference.
Problem:
- When performing a speed test the Tx Rate drops from 1300 / 867 Mbps down to <100Mbps almost immediately. On the speedtest the download speed consequently falls from 230Mbps to about 60Mbps or less.
- Outside of speed testing this causes issues with lag during video streaming, inconsistent download speeds etc.
My reasoning as to why this is a software problem with the OS X Catalina:
- I have Windows 10 installed in bootcamp on the same machine and when I ran a speed test on the exact same network there, it is consisntely 246Mbps from start to finish of the speed test and I experience no issues at all. This leads me to believe it is not a hardware issue with either the laptop or the network but a software issue with the Mac OS X.
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi works flawlessly at ~240Mbps accross all devices in my network. This includes my iPhone 11
- I haven't changed anything on my network recently and it was working perfectly fine at full speed on my Mac for at least 3 years with the same router and laptop.
- Issue is persistent and no amount of restarting of either the laptop or router has any effect.
Troubleshooting steps already tried with no effect:
- Remove all of the relevant Wi-Fi preference files in SystemConfiguration folder and reboot
- Create new network location and apply
- Connect to 2.4Ghz network to check for stability - same problems except speed drops are even more severe and the connection becomes at times unusable.
- Reset NVRAM - Done and no effect
- Run system updates - Updated to 10.15.4, no outstanding updates in App Store - no effect
- Checked network activity in activity monitor - nothing unusal using significant bandwidth
- Tried different browser - same issue on Chrome and with Steam game downloads
- Restarted router
- Turned off Apple watch
- Turned off Bluetooth
- Rebooted in Safe Mode - Same issue
My MacBook:
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
- Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x152)
- Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.77.111.1 AirPortDriverBrcmNIC-1600.4)
- Software Versions:
- CoreWLAN: 13.0 ((null))
- CoreWLANKit: 13.0 ((null))
- Menu Extra: 13.0 ((null))
- System Information: 12.0 (1500)
- IO80211 Family: 12.0 (1200.12.2b1)
- Diagnostics: 1.0 (910)
- AirPort Utility: Not Installed
Router:
- Virgin Media Hub 3.0
I've ran out of things to try at this stage. Anybody experiencing the same issues?
Thanks,
Kamil
MacBook