Mac Studio Ultra Ethernet and Wifi Connection Issues?

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Mac Studio Ultra Ethernet and Wifi Connection Issues?

Just received my Mac Studio Ultra two days ago. I set it up using Migration Assistant from a 2020 iMac 5k. Both machines were running Monterey 12.4. The transfer worked fine, UNTIL I tried to connect the Ultra first to my ethernet, and then to my wifi system. I have Xfinity Gigabit internet with the Xfinity supplied modem. I also have an eero 6 mesh router. Just for fun, I also have Century Link as a backup provider on a totally different router/modem, which functions as internet access wifi for our guests. In the past, bringing any new machine on line was as simple as giving people the correct password.

xfinity is our primary and I plugged the Cat 6 cable into the ethernet port on the Ultra. Nothing except “no connection”. I unplugged everything, shut down the computer, rebooted the router and when it came back to life, I plugged in the cable to the router, then to the Netgear Gigabit switch, and from there to the ultra. Nothing. So, this time, I bypassed the switch, and connected the router directly to the computer. Nothing. Now, completely baffled, I started looking in detail at the specifics of the network connection. I can plug any other device - MacBook Pro (last Intel model), the old (2020) iMac - and have instant access to the network either via direct ethernet connection, or via wifi. With the Ultra, nothing works, not wifi, not ethernet (I even tried a different cable, and also used the cat5/6 adapter to Thunderbolt (which works fine with my 2019 MacBook Pro 16).

After searching the interwebs (including this site), there seem to be lots of people with related problems, having to do with the fact that the ethernet port on the ultra is a 10 Gigabit port). I tried a number of these different solutions (including deleting about 5 plist files from Preferences), and killing mDNSresponder. After rebooting, I was able to access both wifi and ethernet UNTIL I discovered that I had to enable third party extensions by booting into the Security panel. Got that solved, but when the machine rebooted after dealing with the security issues, I once again had no ethernet connection and no wifi. I repeated the steps again that got me to the internet in the first place, but there was no joy again.

Has anyone figured out a surefire and consistent way to connect to both ethernet and wifi? Otherwise, the ultra isn’t very useful.

HELP.

Mac Studio, macOS 12.5

Posted on Jun 2, 2022 1:21 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Marc Feldesman Author

Level 2

314 points

Jun 2, 2022 3:40 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

I’ve been developing software for personal computers since the Apple II. I’ve done CP/M, Linux, Unix, MS-DOS, Windows, Apple System 9, OSX, and pretty much all the variants of OSX crossing through the Motorola/Intel transition, and now to the Intel/Apple Silicon transition. I’ve done stripdowns to bare metal and migrations. I’ve never encountered a problem like this before. Before I ordered the ultra, I checked that all the software I run came in universal flavors. It took me a bit to figure out how to get an Apple Silicon machine into safe mode since Apple did away with the keyboard shortcuts. Once I did that, I could get to the net both over ethernet or wifi. That suggested something that loaded early in the boot process. After a bit of trial and error, trying to see what loaded early, I narrowed it down to four possible culprits. The antivirus wasn’t the issue, the software for the Raid Arrays wasn’t it, my malware software didn’t do it. Finally, I noticed something that I hadn’t seen on my Intel Machines. When I went into System Preferences, I noticed a “hardware” entry that didn’t make any sense. It was actually a piece of software that did nothing noticeable on the iMac 5k - Netbarrier - which seemed to function as a firewall blocking all outgoing connections on the Mac Studio. When I uninstalled it, rebooted, magically everything worked. It is reputedly a universal app, but since there isn’t much to configure, I figure it is expendable. It seems to be a part of my Intego Antivirus Software package, but it installs and removed as a separate application.

if I had gone the bare metal approach, It would have taken me a week before I got around to reinstalling the Intego Software. I figure I saved 5 days.

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Answer 2

Mal-S

Level 5

4,688 points

Jun 2, 2022 1:38 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

I'm not an expert on Ethernet & WiFi but offer the following things to try:

Start up in safe mode and if all is well then it suggests that something is loading in a normal startup which is causing the problems .
If you have any antivirus apps or clean-up apps installed, uninstall them and try again.
After decades of using personal computers I've found that it is best to do a clean install of the operating system and if working ok follow up by sequentially installing apps with testing in between to see if any are troublesome.
On the clean install you can try wi-fi on its own and ethernet on its own before turning both on together.
Migrating apps from a previous system has the potential of transferring old unwanted files, some of which linger in the background causing trouble.

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Mac Studio Ultra Ethernet and Wifi Connection Issues?

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