OSX Yosemite Wifi issues

that made it worst for me unfortunately...

God I hope El Capitan will fix it.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I just upgraded to El Capitan and still got the same issue.

I have found that enabling the setting "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" in the Energy Saver control panel in order to prevent my MBA from going to sleep when plugged in helps a lot.

I will try that. Just uncliked the sleep mode setting.

And I'm backing up and then installing El Capitan. We'll see. Perhaps it'll work for me with a MBA mid 2011 and a linksys router. I'll probably buy the mac router, that should fix it...

Just edited my previous post to clarify. You actually have to enable the functionality to prevent your Mac from going to sleep when the display is off.

Just finished upgrading to El Capitan annnnnnnd no fix. For about a minute I thought I might finally have working wifi again but then it dropped and went back to a completely dead wifi signal just like yosemite. Guess I have to give up and take it to a Genius Bar and have them suggest all the things I've already done and see if I can get some sort of fix because its been 3 months without any wifi and a year without stable wifi.

After performing a clean install of El Capitan on both (early 2015, late 2011) my Macbook wifi connections are stable. I've observed them for over a week and the earlier symptoms are no longer present (wifi connection stays strong but no connectivity). On completing the clean install, I took a comprehensive time machine snapshot. Now I'm only restoring data back to the new machines.

There's no way to be sure if this will work for others and is obviously a lossy step. Makes me think that an application install may have upset TCP parameters. Can't be sure.

thinkSantosh wrote:

After performing a clean install of El Capitan on both (early 2015, late 2011) my Macbook wifi connections are stable. I've observed them for over a week and the earlier symptoms are no longer present (wifi connection stays strong but no connectivity). On completing the clean install, I took a comprehensive time machine snapshot. Now I'm only restoring data back to the new machines.

There's no way to be sure if this will work for others and is obviously a lossy step. Makes me think that an application install may have upset TCP parameters. Can't be sure.

Glad to hear you figured it out! Sounds like some software that had been installed conflicted, or an inherited setting caused a conflict, since your clean install worked.

Another possibility is router settings (apparently not in your case, but others in this thread reported a "fix" having to do with their router).

If it's not software, or a setting, and not the router, then I would suspect a hardware defect.

The Apple computers are mass produced, and they are identical (although the production line can change over time, but any one configuration of hardware is produced in quantities of ~ millions). Hence the most likely user-unique source for problems would be user settings/software, or the router setup. And these things can work under 10.9 but fail under 10.10 or 10.11, since different protocols come into play with a new OS (sometimes).

Some may report a "brand new" laptop has the WiFi problem. But the first thing that is done when one turns on a new laptop is to migrate settings and software from the older computer. That can migrate over something that can conflict, as your clean install showed. If someone actually purchases a new Apple router + laptop and right out of the box WiFi does not work before anything is migrated or installed -- well that could point to defective hardware, router setting or WiFi interference. All have been reported in this lengthy thread.

My personal experience was a combination of two things (some years ago with an earlier OS): a congested RF environment (neighbors' access points) plus my router setting. The default router setting was to auto-select the WiFi channel and a wide channel bandwidth. I figured out that assigning a specific channel and narrowing the bandwidth (both settings on the router) eliminated all the frequent disconnects I had been seeing. This is not to say this can solve for the problems reported in this Discussions thread, but people need to look for their unique cause(s) as thinkSantosh did.

Dear Steve,

I agree the first look should always be to the individual environment. This can be the router as you say or even hardware faults. Hardware can also break. Unfortunately all these things get mixed up in this thread. For me I can say it is neither the obvious hardware (e.g. Wifi card - changed by Apple free of charge) nor the user environment, since I tested clean installs of Mavericks (no issues), Yosemite (issues with 5 GHz) and El Capitan up to GM (same as Yosemite). For me the fault seems to be connected to certain low channels in the 5 GHz band and also connection can be re-established by displaying the Wifi connection details, pointing to a software fault during optimisation the connection. This of course doesn't rule out any particular hardware issue and maybe the Bluetooth Flex Cable as chexicano has posted is the issue, though his problems seemed to be more severe than mine.

Anyway, I think testing a clean install is always wise to see if the problem is related to the specific environment. You can do this on a 8 GB USB stick, not to go through all the trouble for nothing.

I performed also a clean install on a test drive. With El Capitan the WIFI connection works as expected. But, when I activate Bluetooth the performance drops about 40%. The same with Yosemite 10.10.5. After 10 - 20 minutes, on Yosemite it drops almost a 100% and then I have to disconnect Bluetooth to re-establish the Internet connection. It's interesting, the WIFI symbol shows always a 100% of WIFI signal, but the bandwidth slows down dramatically.

I have a MacBook Pro 15" 2014 802.11/ac.

Is this a WIFI driver problem?

Update: After 15 minutes browsing the internet the bandwidth drops to 120 kbit/s. The mouse and keyboard are connected via Bluetooth. When I deactivate bluetooth the bandwidth returns to 19 Mbits/s. This is really annoying.

I was expecting so much from El Capitan. It looked like it was going to be fine but if anything, my problems have worsened.

If I knew that by chucking my Linksys router, and buying a mac router I would solve my problem, I would do it.

I believe downgrading to Maverick is the only worthwhile alternative. I'm too frustrated. Time to do go back to Maverick.

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.

Sure, but to install a new router cannot be the solution. I'm here in a hotel and have no chance to manipulate the router. So the problem is another. Perhaps the drivers. But it's sad that Apple has no solution for this problem.

Upgrading to El Capitan solved my problem.

That's exactly what I did!