OSX Yosemite Wifi issues

Just received a very fascinating update from a correspondent of mine who is actually testing Yosemite against Mavericks (I do not have the hardware for it myself, nor the exact IT knowledge, just reporting):

it seems whereas Mavericks places a call for DNS to the wan/router, and next a Bonjour call (.local), with Yosemite it is the inverse: Bonjour call first, DNS request second. And it seems the Bonjour call gets stuck sometimes. This might also explain the proliferation of instances of "Phantom Macs #x" in the sidebar (my own remark).

Thus, the already mentioned workaround of temporarily switching off "wake-on-lan" gets shed in a new light. Just try. (My own conclusion).

Any comment here?

They do communicate with you? That is great, then I'm confident that you guys are going to fix it soon. Correct? At the same time I would like to clear some big misunderstanding or misconception about a simple consumer/manufacturer/merchant contract which is a product purchase. Under that contract manufacturer/merchant is obligated to deliver a market ready product in exchange for a full payment. Simple, isn't? Not for everyone, not anymore. We the consumers by lowering our standards and expectations are encouraging companies to lower their effort in maintaining products quality. Apple stuff almost never go on sale and we are usually paying MSRP for it. I'm asking once again; why we can't expect fully functioning products in exchange for an inflated payment? All this talk about human imperfection in this case is unnecessary.

Addendum to the above: incomplete Bonjour communication clogging up the network would corroborate the suspicion that older routers clog up the network under Yosemite, not under Mavericks, where DNS is handled first thing.

I had the same problem with my NetComm Wireless router but fixed it by changing the router security configuration as below:

Network Authentication to WPA2 -PSK

WPA/WPA2 Encryption to TKIP+AES

Rock solid wireless connections with no issues at all.

I would like to point out that This Thread (WiFi Issues) is a Tiny Minority of People who own Macs of every type... and that The Vast Majority of people are having NO Problems whatsoever like myself... YES I noticed some Yosemite Bugs but nothing that stopped me from getting serious work done like the 8-10 hours a day I'm at Work designing Print Ads using Adobe Creative Suite and Short Videos Using Final Cut Pro all on a Lowly Plain Vanilla Non-Retina Mid 2012 Macbook Pro.

Yosemite 10.10.1 Fixed all tiny anomalies I noted earlier but none were related to Wifi.... I couldn't even begin to know how to do all these Advanced Tweaks and Settings changes listed here so I'm glad I stay out of those dialogs... which is where I think people screwed up their systems prior.

I believe some of these people on this thread need to go back to a Windows machine because they like technical troubles and don't know how to use a computer for work so they dig into the System deep and mess things up and then blame Apple because they can't "get down from that tree."

I have Many Windows Friends who spend all their time while I'm at a Real Job Tweaking their systems and when I get home they're soaked in sweat resorting to reinstalling their whole hard drive after running them in the ground. One Guy Defrags his Hard Drive Every Day..

The reason Apple isn't responding publicly because they know what I know and that is ya'll be creating most of these problems Yoselves...truth be told...

I'm a Graphic Designer ... not a techie but they aren't happy unless they got an error message on their screen... gives them something to do tomorrow while I'm at work ... I keep getting emails regarding the problems here but honestly If I was Apple I'd buy you all a Dell Laptop and say Good Riddance!

Never had a wifi problem in any of my mac computers until the second I upgraded to Yosemite. And I don't tweak my computer. Your not having a wifi issue is just luck. And your inability to understand how your computer works is not a virtue. And your off-topic post is disrespectful. There should be some way to flag comments from children that are off topic and disrespectful so they can be removed.

When Yosemite was released I upgraded and when IOS 8 was released I upgraded. After upgrading all my devices I began having WiFi issues non-stop. I tried all the posted fixes. Nothing was the absolute fix for my WiFi dropouts. Then I tried changing my DNS server setting to use the public Google DNS server: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, I have 3 Macbook Pro's, 2 iPhone 6, 1 iPhone 5 and a iTV. When I changed my DNS to the Google Public DNS server all my problems went away on all my devices. I have been drop-out free for over a month now on all my apple devices. I have internet service is Comcast Extreme 105 MPS. The Comcast DNS server was the problem for me. I would recommend changing the DNS server setting for all your devices to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. and see if your problems go away. Also I called Comcast, they insisted their DNS server was not having problems and of course this call was supported from India so I gave up trying to talk to the support person.

I have to conclude it was not the Apple devices having the issue but my internet service provided.

Off Topic?.... More Than Half of these 73 Pages are Off Topic... and yes the moderator will probably remove my posting but that's okay... at least a few people will see it... "Not Having a Wifi Issue is just Luck" well Lucky me... good thing I don't understand how my computer works otherwise I'd have to quit my day job which is making money with it... It's a Tool I use to create Complex E-Commerce Websites... with DreamWeaver & Word Press... and my Macbook Pro with Yosemite Working very Nicely... I understand HTML 5 and that's what I need to know... and if "Not Having a Wifi Issue is just Luck" then you're a RETARD.

How's that for "comments from children that are off topic and disrespectful"

I've been following this thread since I installed Yosemite. Maybe I have not read all the 80 pages, but probably most of them. Yes, of course, I'm experiencing the dropping connection issue and tried, with no success, many of the potential fixes suggested above. I also got frustrated updating to 10.10.1.

Reading one of the recent posts where someone wrote about the 2.4Ghz bluetooth/wi-fi interferences, something reminded me of a connection issue I have faced when my iMac 27" late 2012 was just left the box. By that time, I think we were at Snow Leopard age, my internet speed was slow as **** and causing performance loss even on offline tasks. Still by that time, the solution I have found was simple for such a mysterious problem cause: to change the router's frequency channel. So simple that I never wanted to understand what caused that problem.

I know it's a common sense that our problem is being caused by software (Yosemite) and not hardware because everybody's setup was working perfectly with Mountain Lion, but I know people who installed Yosemite in 2-or-3-years-old macs (sorted models) and are happy with their new system which keeps connected and stable over wi-fi. We're a group of people with the same problem but perhaps we have different causes.

Perhaps not.

Every try is a hope and so I tried to change my frequency just because I remembered that it once easily fixed a big problem.

It was set in channel 4 (just because sometimes I make some experiments randomly changing my router's channel to see if I get a better signal for a SmartTV which is distant from the router) and I set it back to "auto". Since that, I have already experienced 6 hours of stable wi-fi connection.

It's too early to say if it has definitely fixed my problem, but if you've been clicking on your wi-fi network every 3 minutes to reconnect, would you please waste a little more of your finger muscles and visit your router's firmware page to check your channel settings? I can't wait to make part of a group of people who have fixed this with the same solution.

This is my first post ever at this forum and I hope it helps one or two. Or three. 🙂

Before anyone tries the various workarounds suggested in this forum, I'd strongly recommend users first make sure their router firmware is reasonably current. Here's my experience.

After upgrading to Yosemite, my 5GHz wifi connection just kept dropping. It had been working just fine with Mavericks, so I came here and started reading.

Rather than experiment with workarounds that many people said didn't work for them or only temporarily fixed the problem, I started using 2.4 GHz because at least it worked reliably ... and hoped that OSX 10.10.1 would resolve the 5 GHz thing.

Before I upgraded to 10.10.1 today, it occurred to me that maybe I should update the firmware in my Asus RT-N66U router. I was kind of embarassed to discover my firmware was from April 2012! I had never updated it because everything had been working great before Yosemite ... it's a really good, reliable router.

After updating my router firmware to the September 2014 level (and before upgrading to OSX 10.10.1) my 5GHz wifi worked just fine, at least with 20 MHz channel width (I haven't tested a 40MHz channel width yet). I actually used 5GHz to download OSX 10.10.1.

It took only a few minutes to find the firmware update and install it ... a lot less time than I spent reading this forum!

Just wanted to add so I don't have to create a new post.

WiFi drops frequently both at home and office network. Magic mouse also disconnects at times. Never had issues before. All started with Yosemite!

MBP Retina 15".

Nice UI. **** QA

I'll add my voice to this as well. The latest update may actually be worse on my MBPr. Now I get "your network has been compromised and disabled for a minute" or something like that. That assumes I get connected...

There seems to be a real issue with Asus WIFI routers. I can connect to other types, but the machine dies on Asus. The problem is, at home and at work they use Asus.

So Apple, a month has passed and I still cannot use my laptop; frankly its a real disgrace . Without WIFI, its more or less useless for my job.

Apple needs to get out of the social issues and bring back their focus on making good IT products, just like the old days.

Hi,

I just want Apple to know that I have problems with wifi on my MBP'14 since the update to 10.10.1. Before it was slow (not as much as now) but at least the connection was stable.

With the Update, the connection has become terribly slow (35 kbit/s for internet and 200-600 kbit/s over afp to my NAS which has usually about 15-25 mbit/s over wifi) and the connection get's lost every few minutes. The distance between the router and the MBP is only about 3-4 meters, with no walls, heavy desks or something else. My wifi also appears now sometime twice in the list.

I cleared all caches, reset the SMC and PRAM. Also switching from 2.5 GHz to 5 GHz and changing the wifi channel as also completely removing and re-adding the wifi profile did not bring any better results.

I use the Fritz Box 7390 with firmware 6.20 as Router as also the Fritz Repeater 300 in some Rooms. In addition my iPad and my smartphone are connected to the wifi.

I even tried with my TP-Link travel router (TL-WR702N). Connecting to it took forever. The speed had the same slowliness. The connection was still unstable, but not as much as with the fritz box.

(Personal note: I use Macs since years, mainly due to the quality, usability and difference to other manufacturers in therms of Hard- and Software). But what Apple does to its consumers since a few years and mainly in the last month's is only terrible. Not even talking about the software design. Sorry Jonathan, you had already better designs.)

Thanks,

Yves

with Yosemite i had to reconnect wifi manually everytime my macbook air(Early 2014) woke up from sleep. annoying but acceptable, since once connected, wifi is stable.

things getting worse after the last update: "LOOKING FOR NETWORKS ... ON ... LOOKING FOR NETWORKS ... ON ..." every 5 seconds or so.

Hello,

Not fixed here after 10.10.1 + PRAM reset + SCM reset. The issue in my case is that wifi does not reconnect automatically after a sleep or after leaving home and coming back later. I have to reconnect it manualy. Not always, but most of the time.

I have the impression there was an improvement though in 10.10.1: when i reconnect manualy, my wifi shows quickly now in the avaliable wifi list - when before i had to wait 1 or 2 refresh before seeing it.

Thanks

Francois, on macbook pro 2012