Q: OSX Yosemite Wifi issues

Don't be so amazed to see Apple say nothing. 

This has been their M.O. for a long time now.  When the Mavericks upgrade took place it

killed the FireWire port when used for an external drive.  The external drive would not go

into sleep mode but just sit their spinning 24/7 if you let it.

I remember all kinds of workarounds people were trying and third party software to uses

to correct the FireWire issue introduced by Apple.  They did data captures and phone

chats with people having this issue but NEVER came out publicly with it.  Their are still

threads around that are just as long as this one if not longer with complaints about this.

In the end what happened?  Nothing.  The problem still is here with Yosemite and Apple

said that FireWire causing the external drive not to sleep is a "New feature".

IMHO ever since the FREE OS upgrades started coming out we have all become BETA-Testers

like it or not.  This WiFi/Network issue should of been known during Beta testing.  There is no way

that they did not know about this.  Somebody was pressured or pushed into early release of this

and now we have this major bug to deal with as well as older ones that were never corrected.

I have a 27" Thunderbolt Display. 4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 Firewire port, 1 Thunderbolt port and Ethernet port. In the world we are in today of people wanting to charge cell phones, the USB ports on the Thunderbolt stay powered. The Thunderbolt port powers down with the Display. Imagine that! Let's give a big "Shout Out!!" to Ext. Hard Drive Manufacturing for not including a Power Button! Let's share some of this contension to Hardware and Software Manufacturers. Not just Apple.

I Followed steps 1 -8 as suggested elsewhere and problems returned within a few days so if yours stays good looks like Steps 9 onwards important

While this looks like it may have worked with others, I can confirm that it has not worked for me. I'm even running the beta seed and I rebooted through-out the various steps just to be sure. I'm doing side by side tests with a MBP 15" retina (mid-2012) which is affected by this bug and a MBP 15" retina (mid-2014) which is NOT affected. Both trying to or are connected to a wireless AC router (same SSID). The mid 2014 is connected to AC while the mid 2012 is "sort of" connected (badly) to N.

Very frustrating but I am testing each and every "fix" that is coming by. Keep 'em coming!

-HighTechDad

Keep up the good work, John. BTW, it looks like your setup may not be affected at all. Some simply aren't. Keep us up to date!

And now something completely different: Merry Xmas to all of you here!

Jeez, look what I found and notably on His supposed Birthday as well!

Please bear with me, as this is going to be a longish story and technical too:

1. Lately, Apple has performed its 1st time ever "push" system-level security update (apart from Gatekeeper updates, which have always been pushed).

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/23/us-apple-cybersecurity-idUSKBN0K108W20 141223

Strange reports about this: some OSX users not having their Autoupdate enabled did receive it surreptitiously, others didn't. Which set me thinking why.

The answer must be simple: the users not receiving the update automatically will probably be those with (slightly) older Macs, not capable of Airdrop/Continuity/Handoff/ Instant Hotspot and/or handling RSA 2048 bit identity hashes. Typically models before the "late 2012" ones.

2: In a search about enabling Continuity on "vintage" Mac models I found this:

http://9to5mac.com/2014/10/23/enable-continuity-handoff-instant-hotspot-airdrop/

Which sort of leads me into believing that some Mac models are not responding well to Yosemite code meant only for Continuity enabled Macs/ Macs capable of computing RSA 2048 bit identity hashes. Wouldn't wonder with all of the superfluous/ unidentified network activity going on on Macs nowadays.

In stead of shutting off AWLD0 and Airdrop or trying WifriedX, would all of you with predefined "older Macs" try the Continuity activation tool published here and report please?

http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2k37tk/yosemite_continuity_activation_too l_v10_released/

3: Something completely different. There is the remote possibility of WiFi chips coming into play in this here issue. None of the people affected have advertized their Airport card or chipset version here. Slight chance, but if your chipset is the Broadcom BCM 4360, I think you have more chance to be affected by the Yosemite WiFi bug. Remains to be seen. No statistics I can find for OSX. In a former post I've made a mistake: the Broadcom BCM20702 is just a Bluetooth chip.

Would like to see fail statistics by chip identifier, though.

Well, I'm just a simple mortal, but you cannot say I haven't tried.

Merry XMas!

I'll be! Great Christmas Gifts that will keep on giving. You didn't have to. How did ya know? We are mere thimbles collecting the overflow of wealth from the buckets of knowledge out there.

My system is stable and doing nicely with Yosemite. Going in to Day 2 of solid use. I'm not booting to my internal HD ( which holds Mavericks ) for a while. I will continue to ride the Yosemite train. My Wireless printer installed and functions. It is connected WPS Push Button on the 2.4 GHz side. Ethernet and 5 GHz running together and playing nicely. Have a neighbor who stays connected to my Wireless Guest ( 2.4 GHz ) no interference. In my router config I have always had my Wife's iPhone and my Mini in High Priority in Media Prioritization for seamless Media Streaming. Nice feature of the Linksys N750 (EA3500). Extreme success at this point of takin her fer a spin. Apple knows. Released as required and in time. Merry Christmas to You and Yours, hexdiy!!

How would I know, John? Just a gut feeling & checked your WiFi chip as well. Seen you having cleanly installed on top.

- If nothing is amiss from the hour go, you system must be allright.

- Your WiFi chip is probably Broadcom BCM 4331, which is considered as safe in my book. It seems AWLD and Airdrop aware, and handling them ok.

It's the early 2012 model Macs and downward that seem to be in trouble, maybe not being AWLD and Airdrop aware. Maybe not resolving RSA 2048 bit identity hashes.

That is my theory, however. Still collecting data.

Never mind, merry Xmas! 

hexdiy wrote:

 

- Your WiFi chip is probably Broadcom BCM 4331, which is considered as safe in my book. It seems AWLD and Airdrop aware, and handling them ok.

It's the early 2012 model Macs and downward that seem to be in trouble, maybe not being AWLD and Airdrop aware. Maybe not resolving RSA 2048 bit identity hashes.

That is my theory, however. Still collecting data.

Interesting theory, one I'm particularly interested as I have a 2008 iMac and a late 2010 Macbook Air that are both eligible for Yosemite but I have been waiting to upgrade to Yosemite for them due to the WiFi problems recently reported.

However the late 2010 Macbook Air did receive the automatically pushed out security update. That seems counter to what you had surmised that " the users not receiving the update automatically will probably be those with (slightly) older Macs, not capable of Airdrop/Continuity/Handoff/ Instant Hotspot and/or handling RSA 2048 bit identity hashes. Typically models before the "late 2012" ones."

Also, your theory seems inconsistent with the many/multiple reports in this lengthy thread from people who had just purchased brand new Macs who were experiencing WiFi issues right out of the box.

Also, my late 2010 Macbook Air has this listed in its System Report (About This Mac): "Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.22)."

In previous post with hexdiy, we discussed possible driver issues under OS X. It is interesting to me that my Windows 7 Pro runs so well when I Boot Camped it under Yosemite. Tells me one thing. The Support Drivers from Apple are from the hardware and chip manufacturers and are "Digitally Signed" for use in Windows. Thanks to MS. They don't want drivers to "break" their OS. At no point was there a "This Driver is Not Digitally Signed" message. You have touched on one primary issue to look at. Firmware Revisions. My Broadcom Firmware Version is: BCM43xx 1.0 (7.15.124.12.10). This would suggest that Firmware Update pushes need to be generated by Apple prior to updating to Yosemite 10.10.1 on  Macs based on Build Date plus Hardware installed. This is where Serial Numbers would come in handy so Apple updates Firmware as required. There have been very sparse accounts of New Macs facing this Yosemite Upgrade issue from Mavericks, it does exist. What year? What Model? Type of hardware?...etc. Have not been made clear and issues vary. Thank you, You raised my curiosity. Yosemite is running fine ( so far ) on My Mac Mini late 2012.

Uh Oh. Lump of coal for me. Looks like Mario's tool doesn't do the trick. Have had a few dropouts. I'm done. going to wait for Apple to fix it.

I think this has finally worked for me. I was just not making an auto connection to my network. Once I was on I was all good; but if I let it sleep or shut down I always had to do it manually. This has gone on for 2 mo. I think the safari fix helped because it was acting really strange. I tried a number of the fixes posted here including a version of this fix to no joy. So far it has been to sleep and shut down and come back on line. Joy! Keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

Good luck everyone!

Just applied your changes, thanks. The first thing I noticed is while it seems to connect faster, my speeds have dropped dramatically. Whereas I used to be able to go all the way up to 130mbps, I'm only getting 80mbps now.

I'll keep an eye. The issue tends to appear after a few hours of use and it gets progressively worse, so we'll see if your changes helped.

Also, your theory seems inconsistent with the many/multiple reports in this lengthy thread from people who had just purchased brand new Macs who were experiencing WiFi issues right out of the box.

Ok, Steve626, you are right all the way. Your argument and other incoming reports today have just about thrashed my stupid theory about older Broadcom WiFi hardware causing this here WiFi issue. And letting the latest "autopush" system security update come through as well. Can't help trying...

Though - and this is where it can get confusing- maybe the out-of-the-box machines have some other issues instead. As stated before, we are dealing with a very mixed bag of issues here. For a good part run-of-the-mill networking trouble, I'm sure.

However, as I now am getting to know, there are so many variations of the WiFi (/sometimes combined Bluetooth) chip (the one for your 2010 Air is as I believe the BCM943224PCIEBT2)  and related firmware that I will be giving up research except for machines in my very own hands. Just look up your chip, and flash to its latest firmware.

The best advice I will offer right now is to make a rock-solid clone or backup of your current setup, and install Yosemite on an external HDD to try it out. With a clean install, just as Jndupuis1 did. If it runs well, install on your internal and migrate. You'll still have your clone/backup as fallback. Good luck!

hexdiy wrote:

 

Also, your theory seems inconsistent with the many/multiple reports in this lengthy thread from people who had just purchased brand new Macs who were experiencing WiFi issues right out of the box.

Ok, Steve626, you are right all the way. Your argument and other incoming reports today have just about thrashed my stupid theory about older Broadcom WiFi hardware causing this here WiFi issue. And letting the latest "autopush" system security update come through as well. Can't help trying...

Though - and this is where it can get confusing- maybe the out-of-the-box machines have some other issues instead. As stated before, we are dealing with a very mixed bag of issues here. For a good part run-of-the-mill networking trouble, I'm sure.

However, as I now am getting to know, there are so many variations of the WiFi (/sometimes combined Bluetooth) chip (the one for your 2010 Air is as I believe the BCM943224PCIEBT2)  and related firmware that I will be giving up research except for machines in my very own hands. Just look up your chip, and flash to its latest firmware.

The best advice I will offer right now is to make a rock-solid clone or backup of your current setup, and install Yosemite on an external HDD to try it out. With a clean install, just as Jndupuis1 did. If it runs well, install on your internal and migrate. You'll still have your clone/backup as fallback. Good luck!

kmosx: Before installing Mac OS X 10.2 or later, check firmware

Hello again, hexdiy. Christmas is coming to an end, but New Years is approaching! So I invite all to Pop the Link above and give a Toast! It is apparently obvious that history has a way of repeating itself by default. Not sayin', just sayin'. This is not Apple's first Rodeo. You all will see that when Apple introduced OS X 10.2, OS 9 customers had to make sure their G4 machine"s  firmware was updated in order to accept the OS X 10.2 upgrade. steve626 peaked my curiosity and raised an eyebrow as stated in my previous reply. Notice the link is from Apple's User Tip Contribution. Proposal: Is it possible that OS X 10.10.1 Yosemite exceeds the Hardware's Firmware capabilities in Macs 2012 and earlier? What about driver limitations in the OS X itself? Happy New Year! hexdiy! Happy New Year to all. Read and you be the judge. This is not Apple's first Rodeo in dealing with these incompatibility issues. There has to be beyond a reasonable doubt proved before leaping to conclusion as well. Thought this link would be another good source to ponder.