Q: OSX Yosemite Wifi issues

I have the same vintage iMac that you do, with the same WiFi hardware, and I have absolutely no network issues whatsoever. Explain then ,why you have issues and I don’t. Same machine, same operating system, possibly different modem/router configuration. Yet Apple is to blame and it couldn’t possibly be some other factor out the hundreds of external factors that go into a stable WiFi connection? Any why would this just suddenly start with Yosemite for so many people?

Any why would this have just suddenly started when the first Public Beta of Yosemite came out?

@ John

Hi,

I am in total agreement. Beta's are for Beta testers. I would slap myself on the hand for getting myself into this mess in terms of accepting my part in the charade. However this is happening to people who are not part of the Beta program. People have posted saying they bought brand new computers with Yosemite already installed... (in other words: bought brand new computers with the bug already installed). Unless they are not elaborating that they immediately went and installed the Beta.

Well some interesting things have happened recently. Been quite busy with work to post. The new Wi-Fi card does behave the same as the original one so yes it does eliminate that. Can't say I'm not trying eh. The dongle still comes to my rescue. I'm absolutely amazed at the little thing. The latest update didn't appear to fix anything at first. But hard to be sure since at the same time I have ripped up all the new wire between the main router and the bridge router and went full wireless again. So far it's been ok. But I am now eternally pessimistic about this issue. However forced me to put that bridged router closer to the main router and thus further from the destination. The iMac seems to have no issue at all getting signal but nothing else gets it. The iPads, iPhones get nothing at all. The Apple TV struggles to keep up with the stream from the iTunes server in the house. But that pathetic looking little dongle gets as good signal as the iMac. I will forever worship that thing. I since adjusted the position of the bridging router and now get connection to the iOS devices and Apple TV seems to only struggle at night now. I have a third Airport extreme on it's way to make up the short fall. I don't mind doing this because I am getting a practically unused Extreme Time Capsule so now there will be one at each end of the network. So the computers in my office and in the house will both have a more regular set of backups in two separate buildings. Saves me carting the old HDD around once a month for that all important off-site backup.

So to conclude I at this moment have to assume that for me Apple have finally addressed the issue. Will continue to read the thread emails as they come in and get back to you as needed.

- Amendment - Nope still bugged... I wasn't able to post my edit to this post a minute ago due to wifi drop... Ohh, back to the dongle.

- from the Nostromo, Ripley out...

Well I stand corrected. just got a slap on the wrist for posting the versions number of the recent update. Not happened to me before that I was aware of. Could it be this issue is starting to sting for them. I don't blame them. It hurts for everyone. Still wish they would just post an open letter here in acknowledgement so we can all love each other again...

P.S. Doing some Wifi analysis gathering of both the built in card and the dongle to send to Apple. Something has occurred to me. I don't know enough to know. But the wifi uses a different interface in the Networks control Panel. I wondered if there is something in that. I would assume they have investigated all this anyway.

- Amendment - Actually I'm not sure how to gather that information for the dongle. Does anyone know if/how I can use the WiFi Diagnostics utility with the other WiFi interface as selected from the Interfaces menu in setting up a newInterface in Networking.?.

@lkrupp - we should probably 'talk' offline to this thread in terms of comparing router info - also, note that I am using 10.10.5, you are using 10.10.4

@Paul - I am a using the current developer release 10.10.5

@osihara - for me, the problem started a couple of releases ago (around 10.10.2 or 10.10.3), and, if you read enough threads, you will see that for many people, the problem started with the release of 10.10.1 - dont understand why you would get slapped for posting the version #??

no one bought a Mac with Yosemite installed as it is beta software and there are only 2 (legit) ways of getting it..... a) you signed up for the beta program, b) you are a registered Apple developer... .there are many who obtained it via some of the jailbreaking sites that keep repositories of the releases... go figure....

I am going back to the beginning and will again reset PRAM, reset SMC, delete the various networking pref files

"no one bought a Mac with Yosemite installed as it is beta software and there are only 2 (legit) ways of getting it..... a) you signed up for the beta program, b) you are a registered Apple developer... .there are many who obtained it via some of the jailbreaking sites that keep repositories of the releases... go figure...."

I guess you're referring to El Capitan... Since I've bought atleast 2 Macs with Yosemite

Hi osihara,

Look in folder: /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications and try to run Wireless Diagnostics - application from there.

Thanks. I will give it a shot.

@osihara - for me, the problem started a couple of releases ago (around 10.10.2 or 10.10.3), and, if you read enough threads, you will see that for many people, the problem started with the release of 10.10.1 - dont understand why you would get slapped for posting the version #??

 

no one bought a Mac with Yosemite installed as it is beta software and there are only 2 (legit) ways of getting it..... a) you signed up for the beta program, b) you are a registered Apple developer... .there are many who obtained it via some of the jailbreaking sites that keep repositories of the releases... go figure....

 

I am going back to the beginning and will again reset PRAM, reset SMC, delete the various networking pref files

I've read every single post and I have had this issue since day one. The first day of public beta I installed and issue started. took me a couple of weeks to realise it since I thought it was related to my office which was new at the time. Well it was the version number because the email I got from Apple Moderation specified I commented about Apple private confidential software. And I reposted the comment to the exact letter with the number replaced with "latest" and it was not moderated out and I was not based or emailed by the moderators. It was the reference to said Beta that did it. The advice given me above about the privacy was incorrect to my surprise and I, being as honest as I can be, admitted my mistake by saying so. No doubt the version number along with some other key words flagged my comment for immediate check.

Secondly. The first official version (not a beta) of Yosemite was 10.10.1 We are now on 10.10.4 official release with the next version still in beta stage. We are not talking about people doing the wrong thing. I believe what they have said about buying machines that when setup on their network contained this issue. It demonstrated the complexity of Apple bug.

Thirdly, I feel your pain. And I don't mean to be so harsh at people but this issue has become very emotional. Apple have threatened to ban me a few times and moderated many "ramblings" from this thread... I do come to Apple defence because it is clear that the issue if far more complex than it appears to people new to the situation. Your suggestion os resets and deletes goes without saying among the million other things listed in this thread if you can bare finding them. Some work for some and some for others. Good luck and I hope this situation is resolved for all of us soon. I am sure Apple hopes so too since this is damaging their reputation with those of use that have the issue.

This is more a reply to the issue and some of the things that I've read on here.

My Macbook Air worked perfectly before Yosemite, and I'm not quite sure now exactly at which release it started going wrong.  My problem was that wifi wasn't there from waking and the procedure to get it going again was to turn wifi off, then on.  Sometimes only once, sometimes a number of times.  It then usually behaved until put back to sleep, although sometimes it did drop and I had to turn off/on to get it back.  All other devices in the house work fine, iphones, ipads, and windows computers.

I have a BT Homehub4, and followed a previous thread by changing the name of the 5GHz, so far so good for my Air, the wifi now doesn't drop. 

But in my humble opinion it's not the hubs fault, it's Yosemite as all was well before, and all other devices are ok.

Personally I think your assessment is correct, logically anyway. The common denominator running through the entire thread is Yosemite... Other things seem to be very variable.

"Personally I think your assessment is correct, logically anyway. The common denominator running through the entire thread is Yosemite... Other things seem to be very variable."

Yes, and for me it looks that 802.11ac WiFi is the problem, since I've got Late-2010 Macbook Air equipped with 802.11n and Yosemite work fine there, I get full wifi-speeds in LAN & WAN. But, my MBP 15" Pro, Mid-2014 with 802.11ac and yosemite 10.10.x was suffering very bad wifi-throughput in LAN & WAN, 2-20Mbps down/upstream.

After buying Asus USB-AC56 external 802.11ac adapter, my MBP 15" went full speed with that. BUT, Asus WLAN drivers SUCK and I had sudden reboots (yes, MBP rebooted due to error, never seen that happen before) so I was forced to take another approach. Now everything seems to work, but in this forum I cannot discuss what operating system I'm running now It is OSX...

I ran the utility from that directory manually but it says the Wi-Fi interface is off. It doesn't recognise the third party Wi-Fi interface. I wonder if that is consistent with what you and others have said. Something is amiss with the built in interface.

- INSERT RANT HERE - You know what Apple need to do. Organise to have our computers shipped to them and give us upto-date equivalents in replacement and then they can hopefully have some machines to reproduce the issue with... Oh well wishful thinking. I was hoping not to upgrade my machine yet since my mid 2011 iMac actually performs really well under high load of Maya and Photoshop. Unfortunately the third area of work it has to do is internet intensive with web development. I run my development sites online in sub domains in situ. Requires reload after reload. It's bad enough that my government won't grace me with the ultra high speed internet connection that many fellow Australian's have got because I live in rural Australia and I am not worth of proper services... Oh well. But you know this issue has frustrated me so much that although I want to just offload this issue and get a new iMac and hope that the new one isn't suffering, but would be under warranty, I feel disgruntled enough that I am not buying a new Mac until we get some face time with Apple on this - FINAL.

Jeff* wrote:

 

@ikrupp - thats an excellent question

 

it could well be a difference in network settings

 

 

so it would be interested to compare our Network Pref panel settings....

My ISP is at&t u-verse DSL (not the video service, just DSL). My network is configured as follows: at&t supplied Motorola NVG510 modem with WiFi radio turned OFF, Apple AirPort Extreme base station in bridged mode with WiFi ON. My rated speed is 18mbps and I usually get upwards of 85% of that speed which is normal for DSL (since distance from the DSLAM affects speed). My Network preference settings are default with no modifications. IPv6 is active and functioning (I can reach IPv6 websites). Bluetooth is ON. My iMac is connected by both Ethernet and WiFi to the network (you need to have WiFi on for location services to work). Speed tests show no differences between Ethernet and WiFi. There are numerous devices connected to the network via WiFi or Ethernet including an HDTV, Blu-ray player, Yamaha AVR, Apple TV3, 2 iPhone 6s, iPad 2, and more smartphones when family is visiting. All function normally.

The key point is that I have not jiggered network settings in any way. It is all default and things connect and function without issues. Nothing drops. The one thing that may be different is that I live in a relatively small town and there are very few neighboring WiFi networks near my location. I ran the WiFi utility included with Yosemite and it found no competing channel interference and did not recommend changing any channel numbers.

as I previously noted, ATT swapped out my modem for a NVG589, they ran a new line into my house, etc, etc

no changes were made to the factory default settings on the new modem except changing the channel

i am still dropping connections, getting slow speeds, etc

so I am stumped....

Try deleting your networks and making a general reset of them, that usually works.