Since updating to latest Yosemite a few days ago, I wake up every morning to find my router crashed (NetGear WNR2000v3). If I unplug the ethernet before going to bed, the router is fine in the morning. Wifi is off on the Mac. So far, I haven't had any problems while using the system, only while it is idle over-night. I had no network problems with previous versions of Yosemite. Anyone else seen this?
MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)
How do you know the router has crashed?
All of my other devices lose their wifi. Power cycling the router fixes it. Maybe not "crashed," but inoperative. Power cycle in the morning would not be so irritating, except the Mac ends up with a different IP address, and I am doing some development work where I have that hard coded in a bunch of places that all have to be edited. I guess I can replace most of those addresses with loopback address.
All of my other devices lose their wifi.
Does that mean they're no longer connected to the local network, or no longer connected to the Internet? Does the Mac also lose its connection to the LAN or to the Internet?
Everybody is losing their LAN connection. It just happened today after being idle for about an hour. Possibly, not related to being idle at all, and I have just been lucky that it hasn't happened yet while I was using the computer. I was saying the router power cycle was no big deal, but this time the Internet connection did not come right back.
Was just comparing ifconfig output with a dependable Mac running 10.8.5, and noticed that on Yosemite en0 is assigned to ipv6, and there are quite a few additional interfaces, with en4 finally pointing to ip v4 address. I just used networksetup to turn off ipv6. Will report back if that makes a difference.
Do you use any cloud-data or online backup services that could be running in the background when you're not at the Mac?
No, and I guess it's not related to being idle. I lost the network again this afternoon, while typing a www form. Lost about half an hour of work. Poof. Not sure why Safari can't at least leave you at the page you were working on when it loses connectivity. That would be preferable to gray "Not connected" page. Now I have turned on wifi and unplugged the Ethernet cable. Maybe that will be more stable, though I am not optimistic.
I'm not persuaded that there's a causal connection between your Mac and the router malfunctions. I think you just have a crap router.
Does your router have the latest firmware?
Have you power cycled all the equipment (not just the router) that uses it? (Waiting at least a minute before turning each device back up is usually sufficient, but you might try waiting 15-30 minutes.)
It is possible that the configuration settings of the router are corrupt. Consider resetting the router to factory default settings. Then restore a good backup version of the configuration settings. If you do not have a backup of the configuration settings, then reset them all manually. That will also allow you to check/change the timeout setting.
For sure it is the router's fault for crashing, regardless of what the Mac is doing. But that doesn't mean Yosemite is not also at fault. The router worked flawlessly until I updated to 10.10.2 a week ago. Then it began to crash every night, except for the 2 times I disconnected the Mac before going to bed. It has now been stable for 2 days since I:
1. Turned off ipv6 on the Mac
2. Rebooted the Mac
3. Turned off DHCP on the Mac and configured the IP address manually
I am not sure which of these was critical. I suspect 3. Saturday was the first day I spentenough time at the computer to realize the bug was not related to inactivity, and I had a warning pop up that another computer was using my IP address, and then a second warning immediately after that for a different IP address. So, the Mac was trying successive IP addresses that were "in use" (though I'm not certain if they really where). Doing an "ifconfig" would sometimes show no IP address at all assigned to the ethernet, when there had been one a moment ago. Anyway, something definitely malfunctioning with the DHCP. That doesn't explain the eventual router crash (which did not happen then), but I can see how the situation was headed in that direction. Perhaps the Mac is using some protocol features that my router does not support, and the compatibility negotiation is failing.
The reason I tend to pin this on Yosemite is a lot of other people are having network problems with recent versions of Apple software. The only reason I braved the 10.10.2 upgrade, other than the annoying prompting, is because I was finding that newly saved files were not visible in the Finder. Opening/closing folder to refresh would not make it appear. The only reliable way to get it to appear was to first find it with Spotlight. Unfortnately, that bug is still there. If Apple has regressed to the point where the OS can't perform the basic operation of displaying a list of files, it's reasonable to guess their reach exceeds their grasp on the networking side as well. And, if the plan was to get me to buy a new router as you suggest, they should have done a delayed action time bomb, so I wouldn't associate the new router problems with the new software.
I re-read this thread and the "crashing" seems to be that your devices disconnect after sleep/idle. In addition, "typing a www form" does not exactly tell us whether the web page was up and idle for a time before you started to complete it by typing. Check to see if Wi-Fi is the first item in the list of network port configurations in your Network preferences (System Preferences > Network). If not, to change it see Set Service Order. In addition, consider trying "Fix for a Mac Disconnecting from Wi-Fi After Sleep from Wake" and "Making a New Location."
The reason I tend to pin this on Yosemite is a lot of other people are having network problems with recent versions of Apple software.
And a lot of people do not have the problem. Remember that generally, users post to this Community when they are experiencing problems. Actually, I had to instances: (a) after Apple automatically pushed the NTP patch in late December in which upon rebooting my computer, wifi constantly disconnected and reconnected. Power cycling all the equipment on my network resulted in no change. Connecting the computer to the router via Ethernet and then restoring the router's configuration settings from a saved backup returned wifi to normal. (b) After the second reboot in update OS 10.10.2, the computer could not find a wifi connection. Well, it was working to download the update... Looked at my Network preferences and the Network Name just showed No Connection. I clicked on the pop down list and selected my network.
The only reason I braved the 10.10.2 upgrade, other than the annoying prompting, is because I was finding that newly saved files were not visible in the Finder. Opening/closing folder to refresh would not make it appear. The only reliable way to get it to appear was to first find it with Spotlight. Unfortnately, that bug is still there.
Users reported a similar problem with what is now an older version of Dropbox. See "New files don't show up in Finder (MacOS Yosemite)." The current version of Dropbox is 3.2.4. Also, if you have not already done so, you might consider trying the various suggestions/fixes users reported in the thread "Yosemite Finder bug, folder get unresponsive in icon view"?
Thanks for responding. I have wifi turned off on the Yosemite laptop. I did try turning it on once to see if the problem was specific to the wired connection (it wasn't). I have some processes running on my laptop that talk to each other via the local IP address. When the problem happens these will lose connectivity to each other, even though communication is purely local to the laptop. Apparently, the Yosemite Mac stops recognizing it's own IP address. Then all of my other devices (a few iOS devices on wifi and another Powerbook on Ethernet) will also lose their LAN connections. I witnessed the Yosemite Mac lose its IP address once while I was using it. Had some sockets open, working fine, went to open another and got error. Did "ifconfig" and found no IP address assigned to the ethernet. This did not crash the router, but I suspect it would have if I had let it go. At that point I assigned the static IP, and no problems since.
The problem with missing files happens with Apple Preview app. I open a .png, duplicate, save, and it is not visible in Finder until I search for it with Spotlight. This happens every time on my system.
Did "ifconfig" and found no IP address assigned to the ethernet. This did not crash the router, but I suspect it would have if I had let it go. At that point I assigned the static IP, and no problems since.
Great! 🙂 With all the routers that I've used, I configure the settings with the GUI. One LAN setting is to "use router as DHCP server" and create an Address Reservation list of reserved (static) IP addresses for each device connecting to the LAN.
The problem with missing files happens with Apple Preview app. I open a .png, duplicate, save, and it is not visible in Finder until I search for it with Spotlight. This happens every time on my system.
Hmm...I do not have that problem, so perhaps there is a wee gremlin in your system causing havoc. Consider verifying your hard disk using Disk Utility (in Utilities folder). Or startup your computer in Recovery (command + R), launch Disk Utility from the Utilities menu, and Repair Disk. (Instructions within this Apple KB article.) The former method can only test and report any errors but not fix. The later method can also fix.
The "ifconfig" is just to see what IP address the Mac is using. I also use GUI to configure the router. However, I set the static IP using the Mac network settings configure ipv4 "Manually" option. Setting a reserved IP on the router would still require DHCP negotiation, which I think is where the problem is. One of these days I will try turning DHCP on the Mac back on and see if the problems returns.
I just noticed the disappearing file problem does not occur if I save the new file to the same folder where the original is. It happens only when I save to a different folder.
10.10.2 update crashes my (wired) router
