Q: Wifi is incredibly slow on OS X El Capitan

Hi there,

A solution that worked for me when the problem appeared.

Just had the weirdest thing on my Macbook Pro.

I had upgraded to El Capitan with no problems whatsoever. Had applied the latest .1 update. Still working fine.

Today, I wanted to plug my second hard drive. I plugged in my D-link USB hub, and plugged the hard drive and wired mouse on it to the left of the Macbook Pro.

To the right was plugged another hard drive.

Then Wifi had all sorts of trouble : could not connect, or when i managed to connect, it was supeeerrr slooooowww.

I tried reseting PRAM, repairing permissions rebooting all devices.

It came to me the only change I had was the second hard drive and usb hub.

Came back home, removed hard drive and hub, plugged in the mouse back.

And voilà.

Everything went back to normal.

Not the first time I fault the USB of the macbook Pro.

You should try unplugging all usb devices from the computer and see if it makes any difference on your Wifi connexion maybe ?

Hope that can help somebody.

I have had terrible wi-fi performance since upgrading to El Capitain also (Mid 2011 MBAir). Also lots of wi-fi connectivity problems, especially after the laptop goes to sleep - takes an age to connect to Wi-Fi after this. I just found this thread and cleared the PRAM as suggested and on booting, it connected to the WiFi really quickly and I ran a speedtest and could see awesome speeds. I checked my iFi connection (Option- click wifi symbol at top gives extra info), and could see that I was connected on 2.4GHz. I thought, I'd better switch WiFi off for a minute and back on to see if I could get a 5GHz connection to the router. On switching back on, the WiFi connected very quickly again, but then moments later became disconnected and was trying to connect. This took over a minute before finally getting a 5GHz connection. I tried speedtest again, and the download speed had dropped from 30Mbps (on 2.4GHz connection) to 4mbps (on this 5GHz connection). So I logged onto the router and have disabled the 5GHz Wi-Fi. Once again disabled WiFi on the mac and re-enabled, and within seconds it got a 2.4GHz connection - no messing around this time. I checked with speedtest and again it was back to 30Mbps download (and 10Mbps upload)!

So I'm wondering if the El Capitain issue is specifically related to 5GHz WiFi connectivity (or maybe just a problem with my hub (BT smart hub here in the UK).

Same problem on my early 2015 Mac Book Pro 13", and already running the 10.11.1 version of El Capitan. Still the same, and not the only issue that I have with the upgrade (Time Machine not backing up properly too).

I don't know if it's my wifi or another issue, but Safari is brutally slow for some things. Gmail takes way too long to load, and usually doesn't at all. I can't access my calendar or my Google docs for the same reason. Facebook is entirely out of the question.

I've tried all of the above fixes (except playing around with dns, because I don't know enough to fix it if it goes wrong) to no avail. I've tried searching to see if El Cap changed permissions somewhere, but no. I've tried using Chrome (which was buggy in Mavericks) with marginally better success. It was fine yesterday, but today, not so much. I've tried going through Safari preferences, clearing caches, etc, nope. If it were just Safari, I'd think it was the browser itself.

I rely on Google docs / drive / gmail for work, and this is ridiculously frustrating.

Well, El Capitan is pretty buggy still ... Yesterday my cursor began to disappear for no reason, had never done that before, nothing changed in my config etc.

So let's hope some more patching comes our way !

Thank you.  Thank you.  I could not find where to Empty Cache until seeing your post.  I even searched the "Help" to try to find out where to do this.  Emptying cache and disabling Bluetooth seems to have improved my response time immensely!!  I did not follow the proxy step however. 

Don't do it. El Crapitan.

I ran through the gamut of possible solutions and nothing has worked. I can stay online for about to 8-10 minutes, then everything will slow down to a crawl...not only on my computer, but the Apple TV and other devices that are connected. Once the network freezes, if I turn off WiFi on my computer, the network opens up and all the other devices unfreeze.

Once the WiFi dropsoff though, I have to log out and log back in to reset whatever it is that went wrong. PITA. Out of options and time.

I guess I'll just log out and log back in every 10 minutes.

Okay, after speaking with Gary at Apple tech support, he directed me through a couple of steps. First, we did a search to find out if there was any malware running. And there was so we removed it. He (Apple) recommended Malwarebytes (free) to scan.

Second, he suggested I set up a new account. For me that was the solution (so far). I'll report back if I run into any problems. If you are having trouble with WiFi after your upgrade to El Capitan, try creating a new account. I set my account up as an administrator account, like the prior account. So far so good.

Here's what was happening to me. After about 4-5 minutes the network would just freeze, and I determined my MacBook was the culprit. It would freeze for all other devices on the network as well. If I turned the WiFi off on the MacBook, my AppleTV and iPad would be able to download again. I then had to either log out or restart the MacBook to get it on the network again. After about 4-5 minutes, the network would freeze again. Click to turn off WiFi, and the network was freed up again for my other devices. That was the pattern.

Creating a new account seemed to be the solution. Hope this is helpful for some as there is nothing more frustrating than having to troubleshoot for hours and hours. 

I'm glad that worked for you. I suggest though to use an externeal usb drive and do a fresh install of El Cap. If after a clean install and a PRAM reset the problem still exsis, then I suggest not to use El Capitan and wait for a fix  (which you can install on your external usb drive for testing purposes). If you trusted all the tech writers out there who said that El Cap is great update without any issues and did not do a super duper backup befor updating - well then you have a problem.....(I learned that lesson last year)

Well, I think I figured out my issue. I use Intego virus-ware. I updated it this morning and everything seems to be working snappily. Email loading quickly, Facebook working well, Google drive working quickly. So, it seems to be solved for me.

I have already been facing the same problem for two years.

Macbook Pro 15" 2012. Today I updated from Mavericks to El Capitan, did clean install. With Mavericks I had more than 80Mb/s, with El Capitan - just 20-25 Mb/s. The router is the same, the network is the same (5GHz). The only difference is OS X El Capitan (clean install). This is ridiculous to have a such problem with basic functionality on the near 3000$ device!

My wife had Macbook Air 13" 2012. With Mavericks Wi-Fi speed was around 80Mb/s. In 2014 she updated to Macbook Air 13" 2013 with Mavericks as well. Guess what happened!? Yes, Wi-Fi speed became 20-25 Mb/s. The router was (and still is) the same.

It seems I tried everything, every advice, spent many days, no luck.

I believed Apple products just work, you do not need to spend hours to make them work properly. At the same time I have corporate Windows 7 HP laptop and two pretty old cheap laptops with Windows 10. Everything is fine!!!

These problems with Wi-Fi in OS X last for many years and Apple still cannot fix them. This is a real nightmare!!!

I am very disappointed. Me and almost all my friends say that we do not need all these new functions, but stable and reliable operating system release.

It is petty that Apple does not care about it.

The first i think this is a problem of Safari. Now, i think El Capital has too error. Safari is too slow,lag and time for shutdown is more long with Yosemite...

I hope Apple will fix all soon.

AnhPhong wrote:

 

The first i think this is a problem of Safari. Now, i think El Capital has too error. Safari is too slow,lag and time for shutdown is more long with Yosemite...

I hope Apple will fix all soon.

It depends on what the cause of your problem is. If you have outdated software or, worse, crapware that has crippled your system (such as the infamous "mackeeper") it is not in Apple's hands to fix it.Reading through this and other threads you may find several tests and solutions for different problems.

lightrack, I would just go back to a clean install on Mavericks. Those are some significant speed differences that would drive me crazy.

For others, I was certainly surprised to find malware on my system. Who knows how that stuff was tugging on my network speeds.

SOLVED SLOW WIFI

Ok I have had the same issues as everyone else here very slow wifi. I have had numerous apps starting at login so started to do some investigation work.

I stopped everything starting at login and ran a speed test... Boom full speed, which for me is 150MB.

I then let everything startup at login again to re-check and ran a speed test... Problems again, 10MB.

My issue turned out to be Boom 2! Uninstalled re-booted and wham full speed on every test now, all seems back to normal. Not sure if anyone else is using Boom 2 but if you are remove reboot and all should be good!!