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Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

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Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#21

Post by varenc »

mrtesthah wrote: post #9
varenc wrote: post #6

Their actual solution for disabling AWDL is running this script in the background: while true; do if ifconfig awdl0 |grep -q " That just checks the awld0 interface every second and turns it off if it's on. Apple really doesn't offer any other way to disable awdl? Note that setting AirDrop to "No One" doesn't fully disable awdl. It's used for other things like screen sharing, AirPlay, bonjour device/service discovery,…

You might also try something like: sudo /usr/libexec/airportd en0 prefs AWDLEnabled=YES (Edit: see varenc's reply below) Or you could create a kext (using deprecated KPIs) that continuously blocks the interface from coming up: errno_t awdlblock_ioctl_handler(void *cookie, ifnet_t interface, protocol_family_t protocol, unsigned long ioctl_cmd, void *ioctl_arg) { if (SIOCSIFFLAGS == ioctl_cmd) { struct ifreq *ifr = (st…

Wow I didn't know about that undocumented ability to change Airport prefs!

I was able to somewhat disable AWDL by doing this like you suggest:

    sudo /usr/libexec/airportd en0 prefs AWDLEnabled=YES
And then restarting airportd so that it picks up the change:

    sudo launchctl kickstart -k system/com.apple.airportd
This worked without having to disable SIP and modify com.apple.airportd.plist

It doesn't take the awdl0 interface down, and I still see some traffic on it, but I can confirm that it disables some awdl features like "Unlock with Watch" and Screen Sharing over awdl. (Screen Sharing will work over your wifi network instead, but normally it'll prefer a direct awdl link)

Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#22

Post by nighthawk454 »

does this impact iOS wifi as well? My local HomeAssistant detects my phone on wifi for presence detection, and suddenly lately it's been all out of whack. it takes much longer to connect to wifi when I get home. and sometimes while home the presence status 'flickers', turning all the lights on/off. never used to happen

Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#23

Post by InvaderFizz »

varenc wrote: post #6

Their actual solution for disabling AWDL is running this script in the background: while true; do if ifconfig awdl0 |grep -q " That just checks the awld0 interface every second and turns it off if it's on. Apple really doesn't offer any other way to disable awdl? Note that setting AirDrop to "No One" doesn't fully disable awdl. It's used for other things like screen sharing, AirPlay, bonjour device/service discovery,…

I've been having this problem for months. The solution I settled on was a root cronjob that just does `ifconfig awdl0 down` every minute.

It makes shared clipboard not work as well with my iPhone, but at least I get 180Mbps/70ms on the work VPN instead of 4mbps/70-700ms.

The interface stays down till the laptop sleeps, so most of the time it's a no-op.

Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#24

Post by jcynix »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #15

I (used to) work in academic IT and I hate articles like this. People would assume there is a serious problem, turn off a bunch of services, run a bunch of random-ass shell scripts, and then forget that they'd done all that and at some random point in the future discover that some feature wasn't working, and blame me.

I mostly agree. But the article isn't the main problem, the sloppy script is. When I install such hot fixes, I have them check if the cause still exists (e.g. still running under Monterey?) and, additionally, add a timeout based on a date.

Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#25

Post by drdaeman »

nighthawk454 wrote: post #22

does this impact iOS wifi as well? My local HomeAssistant detects my phone on wifi for presence detection, and suddenly lately it's been all out of whack. it takes much longer to connect to wifi when I get home. and sometimes while home the presence status 'flickers', turning all the lights on/off. never used to happen

Could be. I've noticed my iPhone started to accidentally intermittently lose WiFi connection, only to reconnect again in ~3-5 seconds. I wasn't sure if this is iOS or UniFi AP bug, but I suppose it could be the former.

Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#26

Post by mrtesthah »

varenc wrote: post #21
mrtesthah wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might also try something like: sudo /usr/libexec/airportd en0 prefs AWDLEnabled=YES (Edit: see varenc's reply below) Or you could create a kext (using deprecated KPIs) that continuously blocks the interface from coming up: errno_t awdlblock_ioctl_handler(void *cookie, ifnet_t interface, protocol_family_t protocol, unsigned long ioctl_cmd, void *ioctl_arg) { if (SIOCSIFFLAGS == ioctl_cmd) { struct ifreq *ifr = (st…

Wow I didn't know about that undocumented ability to change Airport prefs! I was able to somewhat disable AWDL by doing this like you suggest: sudo /usr/libexec/airportd en0 prefs AWDLEnabled=YES And then restarting airportd so that it picks up the change: sudo launchctl kickstart -k system/com.apple.airportd This worked without having to disable SIP and modify com.apple.airportd.plist It doesn't take the awdl0 inter…

That's good to hear that's all it takes!

Yes, Bonjour name resolution, which Screen Sharing uses, can also run over AWDL, but of course it does not have to.

There was a bug in OS X Yosemite and older versions of iOS which caused any AWDL activity to severely increase network jitter and latency; this sounds like a regression.

https://medium.com/@mariociabarra/wifried-ios-8-wifi-perform...

Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#27

Post by bin_bash »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #15

I (used to) work in academic IT and I hate articles like this. People would assume there is a serious problem, turn off a bunch of services, run a bunch of random-ass shell scripts, and then forget that they'd done all that and at some random point in the future discover that some feature wasn't working, and blame me.

don't forget all the cargo-cult of people stumbling on this article with unrelated wifi issues!

Re: Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?

#29

Post by secabeen »

rrauenza wrote: post #28
bink wrote: post #4

Please don't recommend people pipe curl output to a shell. Yikes.

How did piping shell scripts from web sites become acceptable? > bash https://www.meter.com/awdl.sh ) Eek!

It's really common in the Mac world, homebrew does it too: https://brew.sh/
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