2019 MacbookPro 16" Slow Wifi Transmit Rates

[RabidMacFan]

Update: As @ahodes mentions in this thread, disabling "Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac" fixes this issue and and allows the computer to maintain a good Wifi connection. Original post below.

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I'm noticing the wifi on my new mbp to be wildly inconsistent. It can connect up to 1300Mbps 802.11ac, but overtime the transmit rate drops significantly. Attached are two screenshots, one at 1053Mbps and the next at 14Mbps. The Wifi network, channel, and noise stay relatively constant.

As a temporary fix, I can disconnect from Wifi and connect back and the Tx rate will go back up to 800+Mbps, but it's really a pain to do that. My 2015 laptop, sitting a couple feet away, does not have this problem on the wifi.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks

 

[jostermacedo]

Are you sure the issue is with the MacBook Pro? How about the distance from the router, interference or the router itself? Can you test throughput with a different computer from the same place? Any neighbors in the same frequency?

 

[jerryk]

Can you ensure one system is not interfering with the other by shutting down or sleeping the systems. Also, is there are reason it is set to 80 MHz. That is wide and may cause channel overlap weirdness.

 

[RabidMacFan]

Are you sure the issue is with the MacBook Pro? How about the distance from the router, interference or the router itself? Can you test throughput with a different computer from the same place? Any neighbors in the same frequency?

The router is about 6 feet above and 3 feet behind the laptop. My older MBP is on the same desk and does not have this symptom. There are no neighboring networks on 5Ghz band that could be interfering. When wifi is reset and Tx rate is high, both machines have good throughput.

Can you ensure one system is not interfeering with the other by shutting down or sleeping the systems. Also, is there are reason it is set to 80 MHz. They is wide and may cause channel overlap weirdness.

I recall the other laptop being shutdown at times this happens, but I'll try it both ways and pay more attention to it and report.

 

[ahodes]

Do you use unlock with Apple Watch? Turn it off. I ran into the same thing on a Mac Mini and this is apparently a common problem. I don't completely understand why, but the issue never occurred again after disabling it.

 

[RabidMacFan]

Do you use unlock with Apple Watch? Turn it off. I ran into the same thing on a Mac Mini and this is apparently a common problem. I don't completely understand why, but the issue never occurred again after disabling it.

Ok, I'll give it a try. Unlock with Apple Watch does not cause problems on my 15", and the unlock process should be handled entirely over bluetooth, so I dont see how it could cause the issue. But the Apple Watch is 2.4Ghz only when the mac is on 5Ghz so their wireless is not the same. Will report back.

Also, I found a thread where others are reporting the problem is related to Apple Watch:

2018 MBP Slow WiFi on Wake

Belatedly, I did say better, not 'fixed'.. definitely still issues, just less often. Also I do have an Apple Watch, too. Perhaps will try disabling.

forums.macrumors.com

and another thread reporting similar bad wifi on 16" mbp:

16" MacBook Pro bad WiFi?

I just ran my old late 2013 13" side by side with my 16" to compare WiFi performance. It seems like WiFi statistics are different on the two models. When I press option + left click on the WiFi icon the 16" shows a Tx rate of around 60 - 100 MBit. On the 13" it sits at 350 MBit. I ran a couple...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[d0minick]

i wanted to add my own experience here. I got at 16" MBP, to replace my 2016 (late 2015) 13" MBP.

The wireless experience thus far, has been vastly inferior on the MBP. i find better luck on the 2.4GHZ then 5. Constant drops and disconnects. The 2015 model worked great, my old imac (2012ish) works great.

Definitely an issue.

 

[matram]

Have you used the built-in WiFi diagnostics app to check for signals strength, noise and possible imteference.

 

[RabidMacFan]

Have you used the built-in WiFi diagnostics app to check for signals strength, noise and possible imteference.

You can see the signal strength (RSSI) and noise values in my screenshot. Strong signal and low noise.

I'll tell you what though, since disabling since disabling "Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac", I have not had any bandwidth drops!

 

[Mark Baker]

You can see the signal strength (RSSI) and noise values in my screenshot. Strong signal and low noise.

I'll tell you what though, since disabling since disabling "Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac", I have not had any bandwidth drops!

I have been having this same experience with my 16" MBP when using unlock with AW. It looked like @MBHockey was onto something with having 2.4ghz and 5ghz on separate SSIDs, but I wasn't as fortunate with the same config. See here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ke.2129752/page-3?post=28234171#post-28234171

 

[RabidMacFan]

Seriously, I have not had any abnormal reduced Wifi Tx rates since disabling "Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac".

This definitely looks like the source of the problem, and this useful feature will remain disabled on my Mac until Apple fixes this issue.

Thanks for the heads-up @ahodes!

 

[NeoVg]

This problem normally happens when a Mac reconnects to a 802.11n+ac Wifi with 80 MHz channels after wake. I've reproduced it on a 13" MacBook Pro 2018 and a Mac mini 2018.

See this blog post for a description: https://hmijailblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/macbook-2013-vs-80-mhz-wifi-channels.html

You can fix it by setting your router 802.11n+a with 40 MHz channels, but this reduces the available throughput to 450 MBit/s.

The far better solution is to automatically turn Wifi off and on again after wake. You can find a how-to here: https://medium.com/@airbagmoments/is-your-macos-wifi-groggy-after-sleep-ebf510011dd5

 

[petvas]

I might have found a workaround so that unlock with Apple Watch can still work. Go to preferences->Network, then click to access the advanced options (on the right corner). Delete the Wifi you normally connect to (you should of course know the password for later use). Go back to the main menu of the Network preferences and click on locations. Add a new location and assign it the Wifi you normally connect to. Apply the settings. Now test by putting the MacBook in standby and then waking it up. So far it worked every time and I hope it will also stay like that. Apple Watch unlock is of course enabled.

 

[Warren J]

I might have found a workaround so that unlock with Apple Watch can still work. Go to preferences->Network, then click to access the advanced options (on the right corner). Delete the Wifi you normally connect to (you should of course know the password for later use). Go back to the main menu of the Network preferences and click on locations. Add a new location and assign it the Wifi you normally connect to. Apply the settings. Now test by putting the MacBook in standby and then waking it up. So far it worked every time and I hope it will also stay like that. Apple Watch unlock is of course enabled.

Joined this forum to make a post on this issue. I just got my MBP 16 last week and have loved it but noticed that my internet speed was about half of that of the Windows laptop I also have here --250 mbps vs 500 mbps. I do have it setup to unlock with my watch. I followed the steps you shared here and that jumped my speed up to about 300, still slower than the Windows laptop but a noticeable improvement. I then also turned off the unlock with watch and saw my speed go up to about 350, another improvement. At that point I decided that 300 was good enough and I'd rather enjoy the convenience of unlocking with my watch so I turned it back on. For whatever reason, my speed then jumped up to 500 and has stayed there since yesterday.

I don't know if that process is repeatable or will work for others, but I'm sharing it here just in case it can be helpful for someone else.

 

[4sallypat]

I never have trusted wireless for consistency since the advent of WiFi.

All my Macs except for the travel 12" rMB and iPads - are all on wired Ethernet.
Home or work, I connect with a hardline.....

Even my 16" MBP is on LAN directly to the router which is 10' away and never have an issue with speed.

 

[satcomer]

Depends how old is the wireless router your connecting to?

 

[DaveXX]

I had a long fight with my MBP 2018 because of this:

2018 MacBook Pro randomly losing WiFi con… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Yes its much more consistent if AW unlock is turned off. The problem is always the same: after some time the TX rate is dropping to 14Mbps or 27Mbps and its somehow locked. It will go shortly up but always down again to 14 or 27 Mbps.
If you turn off AW unlock wifi performance is still incosistent but never drop to 14/28 Mbps.

The technican at genius bar said its a MacOS issue and they can't fix it. He said as he investigated the issue on my macbook he can see that at this time the locationd deamon goes crazy. So he suspect it has something to do with location services the apple watch is using as well.
Cycle Wifi (off/on) will always fix the issue. Btw i have a lot of different Wifi AP to test with and its always the same.

Response from apple is like always: We never heard about this problem, you are the only one who has this problem, blah blah blah....
My response: well if i'm the only one with the problem exchange my MBP to a working one because i have an apple care + contract ....
First we need to do 3 repairs....
Genius Bar: This problem can't be repaired its a MacOS issue just turn off alle Location services...
Apple Care: We can just do sth if this is 3 time repaired...

 

[Lammers]

I have the same issue on a 2018 i9 MBP 15. I'm a few metres away from an 11ac access point, typically connected at 975 Mbps, but then sometimes the Wi-Fi rate will drop down as low as 14 or sometimes 13 Mbps (measured according to Wireless Diagnostics). And whilst I can see the signal quality fluctuating as you would expect with Wi-Fi, the drop to 14 Mbps doesn't correlate with particular drops in signal quality. :-(

I'll try the AW unlock workaround and see if that helps.

 

[DaveXX]

You can get details by pressing the option key if you click on your wireless:



As you can see there is no signal problem. But the tx rate is locked in this case to 27Mbps. Sometimes it shows 13 or 14Mbps.
And even if the tx rate can change for a few seconds it will always fall down to this number a few seconds later.
After turning off and on the wifi you can see the tx rate is back to 975Mbs and speed is back to normal.

 

[NeoVg]

Interesting: After experiencing the bug more often in recent times (even with using Sleepwatcher to disable and reenable Wifi on each wake from sleep), I've finally reset the NVRAM of my Mac mini some days ago - and since then, it didn't happen again!

I'm still using Sleepwatcher though.

 

[Lammers]

DaveXX, my experience sounds identical to yours. I've turned off the Apple Watch unlock and will see if it makes a difference.

 

[DaveXX]

Last information from apple:

There are changes in the latest update, build 20A5364e,18A5369b, that may have resolved this issue.

Sadly i can't test it because im on public beta and there was no update yet.

 

[DaveXX]

after the public beta is realeased the bug already occur just 1 hour after install the first time again and than every few minutes/hours with activated apple watch unlock function.
So sadly its not fixed.
The weird thing is that its now toggling between 14Mbps and 27Mbps but its still stuck there. So still no usable apple watch unlock feature.

 

[ahendarman]

I can also confirm that I no longer have intermittent Wifi problem on my 2018 13" MBP after turning off Apple Watch Unlock.

 

[DaveXX]

I still don't understand why its so hard to fix it even after some generation of devices. And why don't people care much about this problem?
Everybody is discussing about the fan/heat issue with the MBP 16 but just a handful of people confirm the issue here.
So the question is are there people NOT having this issue with apple watch unlock? Or does nobody use apple watch unlock?

I had this issue with every MBP since 2018 so im just wondering if its possible to use this function without affecting the wifi? I think its a very very useful function if you use the MBP in clamshell mode so you can't use touch id.