Wi-Fi Jitter, Erratic Ping, Latency Due To AWDL (AirDrop/AirPlay)

[AdriftAtlas]

I have noticed that Wi-Fi on macOS Ventura has high jitter. This affects any real-time application. It is common for latency (ping) to spike to spike from a normal 2-10ms to nearly 200ms. This has happened in 13.0 and now 13.1. The only fix so far has been to disable AWDL; which is used by AirDrop and AirPlay:

sudo ifconfig awdl0 down

The issue disappears until the computer goes to sleep. Upon resume, one has to toggle AWDL up and then down to get jitter back down.

sudo ifconfig awdl0 up
sudo ifconfig awdl0 down

There are a few posts on Reddit in regards to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/zl3v3h

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/ynhwur

One company has a support article about it; note that 13.1 still has this issue:

Recent Apple updates leading to Wi-Fi issues

Meter is currently tracking an issue that is affecting M1/M2 Macbooks and leading to slow internet connection, drops in Zoom calls, and entirely losing a Wi-Fi connection.

www.meter.com

UCLA has a support article about it:

Status Records - UCLA Status

systemstatus.ucla.edu

Someone trying to figure out how to disable AWDL permanently:

Force disabling AWDL on Ventura or above

Somewhere around macOS Ventura or Monterey, Apple changed the built-in Wi-Fi kernel driver so that the virtual device for AWDL represented in ifconfig now passes the activation state of AWDL data

apple.stackexchange.com

Other StackExchange report:

Why is my WiFi speed killed by certain events?

Update: This is a bug that has been recently fixed with the release of macOS Ventura 13.1. I have a MacBook Pro M1 14" and have it connected to a 5Ghz WiFi. I can usually use WiFi and Bluetooth

apple.stackexchange.com

Why is Apple not acknowledging this issue nor fixing it?

 

[AdriftAtlas]

Meter and UCLA now claims it's fixed in 13.1. However, I'm still seeing latency spikes every 10s on 13.1 unless AWDL is downed:

64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.037 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.091 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.686 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.499 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=2.968 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=2.501 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=2.642 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=2.871 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=19.306 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=63.392 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=2.735 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=1.862 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=3.171 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=2.933 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=1.956 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=5.427 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=2.338 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=2.003 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=64 time=5.404 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=64 time=2.492 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=64 time=33.450 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=76.711 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=2.317 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=23 ttl=64 time=2.954 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=24 ttl=64 time=2.455 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=2.210 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=26 ttl=64 time=3.970 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=27 ttl=64 time=2.104 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=28 ttl=64 time=4.217 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=29 ttl=64 time=3.005 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=30 ttl=64 time=2.482 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=31 ttl=64 time=2.744 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=32 ttl=64 time=38.778 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=33 ttl=64 time=87.147 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=34 ttl=64 time=3.216 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=35 ttl=64 time=3.072 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=36 ttl=64 time=2.346 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=37 ttl=64 time=2.093 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=38 ttl=64 time=3.768 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=39 ttl=64 time=2.158 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=40 ttl=64 time=1.995 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=41 ttl=64 time=5.317 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=42 ttl=64 time=2.887 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=43 ttl=64 time=10.265 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=44 ttl=64 time=56.099 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=45 ttl=64 time=1.859 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=46 ttl=64 time=2.207 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=47 ttl=64 time=2.579 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=48 ttl=64 time=2.377 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=49 ttl=64 time=2.751 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.42.1: icmp_seq=50 ttl=64 time=5.497 ms

 

[AdriftAtlas]

Wi-Fi Latency with AWDL Up on macOS 13.1:

Wi-Fi Latency with AWDL Down on macOS 13.1:

 

[AdriftAtlas]

Reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/zty807

 

[AdriftAtlas]

I discovered something odd by accident:

Switching the access point to channel 149 instead of 36 makes the issue go away. Is it possible that AWDL is scanning on channel 149 by default? Does it have to jump away from whatever channel is being used to channel 149 momentarily hence the delay?

 

[AdriftAtlas]

That's exactly what's going on:
https://wlanprofessionals.com/an-overview-of-apple-wireless-direct/

It appears that AWDL prefers channel 6 on 2.4Ghz and channels 44, 149 on 5Ghz. Channel 149 seems to be preferred over other channels. Thus switching the Wi-Fi network to channel 149 seems to avoid the delay for the radio to hop channels.

 

[joloriquelme]

Hi,
I am having the same issue. Changing 5 GHz channel to 149 fixes this. I can do this at home only. I don't have control over the rest of the networks I am frecuently visiting.

 

[joloriquelme]

Unfortunately, I am still facing this problem.

 

[quirkypig]

Issue still persists on 15.0.1 even after taking all steps in this thread.

 

[Systox]

Seems like this issue is still happening with the new Mac mini m4 and affecting my iPad Pro 13” on the 18.2 DB4.

Interestingly, my iPhone on the same iOS version isn’t reproducing the repeating interval ping spikes/jitter.