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M2 Pro Ethernet issues?
- Thread starter Saberon2014
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I got my new M2 Pro Mac mini on Wednesday. It came with MacOS 13.0 and immediately prompted to update to 13.2 before finishing setup which hung. After a power off reboot, I let it stay at 13.0 until I got everything working. Then I successfully updated to 13.2. Now my faithful 2012 Mac Mini is a dedicated media sever.
Speediest shows the same speeds as my 2012 Mac Mini. I very rarely have seen any packet losses, except then there are widespread power outages with lines being down from hurricanes or tropical storms.
Speediest shows the same speeds as my 2012 Mac Mini. I very rarely have seen any packet losses, except then there are widespread power outages with lines being down from hurricanes or tropical storms.
Had exact same problem on Macmini Pro with Ethernet,45-55% packet loss.
Switched to Manual from Automatic and 0.0% loss.
If this is not a hardware problem why only some people having this problem?
Is there any chance this could actually be a hardware problem?
Is there any chance this could actually be a hardware problem?
Trying to decide if I want to send them back or not. Still have a couple of days left & I'm still having terrible networking issues every other day or so.
My M2 Pro machines are supposed to be servers. They are replacing two very solid (albeit aging) 2012 Mac minis. On Catalina, I would achieve double digit uptime (sometimes, even triple digit!). On these? I haven't even made it to three days yet! Networking gets bonked & only a restart will fix it. Toggling Manual -> Auto -> Manual makes the problem go away, but only for a few minutes. And I've even had the same packet loss issue with a USB-C to Ethernet dongle!
It's AMAZING hardware, but quite frankly, given the price... it's hard for me to justify keeping them. At this point, I'm tempted to either reactivate my 2012s or try & find a pair of M1 minis to run on Monterey...
My M2 Pro machines are supposed to be servers. They are replacing two very solid (albeit aging) 2012 Mac minis. On Catalina, I would achieve double digit uptime (sometimes, even triple digit!). On these? I haven't even made it to three days yet! Networking gets bonked & only a restart will fix it. Toggling Manual -> Auto -> Manual makes the problem go away, but only for a few minutes. And I've even had the same packet loss issue with a USB-C to Ethernet dongle!
It's AMAZING hardware, but quite frankly, given the price... it's hard for me to justify keeping them. At this point, I'm tempted to either reactivate my 2012s or try & find a pair of M1 minis to run on Monterey...
I think it's a combo of things. I was able to connect to my 5ghz network intermittently with lots of packet loss prior to upgrading to 13.2 after an apple tech suggested updating. It wound up making me not able to connect AT ALL to the router. I had to swap out the router for a newer XB8 by Xfinity that supports Wifi 6, however I'm still having issues connecting which leads me to believe it's a software issue.
I'm not 100% convinced by that logic (though still hoping you're right). I do think it's probably software related, but I don't think it being hardware problem is completely outside the realm of possibility. Edit: I'm overthinking this, so no need to take any of the following too seriously.
When I read more to understand what AVB/EAV modes are (which a lot of people on the Apple forum seem to be leaving disabled to resolve the packet loss), this feature appears to require both hardware and software support. E.g. any Mac with both thunderbolt and ethernet support it, but USB ethernet dongles don't support it; networks switches also have to support it, apparently.
So if the network is behaving badly when a hardware feature is enabled via a software toggle...the blame can go to either side, IMO. Also, one scary thing about certain types of hardware damage (e.g. electro-static discharge) is that it continues to work but has intermittent issues that could get worse over time. Though the senior Apple support who ran diagnostics said hardware checks were fine (hopefully not a false-positive).
When I looked into what this feature is used for, it is splitting video and audio channels on the ethernet wire, alongside network. From what I have observed, it's used by musicians/audio engineers who have ethernet-enabled audio hardware. If that is the only use case, then it's something I personally don't care about. Though the principle of it not working since day 1 on a new machine is troubling. I don't know any other use case for this mode. E.g. I couldn't find out whether it also helps with ordering audio/video packets in regular everyday internet usage, like streaming. If anyone else knows, I'd appreciate some education.
Unfortunately, even with that mode disabled, I can still get a bit of packet loss just 1 or 2 percent beyond what is considered acceptable.
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Thing is, you can turn AVB/EAB right back on and it works fine as long as the settings are set to manual. So even with absolutely no settings changed at all, just purely setting the config to manual fixes the problem
Yeah I agree that if it's fixed by toggling an option on and off, it is probably a software bug, but some users have reported that software workarounds for the M2 packet loss tend to work for a while then come back. For me, it only comes back if I power down then restart the Mac Mini. Which is probably why the users over in the Apple forum have disabled AVB/EAB completely (including myself).
I've also observed that changing the settings then clicking OK will down the device few a few seconds and bring it back up. IME, issues that get resolved by "restarting" the hardware can either be hardware or software.
I do still think it is software, and am betting on it by not returning my M2 Pro mini, since that has not worked for some others.
Apparently, just the M2 Pro mini. I am testing a base M2 mini and no problems (except screen sharing) after a few days. I would consider the Pro but not if ethernet is not working (FFS!).
No clue yet that this is an hardware issue (on some models), or a bug in Ventura?
And what about the WiFi issue? Is it afflicting the M2 non-Pro too?
I don't use WiFi on the desktop. But I just turned on WiFi on the M2 mini and it is getting an excellent signal. So no problem on my machine.
This is the thread where the "helpful reply" is to disable AVB/EAV and leave it off. I'm tracking 7 different threads because I'm affected by both the ethernet problem and the wifi problem and this workaround doesn't have me fully convinced (up to 4.6% packet loss is better than 73% but it is still a lot).
Ethernet
Wifi
Before finding out about the workaround, I used an off-brand USB ethernet adapter and it was working far better than the mini's bulitin ethernet or wifi. It still have a few percent of packets lost, but it was more than usable.
Yes to both for me. I've tried both a USB-C hub with ethernet as well as a USB-A ethernet adapter. They were better, no question, but ultimately would eventually exhibit the same problems. One time, my USB-C hub actually lost networking, froze the settings app when i tried to go into the network settings & then decided to take the system down with a kernel panic!
Leaning towards returning mine... If it is software related like we suspect, who knows how long a fix will take?
This is really troubling then. Externals are supposed to eliminate hardware components inside the mini failing. When even an external NIC drops packets it means a deeper issue, OS level or board / silicon level. Hopefully it is only Ventura being Ventura...
JAB wrote:
"The workaround does fix the issue, but what is the next step?"
The next step is "just use it".
And don't worry about the problem, once it has been "fixed"...
"The workaround does fix the issue, but what is the next step?"
The next step is "just use it".
And don't worry about the problem, once it has been "fixed"...
A temporary fix that, in my experience, sometimes reverts itself (back to "Auto") after rebooting is no fix. Not to mention the issues I've had with external ethernet adapters...
I still think it's some combination of the M2 Pro & the Ventura network stack (since some folks have Wi-Fi issues), but I've already started the return process on both of my machines with Apple. Hate to do it, because they're otherwise fantastic machines, but I guess I'll just wait for M3!
I've gone back to using my 2012 Mac minis for the time being. Oddly enough, I used OpenCore to install Ventura on one of the two 2012s as a test... and it's been up solid for almost 4 days now! If it keeps up like this, I might patch the other one, too... I can't say I missed having audible fan noise, though! 😂