Macbook Ruins Home Wifi Network

[YouthTree]

Hey guys, googled this lots and found a few solutions but none work unfortunately.

This only started happening recently, Netflix on TV's, other peoples internet on computers throughout the house work fine until my macbook connects to the internet, then everything cuts out or runs mind numbingly slow. Once the internet is turned off on my macbook everything works perfectly again.

I've tried turning photostream off in iPhoto, it did nothing, I've also changed the channel on my router but this does nothing. What could it be? It's so annoying!

Macbook OS Sierra 10.12.6
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014)

I have actually avoided updating my OS because I don't want it to start negatively affecting my macbook like a new OS will on an iphone, but if you think it's worth a shot I will.

Thanks in advance

 

[jerryk]

Hey guys, googled this lots and found a few solutions but none work unfortunately.

This only started happening recently, Netflix on TV's, other peoples internet on computers throughout the house work fine until my macbook connects to the internet, then everything cuts out or runs mind numbingly slow. Once the internet is turned off on my macbook everything works perfectly again.

I've tried turning photostream off in iPhoto, it did nothing, I've also changed the channel on my router but this does nothing. What could it be? It's so annoying!

Macbook OS Sierra 10.12.6
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014)

I have actually avoided updating my OS because I don't want it to start negatively affecting my macbook like a new OS will on an iphone, but if you think it's worth a shot I will.

Thanks in advance

Might be bandwidth issues. How much bandwidth do you have in the house. 10-20 Mbs can get eaten up by a couple of netflix sessions or a couple of medium (720p) resolution youTube sessions. Especially if you are in an area of high latency. Go to speedtest.net and see what it reports for latency and down/up speeds.

 

[YouthTree]

I should also point out this doesn't happen in any other houses I've been in
[doublepost=1529939345][/doublepost]Hey mate. I don't think it's bandwidth, everything works fine and consistently until my mac is connected. It doesn't just slow things down, the internet cuts out, then connects, then cuts out, then connects.

 

[Painter2002]

Hey guys, googled this lots and found a few solutions but none work unfortunately.

This only started happening recently, Netflix on TV's, other peoples internet on computers throughout the house work fine until my macbook connects to the internet, then everything cuts out or runs mind numbingly slow. Once the internet is turned off on my macbook everything works perfectly again.

I've tried turning photostream off in iPhoto, it did nothing, I've also changed the channel on my router but this does nothing. What could it be? It's so annoying!

Macbook OS Sierra 10.12.6
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014)

I have actually avoided updating my OS because I don't want it to start negatively affecting my macbook like a new OS will on an iphone, but if you think it's worth a shot I will.

Thanks in advance

My two main questions are this:
1). How fast is your internet speed rated to be, and
2). Are you using the internet providers router or your own that you bought?

In question 1, it is possible that if you have low speed internet (less than 20 mps) the having too many devices can overwhelm you internet bandwidth.

In question 2, there could be two issues with the router, 1 being that you might have a cheap or poor router that needs replacement since it can’t handle too many devices, and 2, if you have your own personal router, you may need to check settings to see if it prioritizes devices. If you have a Nighthawk router or other good router, these sometimes have settings that provide stronger internet to certain devices over others, based on internet usage history on that device on that router. If you have one of these you might try turning that setting off.

The MacBook itself shouldn’t cause an issue with draining the WiFi unless you are doing something taxing on the internet (i.e. downloading large files). If you store your photos in the iCloud it could be that it is downloading a lot when you first turn on you macbook but that should go away after a bit.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I feel your pain. I had an already old 2011 Netgear N600 that was having problems before my wife and I got our 2017 MBPs. Yep, we started having noticeable internet problems - but we had them before too, but definitely once we got our 2 MBPs. (iCloud downloads, downloading and installing software, etc...).

So, I invested in a Linksys Max-Stream AC4000. WOW. Talk about a night and day difference. No device is having problems, all devices work instantly, easily 2x the wifi range, we're having a blast.

Definitely invest into a nice router. Also, your old router may have some media priority settings where it gives laptops priority wifi traffic.

 

[YouthTree]

I'm using our Bt homehub router that Bt gave us. We have fibre broadband. I just dont understand why this only happens at home
and nowhere else and why its only my macbook that ruins the connection. Are there any easy fixes I could try? Would rather not spend 80quid on a new router!

 

[BigMcGuire]

I'm using our Bt homehub router that Bt gave us. We have fibre broadband. I just dont understand why this only happens at home
and nowhere else and why its only my macbook that ruins the connection. Are there any easy fixes I could try? Would rather not spend 80quid on a new router!

Assuming you have the ability to log in to that Bt homehub router as admin to change settings? --- Try changing the channel used by the router, use the 5ghz frequency instead of 2.4 (or vis versa), turn off QoS if it has it (or on if it is off), relocate router with a long ethernet cable if possible, etc.

I would try that stuff and see if any of that helps.

 

[YouthTree]

Assuming you have the ability to log in to that Bt homehub router as admin to change settings? --- Try changing the channel used by the router, use the 5ghz frequency instead of 2.4 (or vis versa), turn off QoS if it has it (or on if it is off), relocate router with a long ethernet cable if possible, etc.

I would try that stuff and see if any of that helps.

Changed channel, nothing happened. No options for changing frequencies. I guess I'll just have to stick to my iphone when home!

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

It would be really odd to have a single device cause this kind of failure. Not sure I've come across something like this before.

Off the top of my head it could be something to do with security settings, maybe everything is using one connection and the MacBook another, causing a conflict when connected. Highly unlikely however but this is a BT el'cheapo router we're dealing with.

As you say it only happens at home, the most likely offender is the router. You need to try another router to see if you still experience the issue, just to rule it out.

I assume you've already tried stuff like connecting things one by one to ensure it's the Mac. Would also be worth calling up BT and having them deal with it too.

 

[jerryk]

I did no realize you are in the UK. You might want to update your location to state that.

With that said, not matter who they are, I never use the crap the Telecom providers give you beyond what is necessary. Here in the US that means letting the cable company providing the cable and buying my own cable modem and separate router. That provides a $5/mo savings since I am not renting their box, but more importantly lets me control everything and buy decent equipment. With so much of our lives effected by the internet, spending money on that connection is a good investment.

I am with everyone else on saying that you need to understand the bandwidth, and if that is enough, look at the equipment at your home.

 

[duervo]

Hey guys, googled this lots and found a few solutions but none work unfortunately.

This only started happening recently, Netflix on TV's, other peoples internet on computers throughout the house work fine until my macbook connects to the internet, then everything cuts out or runs mind numbingly slow. Once the internet is turned off on my macbook everything works perfectly again.

I've tried turning photostream off in iPhoto, it did nothing, I've also changed the channel on my router but this does nothing. What could it be? It's so annoying!

Macbook OS Sierra 10.12.6
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014)

I have actually avoided updating my OS because I don't want it to start negatively affecting my macbook like a new OS will on an iphone, but if you think it's worth a shot I will.

Thanks in advance

It’s your router. I was going to suggest that it could be either your router or a bad WiFi card in your Mac blasting broadcast traffic to your router (I’ve seen that cause outages in business networks a few times,) but then you said it worked at other locations just fine, so ...

Check for an update for your router and install if available and then test again. If no update is available, or testing shows no change, then replace it. In fact since you mentioned that it used to work fine, until recently, it’s probably a hardware issue with the router, but I’d update it if I could, just to rule out its software. Also, if you rent it from your ISP, an exchange should be free.

 

[Painter2002]

Assuming you have the ability to log in to that Bt homehub router as admin to change settings? --- Try changing the channel used by the router, use the 5ghz frequency instead of 2.4 (or vis versa), turn off QoS if it has it (or on if it is off), relocate router with a long ethernet cable if possible, etc.

I would try that stuff and see if any of that helps.

Seeing that OP has the 2014 MacBook Pro which still has an ethernet port, I might suggest trying to plug in the MacBook directly to the router via ethernet, and then see if the other devices experience an issue with disruption of connection. If they don't then most definitely you probably need a new router.

Also, I'd still suggest downloading an app on your iPhone (Speedtest or other) and test the connection speed without your MacBook to see what speed you are getting. If you have fiber, you should be getting decent speeds (depending on the package speed you are paying for).

I personally got tired of using the provider supplied routers and bought my own Netgear Nighthawk, and it is SO worth the investment. None of my or my girlfriend's devices have issues with connection (and we have quite a few devices actively connected).

 

[jerryk]

Seeing that OP has the 2014 MacBook Pro which still has an ethernet port, I might suggest trying to plug in the MacBook directly to the router via ethernet, and then see if the other devices experience an issue with disruption of connection. If they don't then most definitely you probably need a new router.

Also, I'd still suggest downloading an app on your iPhone (Speedtest or other) and test the connection speed without your MacBook to see what speed you are getting. If you have fiber, you should be getting decent speeds (depending on the package speed you are paying for).

I personally got tired of using the provider supplied routers and bought my own Netgear Nighthawk, and it is SO worth the investment. None of my or my girlfriend's devices have issues with connection (and we have quite a few devices actively connected).

No Ethernet ports on the retina MBPs like his 2014.

 

[Painter2002]

No Ethernet ports on the retina MBPs like his 2014.

Oh, I must be having a brain-fart, must need more caffeine, thank you for correcting me. I apologize for my error on that.

 

[jerryk]

Oh, I must be having a brain-fart, must need more caffeine, thank you for correcting me. I apologize for my error on that.

No Problem. What you said is correct. With the retina MBP the user just needs to buy a USB or DP to Ethernet adapter. I have one for my MBP to perform the exact troubleshooting you suggested. Using ethernet gets all of the Wifi potential issues out of the way, so you can see what the real issue is.

 

[HDFan]

Out of curiosity when you are having the problems after having just rebooted, with activity monitor showing no network activity, what happens if you turn off wifi in network/system preferences?

 

[sublunar]

My reading of the OP suggested that the internet quality via wifi for everyone goes to hell as soon as the MacBook goes onto the wifi network. BT Fibre (marketing name BT Infinity) could offer upwards of 38-76Mb which is very fast in best case scenarios. One notable fact from using BT internet is that they used to employ traffic shaping to prevent bandwidth from being sucked up by users. A document on their website appears to show that they don't now whereas they used to slow down P2P traffic during so-called peak hours. Our US readers may read this under net neutrality.

Therefore my questions:

1. Despite being on BT Infinity what's your line speed? Go to speedtest.net (as an earlier poster said) to get a reading.
2. Are you doing stuff like sharing on P2P networks? eg downloading 'videos', 'music', and 'software' etc using bit torrent for example.
3. Is everything ok between midnight and 8am (ie off peak hours)
4. Have you recently set up iCloud on that Mac? Could stuff be syncing?

 

[Painter2002]

BT Fibre (marketing name BT Infinity) could offer upwards of 38-76Mb which is very fast in best case scenarios.

I forget how fortunate I am to have Google fiber in my area. I regular pull speeds of 350+mbs download on my WiFi with my MacBook Pro, with a bunch of other devices connected.

 

[sublunar]

I forget how fortunate I am to have Google fiber in my area. I regular pull speeds of 350+mbs download on my WiFi with my MacBook Pro, with a bunch of other devices connected.

That's very fast indeed. I think the fastest UK speed without going into very high pricing is about 100Mb cable via Virgin Media. However, I believe US internet pricing is very expensive from what I have seen, you can get BT internet connection for under $30 a month standalone. I believe US cable companies are hugely expensive by comparison?

 

[Painter2002]

That's very fast indeed. I think the fastest UK speed without going into very high pricing is about 100Mb cable via Virgin Media. However, I believe US internet pricing is very expensive from what I have seen, you can get BT internet connection for under $30 a month standalone. I believe US cable companies are hugely expensive by comparison?

Yeah, it can be pricey depending on where you are and the provider. I pay $70 a month for my google fiber, which is pretty cheap for gigabit internet.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Yeah, it can be pricey depending on where you are and the provider. I pay $70 a month for my google fiber, which is pretty cheap for gigabit internet.

I'm paying $93/mo for my 96/96 Frontier FIOS - formerly Verizon FIOS. Quality has gone down since Frontier has taken over - and price gone way up. Was paying $60/mo under Verizon. I'm jealous!

 

[Fishrrman]

Does the router offer you the option to have both 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz wifi networks?
If so, I'd set it up with individual SSID's for each band.
Then, I'd set up the network/airport on the MacBook so that it could access EITHER band.

Once that was done, I'd try the MacBook on the 2.4ghz band for a while.
If that doesn't work, I'd move it to 5ghz.
Does one work better than the other?

 

[Painter2002]

I'm paying $93/mo for my 96/96 Frontier FIOS - formerly Verizon FIOS. Quality has gone down since Frontier has taken over - and price gone way up. Was paying $60/mo under Verizon. I'm jealous!

Yeah I got so excited when Google finally installed their fiber network in our area, I was sooo tired of dealing with Time Warner/Spectrum Internet. Maybe one day more companies will move towards fiber networks, they are the best! And so far Google’s customer service has been top notch.
[doublepost=1530026453][/doublepost]and I might add with Time Warner I was paying close to $120 just for 200mb internet service.

 

[jerryk]

That's very fast indeed. I think the fastest UK speed without going into very high pricing is about 100Mb cable via Virgin Media. However, I believe US internet pricing is very expensive from what I have seen, you can get BT internet connection for under $30 a month standalone. I believe US cable companies are hugely expensive by comparison?

I pay $120/mo for Verizon, but most of that is for cable TV. The internet part is $50 or so a month. We see up to 350 mbps down, but only 15 mbps up. But at least the ping times are low <10ms

 

[Painter2002]

I pay $120/mo for Verizon, but most of that is for cable TV. The internet part is $50 or so a month. We see up to 350 mbps down, but only 15 mbps up.

That's not shabby for cost and download, but I am sure it'd be more for just internet. I have no need for cable because we stream everything. 15 mbs upload is not unusual for cable internet, that's what I got with Time Warner. Now with Google Fiber I get the same upload speeds as I do for download (350-450 mbs), in fact sometimes upload is faster than download (go figure).