topic RE: MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity in ExtremeWireless (General)

MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity

McKitrick__Mark — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 18:56:00 GMT

MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity

Reference: http://osxdaily.com/2015/01/30/os-x-10-10-2-yosemite-wi-fi-problems/

Situation exists at customer site UMass Medical School with EWC running 08.32.09.0002 with Wireless AP3610-1, and the authentication is 802.1x using AD credentials.

Just starting troubleshooting, but since the issue seems to be specific to this OS and it's common enough to be posted all over the internet, I figured odds are good, someone has run into this already and best practices might already exist. If so please share.

RE: MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity

Chris_Sherman — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 20:02:00 GMT

Oh Lord Mark, Good luck. We're all Mac and have been struggling mightily with this issue for years. I'll step through what I have but I've not found best practices. This really seems to be a moving target for Apple with Wi-Fi updates coming with nearly every update.

Can they upgrade the controller? Extreme has made several changes that specifically deal with Apple's "improvements." I'm on 09.15.03.0005 with the APs purposely on 09.15.02.0009.
End users really need to be trained to turn their Wi-Fi off and back on again. This solves connectivity issues - most of the time.
Macs have a problem with caching bad info and good luck finding it. There is nothing that I know of that's akin to doing a "repair" on a windows machine which seems to always fix the issue. Here are the steps which must be done in order though:

Turn off Wi-Fi
Remove relevant keychain entries
Remove relevant Wi-Fi networks
Remove any 802.1x profiles
Delete the AirPort's location
Create a new location
Turn the AirPort back on and try again.

I know the above is tedious but I can't stress enough how many machines it has made better. If you find this to be helpful, let me know - I have a script which can be adapted to your location.

Macs seem to have a way harder time finding the best signal than Windows so they'll latch on to a poor signal and all-the-sudden go looking for a better one. I've had SOME success shrinking the cell size, but Extreme told me that what I shrunk it to is now the default: MBR for the A/N radio: 12 Mbps. I've had (and kept) the MBR for the G/N radio at 6 Mbps (which is the default for that radio) due to low density issues in certain areas.
Revisiting problem areas to re-channel if necessary.
If any Apple client is not up to date, have them turn off Bluetooth(or update!). This problem seems to be solved with 10.10.2 (not sure about iOS yet).
References:

A lot of banging my head and the bricks.
My testing shows this to be fixed in 10.10.2: https://medium.com/@mariociabarra/wifried-ios-8-wifi-performance-issues-3029a164ce94
No clue what to do about this one except the wifi off/on trick: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2zo1uo/if_you_have_still_having_wifi_issues_with/

Hope some of this helps - at least know that you are not alone.

RE: MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity

Ronald_Dvorak — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 20:02:00 GMT

Hi Chris,
just because I'm curious... why did the APs run with the older image?

Thx,
Ron

RE: MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity

Chris_Sherman — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 20:02:00 GMT

Hi Ron, I upgraded to 09.15.03.0005 and immediately started having more problems with our AirPlay setup - we're using Extreme's bonjour VLAN solution, Wi-Fi only. Rolled back and things calmed right down.

Thanks!

RE: MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity

BrandonC — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 04:46:00 GMT

Just a heads up, OS X 10.10.3 was just pushed out from Apple, and it looks like it has some WiFi fixes. Unfortunately, I can't say if it will help with this, but it may be worth a shot.

RE: MAC Yosemite OS X 10.10.2 loses Wireless connectivity

Chris_Sherman — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 05:52:00 GMT

I've just done a lot of testing on ~12 machines and honestly don't see a lot of improvement. Several times the machines thought they had an IP but had no network access. Each time, checking the reports on the HWC - the offending clients weren't even ON the wireless. Again(still), I'm calling this an Apple problem. A few of the enlightening posts that have recently showed up about 802.1h I think were too late to make it into 10.10.3 so there's still hope.