Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter
Mark Tinka
mark.tinka at seacom.com
Thu Oct 29 16:39:08 UTC 2020
On 10/29/20 18:05, Blake Hudson wrote:
> On the latest Catalina 10.15.7 from a MacBook Air (early 2014) via
> WiFi to Google Wifi Mesh router (only a single unit network):
>
> Over 2.4Ghz through 3 interior walls:
> --- 192.168.86.1 ping statistics ---
> 100 packets transmitted, 100 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
> round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.440/15.078/213.538/30.541 ms
>
> Over 5Ghz through 1 door:
> --- 192.168.86.1 ping statistics ---
> 100 packets transmitted, 100 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
> round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.557/24.614/137.233/39.015 ms
This is what I'm talking about. Why would you have such massive jitter
on wi-fi to your local router?
You're hitting 213ms on 2.4GHz and 137ms on 5GHz. This doesn't seem odd
to you?
Never had this issue pre-Catalina (I understand it may have been
introduced in Mojave, but I came from High Sierra).
> This is a real world test with several iPhones, 2.4GHz WiFi only
> cameras, and an iPad being used for zoom (remote school) while running
> these tests.
Same for me. There are tons of devices on my WLAN, and only the one
running Catalina behaves this way.
No drama for the rest.
> If you were not aware, on a Mac you can hold the Option key while
> clicking on the WiFi icon to see more options as well as more
> information about your current WiFi connection, including the realtime
> Tx rate, channel, and when your Mac is searching for new networks
> (mine does this every few seconds, it seems).
Yes, I am aware about the on-board macOS wi-fi diagnostics, and the good
ol' trusted "airport -s". But those aren't enough.
I ended up spending money on NetSpot to see what's going on. Nothing
there either. All I can tell is that Catalina is the problem; how
exactly, is not yet very clear.
> From an experience perspective, all applications seem to work fine for
> us. Including uploading to YouTube (a regular event as my spouse is a
> teacher) and Zoom/Teams/FaceTime/your teleconference app of choice
> (used by all of us).
So even though apps like Zoom report mild packet loss while on wi-fi
(0.1% - 0.10%), it's not a train smash.
In general, everything works fine. But it doesn't feel 100%.
For the Youtube upload, I've found it to be temperamental, but I'm
making it work for the time being.
Mark.
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