When MacBook Air is connected to the internet it drastically slows down the wifi for other devices

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Level 1

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When MacBook Air is connected to the internet it drastically slows down the wifi for other devices

The wifi on my MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014) works perfectly fine but other devices that are connected to the same wifi will slow down and get very glitchy periodically. This will stop video streaming on other devices and will cause my partner's game to glitch really badly on his PC that has its own ethernet cable. This issue only occurs when my MacBook Air is on and connected to the wifi.

I have stopped downloading any files whatsoever, removed my iCloud, deleted any possible applications that can be running in the background, enabled the 'Cache' tab in Content Sharing (Seen in the Activity Monitor), disabled automatic software updates, turned off My Photo Stream, and anything else I could think of to reduce bandwidth usage.

Under the Network tab in Activity Monitor there are some processes I don't fully understand - is there something I should be looking for?

What else can I do to fix this problem?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on May 14, 2020 6:59 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

John Galt

Level 10

146,402 points

May 14, 2020 7:44 PM in response to morgylaw

I understand that when your MacBook Air is connected to Wi-Fi, other devices sharing that network suffer from poor connectivity.

To advance troubleshooting try creating a new Network Location on that Mac. Please read How to use network locations on your Mac - Apple Support.

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

146,402 points

May 17, 2020 9:21 PM in response to morgylaw

I don't know if it will help, but using Wireless Diagnostics may reveal some suggestions: Use Wireless Diagnostics on your Mac - Apple Support.

Its Summary page at the end may be its most useful result. Normally, only Review Wi-Fi Best Practices is its sole entry. Anything in addition to that requires investigation. Please write back and describe its results, or post a screenshot.

At the time that screenshot was taken nothing out of the ordinary appears to be happening. It's all normal. The "spiking" you describe is to be expected with any network activity. It is by nature discontinuous, with data being sent in chunks.

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Answer 3

morgylaw Author

Level 1

8 points

May 17, 2020 3:49 PM in response to John Galt

Hi there,

Thank you for the advice. I created a new Network location and checked the Service Order which does not seem to be the problem as it goes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thunderbolt. I have never connected to an ethernet cable and so there is nothing to adjust there.

My MacBook seems to spike, whether I'm browsing the web, watching a video, or even have nothing open and my MacBook is sleeping, it will just randomly spike.

I have attached a photo of the Network screen in Activity Monitor. When these spikes happen the other devices in the house will experience a lag of sorts.

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Answer 4

May 17, 2020 7:18 PM in response to morgylaw

go into modem setting to allocate different wifi setting, nowadays modem or router has at least 2.4G and 5G, switch MBA to the other least users/connected-devices. if it does not help, you may have to assign connection priority in modem (normal IP address: 192.168.1.1) . good luck!

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When MacBook Air is connected to the internet it drastically slows down the wifi for other devices

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