6 ms·

I noticed this too when I used steam to stream a game to my laptop over good wifi. Every minute it would stutter for a second. I set up iperf3 tests and noticed

by tda 4y ago

I noticed this too when I used steam to stream a game to my laptop over good wifi. Every minute it would stutter for a second. I set up iperf3 tests and noticed the wifi lag increasing every minute between my macbook and my server and between my windows desktop pc and my server (when connected over wifi). Of course no lag when using cables, so I reasoned it was wifi related, and had noting to do with my setup (I used different clients, and different AP's). I then took my macbook (only portable computer I had) it too a nearby coffee shop with good wifi and I could still measure lag spikes every minute. So then I was really puzzled, was there some rogue device interfering with wifi all over the neighborhood? Finally I found a suggestion to turn off location services (or whatever it is called), and the spikes disappeared. And I learnt that even when it is not used (not sure it the lid was closed) a macbook can cause significant interference to the wifi for all other nearby devices.

hoten 4y ago
Wow, I guess this is also why my local steam streaming (well, I use Moonlight but same difference) started lagging out of nowhere. I first noticed it 2 days ago, but before that I clocked 30 hours no problem, so I guess this is a brand new problem. Gonna try turning off all my Mac devices location services, thanks for the tip.
- tda 4y ago
  This was a few years ago on a 2015 MBP running Catalina or whatever came before that. My guess is the adaptive bandwidth algorithm acutely switches to a lower bandwidth due to the lag spike, and then slowly recovers in the ten seconds after. And then 50 seconds later it starts over again. I suspect if I could have manually set the streaming quality to a fixed value the lag spike would hardly not be noticable at all, but the constant switching of the stream quality is what actually caused chopiness. Same might be the case with the OP's zoom calls
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
tomxor 4y ago
> And I learnt that even when it is not used (not sure it the lid was closed) a macbook can cause significant interference to the wifi for all other nearby devices. My partner has an older MBP, I noticed this the last time she was forced to updated her OS a major version... the thing no longer sleeps when you tell it to or when you close the lid, it will stay connected to wifi and quite happily saturate the network downloading updates. Only way to be sure is to power off the stupid thing.
- astrange 4y ago
  https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-power-nap-on-or-off-mh40774/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-power-nap-on-o...
  - tomxor 4y ago
    Tried it, didn't work, I also dug out the old pmset command but it seems to have been neutered. I'm glad I stopped using Apple stuff 10 years ago, their macs are gradually devolving into iDevices.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Sleep isn’t any different than it used to be. “pmset -g assertions” will show you why it thinks it’s awake, it could be a silent video playing in a web browser or something. (and of course, if you can ssh in to run that it must be awake.)
      - IAmEveryone 4y ago
        they already mentioned why it was awake: downloading updates. ...which it only does when connected to power so I'm honestly failing to understand what the problem may be. Anyway: Settings -> Software updates -> Advanced -> Download new updates when available -> uncheck. For everything else: Battery -> Power adaptor -> Wake for network access -> uncheck (may also take care of the above, dunno)
- 4y ago
draebek 4y ago
People doing game streaming might be interested in this bug in the moonlight-qt repo that discusses people having this same problem, including various fixes: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159 https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159
- trafficante 4y ago
  Can confirm that the scripts posted itt by vJan00 [0] solved the stuttering problems that were plaguing me 4-5 months ago. Didn't bother setting up a cronjob; I just toggle it on/off as needed. [0] https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159#issuecomment-999049632 https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159#...
867-5309 4y ago
if you have the wherewithal to use iperf then why not wireshark too? it's probably actively sniffing surrounding wifi frames to feed back to its proprietary version of WiGLE.net under the guise of super helpful "location based services"

by tda 4y ago

hoten 4y ago

Wow, I guess this is also why my local steam streaming (well, I use Moonlight but same difference) started lagging out of nowhere. I first noticed it 2 days ago, but before that I clocked 30 hours no problem, so I guess this is a brand new problem. Gonna try turning off all my Mac devices location services, thanks for the tip.

tda 4y ago
This was a few years ago on a 2015 MBP running Catalina or whatever came before that. My guess is the adaptive bandwidth algorithm acutely switches to a lower bandwidth due to the lag spike, and then slowly recovers in the ten seconds after. And then 50 seconds later it starts over again. I suspect if I could have manually set the streaming quality to a fixed value the lag spike would hardly not be noticable at all, but the constant switching of the stream quality is what actually caused chopiness. Same might be the case with the OP's zoom calls
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

tomxor 4y ago

> And I learnt that even when it is not used (not sure it the lid was closed) a macbook can cause significant interference to the wifi for all other nearby devices. My partner has an older MBP, I noticed this the last time she was forced to updated her OS a major version... the thing no longer sleeps when you tell it to or when you close the lid, it will stay connected to wifi and quite happily saturate the network downloading updates. Only way to be sure is to power off the stupid thing.

astrange 4y ago
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-power-nap-on-or-off-mh40774/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-power-nap-on-o...
- tomxor 4y ago
  Tried it, didn't work, I also dug out the old pmset command but it seems to have been neutered. I'm glad I stopped using Apple stuff 10 years ago, their macs are gradually devolving into iDevices.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Sleep isn’t any different than it used to be. “pmset -g assertions” will show you why it thinks it’s awake, it could be a silent video playing in a web browser or something. (and of course, if you can ssh in to run that it must be awake.)
    - IAmEveryone 4y ago
      they already mentioned why it was awake: downloading updates. ...which it only does when connected to power so I'm honestly failing to understand what the problem may be. Anyway: Settings -> Software updates -> Advanced -> Download new updates when available -> uncheck. For everything else: Battery -> Power adaptor -> Wake for network access -> uncheck (may also take care of the above, dunno)
4y ago

draebek 4y ago

People doing game streaming might be interested in this bug in the moonlight-qt repo that discusses people having this same problem, including various fixes: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159 https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159

trafficante 4y ago
Can confirm that the scripts posted itt by vJan00 [0] solved the stuttering problems that were plaguing me 4-5 months ago. Didn't bother setting up a cronjob; I just toggle it on/off as needed. [0] https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159#issuecomment-999049632 https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/issues/159#...

867-5309 4y ago

if you have the wherewithal to use iperf then why not wireshark too? it's probably actively sniffing surrounding wifi frames to feed back to its proprietary version of WiGLE.net under the guise of super helpful "location based services"