“In this article we look at some of the issues with Yosemite, including problems with WiFi in Yosemite, difficulties getting Apple’s new Continuity features (AirDrop, HandOff and phone calls made on the Mac) to work. We also look at updates to Yosemite including 10.10.1,” Karen Haslam writes for Macworld UK.
“S developer has theorised that the WiFi problems being experienced by Yosemite users are due to the technology behind AirDrop,” Haslam writes. “Developer Mario Ciabarra wrote on Medium: ‘I’ve narrowed down the issue to the use of Apple’s Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) that is used for AirDrop, AirPlay, and Gaming connections.’ He added: ‘I’ll go out on a limb and say the WiFi issues are because of Apple’s choice of using Bonjour over AWDL and that, given the constraints of the WiFi hardware, this will be difficult to get right.'”
“Ciabarra explains that AWDL is a low latency/high speed WiFi peer-to peer-connection Apple uses for AirDrop, AirPlay, GameKit and some other services. Normally services would advertise their services over Bluetooth SDP, an indeed some Apple services do so, but Apple is advertising AirDrop over WiFi instead – and this, thinks Ciabarra, is ‘inadvertently destroying WiFi performance,'” Haslam writes. “Ciabarra’s suggestion is that to fix the WiFi issues users can turn off AWDL and AirDrop in Yosemite.
Read more in the full article here.
