14 DAY TRIAL // Great news for everyone using a Mac with OS X 10.10 installed or an iDevice running iOS 8. Any WiFi woes you may be experiencing can be easily addressed with a few tweaks on your end, as shown by one wickedly smart developer.
Code whiz Mario Ciabarra, who sells a number of successful mobile applications, took matters into his own hands when he made acquaintance with the WiFi bugs brought by iOS 8 and OS X 10.10. Not only did he find the culprits on both platforms but he also devised separate fixes for each. Yes, he’s a saint.
AWDL is to blame
Mario says that a peer-to-peer connection called AWDL that Apple uses for a lot of wireless services is the main reason behind everyone’s problems with WiFi. He demoes the issue on iOS using a speed test app. Pull up Control Center and you’ll instantly cripple your WiFi. Why is this happening? Mario explains:
“This will cause the discoveryd process to browse and advertise services over your WiFi interface. You’ll see an immediate reduction in WiFi speeds that will continue for a minute or two while the AWDL interface continues to browse/advertise.”
The problems vary from user to user, but the developer is convinced that this is the culprit. He says it’s even possible to mess up someone else’s connection by inducing the WiFi issues “by simply waking a nearby iOS device.” According to the man, “The waking process itself begins a browse and advertise of services that affects other nearby devices.”
How to fix WiFi on iOS 8 and OS X 10.10
As noted earlier, Mario coded a fix for this problem and uploaded it as a downloadable packet on Cydia. Yes, you need to jailbreak your device to apply the patch. In case you’re already there, just hit up Cydia and look for “WiFried.” The download is free of charge.
WiFried can be turned on and off at any time, and it’s easily accessible under the AirDrop settings in Control Center. As for Yosemite, you’ll need to punch in some simple Terminal commands that Mario has thoughtfully supplied in his post. To save you the trip over there – though something tells us every geek will devour his elaborate post –, here are the commands to disable AirDrop and AWDL, as well as to reenable them if needed.
sudo ifconfig awdl0 up
