topic Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS in Wireless Questions and Best Practices

Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

michael_brado — Thu, 21 May 2020 21:36:19 GMT

There has been a lot of chaos on Catalina MacOS and its interaction with networks that have deployed Ruckus products for wireless service. Issues are being seen in current Catalina MacOS that did not appear in earlier releases of MacOS: Mojave, High-Sierra, etc.

TAC managers have asked that we share information with our customers.

It is recommended that Macbook users use 10.15.4 who wish to use Catalina OS or have got an relatively older version of Catalina MacOS: namely 10.15, 10.15.1, 10.15.2 or 10.15.3. Apple has fixed a variety of bugs including but not limited to Wi-Fi, Safari stop responding when attempting to use Apple Pay, HSTS enhancement etc.

Apple has released beta version of 10.15.5 and it will soon be available officially on their website.

Some of the useful URLs on issues encountered with Catalino OS are:

-> https://www.techradar.com/news/macos-catalina-10154-gets-a-stability-update-but-reports-claim-its-breaking-some-macbooks

-> https://macreports.com/mac-catalina-wi-fi-problems-fix/

-> https://www.switchingtomac.com/tutorials/osx/macbook-pro-constantly-dropping-wireless-connection

-> https://osxdaily.com/2014/04/24/fix-mac-disconnect-wifi-sleep/

Please note that Catalina is true 64-bit operating system and Apple has asked all the users to use 64-bit version of those applications. Please read the following URLs for further information:

-> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/12/20908567/apple-macos-catalina-breaking-apps-32-bit-support-how-to-prepare-avoid-update

Quotes on 32-bit applications:

“Apple first announced that it would ultimately wind down support for 32-bit apps more than a year and a half ago, when it began pushing alerts to macOS High Sierra users that 32-bit software was “unsupported.” The apps still worked, but with Catalina’s official unveiling back in June at WWDC, Apple made the eventual discontinuation official. With the launch of Catalina, 32-bit apps no longer function.”

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

tony_chuah — Sat, 23 May 2020 01:27:14 GMT

I have an unleashed network with R610 + 2 x R310 that drops Zoom meetings on a new macbook pro. Could this be the issue, or do I need to raise a ticket with support?

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

michael_brado — Thu, 28 May 2020 18:14:15 GMT

It is recommended that Macbook users use 10.15.4 who wish to use Catalina OS.

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

michael_brado — Fri, 29 May 2020 15:55:30 GMT

And/But I have found further information,
Apple has made some further announcements: latest MacOS isCatalina: 10.15.5. It has some interesting features and fixes, please read ityour leisure:

// Apple releases macOS Catalina 10.15.5 with newBattery Health Management feature

https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/26/apple-releases-macos-catalina-10-15-5-with-new-battery-health-management-feature/

//What's new in the updates for macOS Catalina

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210642

It may be that in few weeks 10.15.4 will be inaccessible...

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

erin_mcclellen — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 15:27:18 GMT

What's the current recommendation on this. We are working w/coworking spaces and we can't just ask random people to downgrade, especially with the "it works everywhere else" response we tend to get.

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

erin_mcclellen — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 16:31:36 GMT

bump - seeing 10.15.6 clients dropping like crazy, no reason code on the ZD side.

Posted elsewhere, but this "we don't validate Mac/iOS anymore" upsets me because of sites like this:

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

vineet_nejawal1 — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 03:59:55 GMT

Hi Team,

Since this seems to be affecting you on a larger aspect it would be best if you can open a TAC ticket with Ruckus to investigate this further. We would need ZD debug log and AP support logs along with client MAC which is dropping frequently.

Please reach out to us using below :

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/contact-us

Best Regards
Vineet

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

Vineet_nejwala — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 04:01:39 GMT

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

erin_mcclellen — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 18:50:27 GMT

Do you have any explanation why 10.14 and 10.15 are not validated with any Ruckus gear?

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

Vineet_nejwala — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 05:45:13 GMT

Hi Team,

I am not sure who gave that information or could validate it but if I see from customer's setup I know many customer's are using MACOS 10.14 and 10.15 on Ruckus gears, sometime there might be connectivity issue but with the right set of information and debugging it is always narrowed down and resolved. It would be best if you can open a TAC case, let support gather the details ex. AP model, Wlan type, Version on controller/AP, debug log information and accordingly progress to find the cause.

Best Regards
Vineet

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

erin_mcclellen — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 05:53:04 GMT

The information comes from your own release notes!

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

Vineet_nejwala — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 07:27:55 GMT

Can you please point me to it ? I mean ZD or vSZ and what version release? Let me go through it and I would be in a better position to reply.

Best Regards
Vineet

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

Vineet_nejwala — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 15:57:31 GMT

Hi Team,

I was able to find out the below article that would be helpful. The article has explained the recommended version for MacOS as well as the issue that were specific to MacOS devices.

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/articles/000010544

Best Regards
Vineet

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

chris_downing_g — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 01:33:08 GMT

Vineet... this is an issue affecting LOTS of sites... the response from Ruckus (including that article you link to here) has been dismal.

We (Prince Alfred College - in South Australia) reported this issue 11 months ago... we've had the 'roam-save 2' change in place for 10 months and still have macOS clients running 10.15.4 and 10.15.6 that are still exhibiting this problem.

That article also states "Ruckus wireless AP has connectivity issues with Catalina version of MacOS; ALTHOUGH TECHNICALLY NOT TRUE, customers like to get technically analyzed answer to prove otherwise" ...I note that there is no "technically analyzed answer" provided!

For your reference, in the last 9 months we have tested, Cisco Meraki, Cisco Aironet, Aruba, Ubiquiti, Xirrus, Aerohive and Mikrotik AP's in the same environment, against the same RADIUS server. Ruckus are the only AP's that exhibit this issue.

Can you explain that?

... or point us to an article that does.

Regards,

Chris Downing

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

erin_mcclellen — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 03:04:07 GMT

We are really loathe to shell out the kind of money they want for support when in the end we can just get pointed back to "we only validate up to 10.13".

One thing we're looking at is that we have other sites where the same devices have no issues. They are running 10.1.2.0 build 210. As a last ditch effort before just throwing some ubiquiti in as a stopgap, we're going to roll this site back to that version to see if it resolves the mac issues. Sadly a rollback entails a factory reset, so we have to find a time to do this w/o disruption and then after noting all the settings in the web UI, downgrade and re-enter it all by hand (plain text config files like cisco and juniper, who needs them!).

We have verbose logging from the mac side of things, but it's not entirely clear from that what is causing the drop. I can share with anyone interested.

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

Vineet_nejwala — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 18:59:15 GMT

Hi Chris and Bway NOC,

It would be best if you can open a TAC ticket with Ruckus to investigate this further, since it requires debug on a packet level and it would be best to keep this all logs documented on a case. Until unless we debug this issue we would not be able to identify the Root cause.

Please reach out to us using below :

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/contact-us

Best Regards
Vineet

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

chris_downing_g — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 05:54:54 GMT

Hi Vineet,
I have a TAC case open for this now... will let you (& Bway NOC) know what we find here. This issue is intermittent so it may be some time before I ca report anything conclusive.

Regards,
Chris Downing.

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

erin_mcclellen — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 16:25:06 GMT

For less than the cost of a support contract, we dumped in a few UBNT APs and resolved the problem.

I spent a TON of time (free labor for Ruckus!) digging through the client side logs. If your users are flexible, I suggest doing two things to improve the wifi experience on Catalina:

- Disable bluetooth (or in our case we found, simply don't use BT if enabled)
- Disable Airdrop (more specifically, AWDL)

I strongly suspect that there are bugs on both sides happening here. Ruckus side is a big unknown since there's not much public discussion of the issue. On the Mac side, it's worth looking at what AWDL is and how it works. Airdrop and other services like it (Airplay, what else?) use a local ad-hoc wifi network for data transfer. The OS "seamlessly" flips the wifi chip between two channels (your real wifi connection and the airwhatever device) to sort of "multiplex" two wifi connections in one. This generally doesn't break things, but it does mean that the radio IS off-channel for the main wifi at times, and I'm guessing this is where things get screwy.

Anecdotally, our problem users had far fewer problems if they just stopped using their airpods (yes, BT is on 2GHz, and this site is 5GHz only, but it's a shared radio and who knows what Apple is doing here). Same w/disabling AWDL (assuming they got the instructions right).

But the AP swap has gone really well - we went from guys on Zoom all day having drops every 5-10 minutes to going a full day without a single drop that they noticed. I hate UBNT stuff, but we had some spares so we gave it a shot... I suspect they simply have more customers than Ruckus that have a large Mac population. I think Ruckus is so entrenched in the enterprise market that they still think of Mac/ios as "fringe" and just don't put resources into it.

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

david_lipkin — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 14:10:24 GMT

We're seeing this happen more with slightly older MacBook pros. Our 2017 and newer ones seem stable whereas the 2016 and older ones keep falling off the network. This is a small network of Wave 2 APs running current firmware.

Has anyone looked at this with the Big Sur previews?

Best,

David

Re: Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

tony_heung — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 14:36:18 GMT

I am on Big Sur 11.0 developer beta (20A5384c) against Unleashed 200.9 on R750 with no issue.