Thanks, J. So I did test this a few times as well. The only thing I had enabled (during the first test) in "System Services" was "Find My Mac". Everything else was turned off, and the issue remained. Just to confirm that this was a clean install of Catalina, so the only wi-fi AP in my history is my home one, as I haven't worked in a cafe, airport, or hotel since then :-). Since disabling Bluetooth and the system stabilizing, I've re-enabled "Location-Based Suggestions" and "Significant Locations" only. Everything else under "System Services" is still turned off, including "Wi-Fi Networking". That said, you did mention that you've fixed this on Big Sur. I am still running Catalina. Considering Apple's history of dodgy initial releases of a new OS, I'll give Big Sur a few months (or a year) before I feel it's safe to upgrade. I'm already having to deal with Catalina as it is, which is why I have High Sierra installed on my old laptop for my weekend DJ streaming habit :-). OBS Studio seems to like High Sierra better than Catalina, hehe. Many thanks for working on this - it's most appreciated! Mark. On 11/10/20 16:30, J. Hellenthal wrote:
Hey Mark,
Went through a bunch of tests here. Seems I’ve cleared up the matter on this macOS[1] Big Sur at least by disabling Wi-Fi Networking under “Location Services -> System Services -> Wi-Fi Networking [2]”. It seems at least from perspective that something changed there and causes the Mac to scan more aggressively when more than one access point (generally speaking your SSID & SSID + 5G) has been logged at a location as accessible. This same thing could be observed at least on my system while having those settings turned off, bluetooth on and location services enabled and opening (Wi-Fi Explorer[3]) which puts the interface into “monitor mode” which seems to be causing the contention somewhere. After those changes keep in mind I had to restart from a full shutdown to get to some real clean ms traffic to the router and I prefer to be connected to 5Ghz before 2.4Ghz.
1. Darwin Kernel Version 20.1.0: Thu Oct 29 05:35:40 PDT 2020; root:xnu-7195.50.5~4/RELEASE_X86_64 2. https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3xm3fpoziwe01d/Screen%20Shot%202020-11-10%20at%20... 3. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wifi-explorer/id494803304?mt=12
On Nov 5, 2020, at 00:43, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka@seacom.com> wrote:
Just an update on this re: the Bluetooth.
I had my AirPods paired previously for single use. I don't use them on the laptop (there is some latency), so I prefer the wired earphones. But it seems like Bluetooth was aggressively scanning for them. After removing them from the system, the scanning remained, but reduced significantly.
So looking at Console again, every so often, Bluetooth is scanning the network on behalf of the "sharingd" process.
sharingd is a sharing daemon that supports features such as AirDrop, Handoff, Instant Hotspot, Shared Computers and Remote Disc in Finder.
Still keeping Bluetooth off, however.
Mark.