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Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED!


From: Doug Barton <dougb () dougbarton us>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2020 14:57:08 -0700

I would hesitate to blame BT. I have a macbook pro from ~1 year ago, on Catalina, and I use BT extensively ... mouse, keyboard, and headset. I do have location services trimmed down to just find my mac.

I ran: ping -c 1000 -i 0.1 <router address>

1000 packets transmitted, 998 packets received, 0.2% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.255/2.378/9.095/0.634 ms

One thing that may contribute to blaming BT however is if you are using wifi on 2.4G only, and/or preferring it, as BT operates in the same frequency range neighborhood. My macbook is connected using 5G.

Happy to compare other settings if there is interest.

Doug


On 10/30/20 12:08 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
Hi all.

So I may have fixed this for my end, and hopefully others may be able to use the same fix.

After a tip from Karl Auerbach and this link:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/97805

... I was able to fix the problem by disabling Bluetooth.

However, disabling Bluetooth was not enough. I also had to disable all Location Services.

After that, I re-enabled Location Services and only allowed for two features:

     - NetSpot
     - Find My Mac

With just those two location services, as well as Bluetooth disabled, I have no more high jitter.

App performance like Zoom and Youtube uploads are now crisp, with 0.0% packet loss.

So looks like that Bluetooth is a huge problem. Confirmed by opening the "Console" app, and adding "scan" in the filter bar, top right.

A peak latency of 13.5ms after 300 packets:

Marks-MacBook-Pro.local (172.16.0.239) 2020-10-30T21:06:05+0200
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
Packets               Pings
  Host Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1. 172.16.0.254 0.0%   300    3.1   4.8   2.2  13.5   1.9

Mark.




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