Get Faster Wi-Fi in Yosemite

Article is from Maclife.com

Have you been having a slow wireless experience on your desktop or portable Mac? With the advent of new AirDrop technologies in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, a feature called Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) is to blame. This technology is used for AirDrop, AirPlay, and direct-play gaming connections. This could be a Bonjour and AWDL clash, but regardless, it can be a little annoying. To instantly see faster results, we've got a Terminal trick that'll make online surfing and network file transfers a little faster. Continue reading, and we'll show you how it's done.

To begin, open the Terminal application on your Mac (located in /Applications/Utilities). Once there, you'll want to type the following command, followed by the enter key:

sudo ifconfig awdl0 down

You'll be prompted to type your password after entering this command to verify your administrator account. Once entered, you'll instantly have a faster wireless connection. However, this will also disable AirDrop on your Mac.

Note that some older Macs may not use AWDL to handle AirDrop/Handoff, in whiuch case using this trick may give you an error message such as "interface awdl0 does not exist." On the plus side, then you're not experiencing the related Wi-Fi slowdown issue to begin with.

If you wish to have access to AirDrop, but go back to a slower connection, then you'll want to navigate back to the Terminal and type in this command:

sudo ifconfig awdl0 up

After re-verifying your password, your AWDL and AirDrop service will be restored and your Mac will function as normal.

We hope that Apple will figure out and fix this issue with an upcoming update, but until then, you can use this little trick to ensure that your Mac's network speed is operating at its maximum.

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