It typically starts when I try to enter a search in Google. The search fails because the page never completes loading. After this, Safari is totally useless as nothing loads or reloads anymore.
If I next go to Mail, I will most often get a strange symptom now as well. If I start a new email, I am unable to enter text in the body. After that, Mail stops functioning and behaves mostly as if the app has frozen.
Some apps, including Internet apps, continue to work as normal while this is happening. But over time, more and more oddities pile up in more and more apps.
Eventually, I restart the Mac (an M1 Mac Studio) and everything returns to normal. 100% fine. Until the next time this happens…which is now about every 72 hours or so.
I have been unable to find anything online that describes this set of symptoms. I have no idea what is causing this or how to put an end to it. Very frustrating. Any suggestions? Thanks.
I forgot to add that…sometimes…if I walk away from the computer and come back later (say after 30 minutes or so), the symptoms have vanished on their own. No restart is needed to get things back to normal.
DNS problems? Make sure you’re using the server you think you should be using. If it’s your ISP’s server, see if changing it to something else (I use Google’s 8.8.8.8 server for testing problems like this) changes anything.
If changing the server works, then consider contacting the operator of your server (ISP? IT department?) to see if it’s a problem they can fix. Although they may not want to work with you if you can’t provide a more concrete problem description, since “it’s broke” isn’t much of a bug report.
I second @Shamino’s suggestion. Another way of doing the same thing on a less granular scale would be to switch the Mac’s network connection over to your phone’s hotspot, if that’s possible for you, and see if the problem follows.
DNS problem doesn’t seem likely. I have several devices in house (including an iMac and a MacBook). None of them have this symptom. Just my Mac Studio.
Also make sure iCloud Private Relay is turned off. I’ve found times where it can interfere with the Internet - I suspect that from time to time the service either gets overwhelmed or wonky.
Some mac have problems, some not. This is consistent with arp table problems. Normally this is caused by problems with having more than one DHCP server or, like @trilo says, a mix of static and DHCP. Have a look at all IP addresses in your home.
Thanks for all the helpful advice. Really appreciate you all taking the time to reply.
As it turns out, it may be an DNS issue. It seems I had shifted to a Google DNS 8.8.8.8 awhile back because of some similar problem I was having (again just affecting my Mac Studio) and left the DNS that way. This could now be the source of the latest glitch. I changed the DNS back to the server’s defaults. We’ll see if this helps.
I would certainly like to hear if you come up with a solution. I have what sounds like exactly the same problem. Very random, sometimes days without a glitch, sometimes multiple times in a day. I manually set the ethernet speed based on a post, changed my dns servers. Nothing seems to help. It just disconnects .Unplugging and replugging the ethernet cable occasionally reconnects but usually requires a restart. Today I was working in citrix and it started to pop up reconnecting. At that point there was no connectivity.
yes everything else is working. I replaced an iMac with the mac studio and there were no changes to the network setup.
Doing some internet research it appears to be a problem for others as well. I have tried many of the reported fixes but it still keeps happening. The only thing that may have worked was to set
Network>ethernet>Details>Hardware to Manual, 1000baseT full duplex standard MTU 1500
However I noticed that when this happened the other day that it was reset to defaults, probably after system update.
A Mac Studio has a 10G Ethernet port. If it is auto-configuring for 2.5G, 5G or 10G when your router or switch are only gigabit, that would definitely be a problem.
Also check your cables. If your router/switch support 2.5G or higher speeds, then you need a Cat-6 or Cat-6A cable. Cat-5/5e can’t reliably handle speeds greater than gigabit. So if you’re using a Cat-5 cable to connect to a 2.5/5/10G switch, you’ll have to manually configure the port to gigabit. Or buy a Cat-6 cable.
If this isn’t the case (that is, if the router/switch ports are only gigabit), you could still have a bad cable. Try replacing it. Also try connecting to a different port on your router/switch (in case the one you’re using is bad). Try disconnecting Ethernet and use Wi-Fi (in order to determine if it has anything to do with Ethernet).
In my (admittedly limited) experience, this is related to Mail > Settings > Privacy. I turned each of those 3 off to get rid of odd behavior I was seeing in Mail.
Follow-up: Fiddling with the DNS settings ultimately did NOT solve the problem. I still have the same symptoms…albeit less often than before. Wish I could figure out a cause and solution. Grrrrr.