Sierra: MIDI over Wifi Networks Problem (Solved)

[cuttime]

For years I have enjoyed using several devices on a Wifi MIDI network. It worked flawlessly with very little latency. After the Sierra update I have been having problems. I see the devices in the Audio MIDI Setup Network menu. I can connect to the devices, but after a few seconds the connection times out and I get the dreaded "-:5004 Didn't Respond to the Connection Request" error. I've troubleshot this to the extreme with various firewall settings, even trying turning off the firewall completely, no go, so it's not the firewall. I then tried using several different routers and setups with the same results, so it's not the router. Tried ports other than :5004-nope. The only thing that works now is a "Create Network" ad-hoc connection, which, everyone should know by now, is NOT secure. Works great, but I'd rather not operate that way. I've come to the conclusion that it is WPA security that is messing up the connection.

I've Googled around for a solution, and there's been a couple of work-arounds proposed, some of which have been presented on this very Board:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=58618

And no, I can't get them to work, either. Can anyone point me to a solution? Or do I have to just give up on wireless MIDI?

[bayswater]

I've also found Sierra WIFI networking to have problems, although I have no idea if my problem has the same root as yours. I have a number of Macs, and rather than have keyboards etc on all of them, I use Screen Sharing from a laptop to deal with most of them. I used to be able to put a VNC icon on the desktop for remote Macs and connect to them by clicking on them. Now I get messages saying the device doesn't exist (although it appears in the Finder), or the "original can't be found". After turning WIFI off and on, those problems disappear. But now I have to enter User and PW for every connection, regardless of what is in the keychain and options. On the first attempt, I get a password rejection. Clicking again using the same ID/PW works. Connections after that may or may not be stable. About half the time, they are dropped if not used continually.

So, I can get connected but it's tedious to go through this stupid routine every time. Googling it, I've found others with similar and identical problems. The only solution I've seen reported with any consistency is to remove anything (prefs, etc) that is associated with a network connection, and reset these all from scratch. I've removed keychain entries where there are duplicates for the same network location and that seems to temporarily fix things, but the problem comes back after a day or two. I've removed preferences I know of, but that didn't seem to help.

I've also noticed the version of Safari with Sierra rejects certificates that earlier versions accepted, and that current versions of Firefox and Chrome accept. These are associated with very large organizations that live on line so it's not likely they've been sloppy with this. I don't know, but perhaps there are implied certificate involved in local networks that are not being handled properly by Sierra. Or maybe Apple has become so paranoid with these things that they have some sort of hair trigger disconnect function to protect us from ourselves.

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It's not just me, apparently.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7695767

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I'm told this has been addressed in the latest update:
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1900?vie ... cale=en_US

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Bumping this back up for anyone who might be interested. The macOS 10.12.3 update in and of itself did not fix this problem, but after months of searching for a solution, with Dan Rosenstark's help (of MIDI Designer), I finally nailed it: Shut off IPv6!
http://osxdaily.com/2014/04/18/disable-ipv6-mac-os-x/
I can't help but put in a plug for MIDI Designer, been a long time fan.

[JLEpperson]

When i turn off networksetup -setv6off, my MIDI devices stop communicating. Is this correct?

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When i turn off networksetup -setv6off, my MIDI devices stop communicating. Is this correct?

Yes, I think that is correct. Any changes made to the MIDI setup usually results in loss of comms that require reconnecting through a new network session. I hope this helps.