<< Solved >> High Sierra 10.13.6 Ethernet intermittent

[BobDobbs]

I just built this machine and the build went very smoothly... except that the wired ethernet connection keeps going up and down about once per minute or so. Via Multibeast I tried installing the Intel mausiEthernet and the Apple IGB (separately of course) but the problem exists with both. Multibeast forces a cache rebuild when it installs kexts, right? Out of curiosity, I also tried the "smalltree" kext with no difference. I've used this ethernet drop with my Mac laptop and even the lab oscilloscope and it seems to be stable.

Searching the forums, this seems to be an occasional issue but apparently most people have been able to resolve it with the proper choice of kext. I've been working on this literally longer than it took me to do the install and software upgrades, with no resolution...

 

[BobDobbs]

After some experimentation, I've found that the Apple ethernet kext works reliably... until the computer goes to sleep, whereupon it fails to connect until the computer is rebooted. I guess the temporary solution is to use that kext and not let the computer sleep. None of the other kexts work reliably on this machine at all.

 

[BobDobbs]

After letting the machine sit overnight with sleep=never but the screensaver enabled, it remains connected to the internet with the AppleIntelE1000e driver. This is what I've had to do with both my previous builds, so it's not a huge inconvenience. Unless there's a future driver update which allows sleep, this is where I'm going to leave it.