(Update: RESOLVED) Brand New M1 MacBook Pro does not see any other Macs or Network Drives— Can anyone assist?

[jyhash]

Hey Folks,

My job recently saddled me with a new 16" MacBook Pro M1 (Apple M1 Pro Chip/16GB RAM/500GB SSD) that came stock with MacOS Monterrey (MacOS 12). The main issue is whenever I attempt to look up a local mac on my home network by its name (e.g. MacMini.local), or look for a local computer/network device in the Network section of the Finder Sidebar, nothing appears for selection and it will not connect via Finder's "connect to server" unless I manually type in the IP Address to connect.

I also have a Synology on my network that is not appearing either, even though it is set to be visible and remotely mount on any machine on my network (and does appear on other Macs I have in my household, not running Monterrey).

The other mac on the network is running Big Sur (latest update, 11.6.3) and is broadcasting for file sharing as well (and also appears on any Mac NOT running Monterrey). It is an Intel MacMini 2018. It cannot be connected to by its ".local" name via SMB nor AFP.

All devices are broadcasting to be connected via SMB, not AFP (except for the test to see if it would work since the other didn't). No devices are using IPv6, including my router and my modem, so it is probably not an issue with that service, either.

I have all of the sidebar items checkmarked and activated in Finder preferences, including Bonjour devices and the Network sidebar selection, and nothing I seem to do will fix this problem that ONLY Monterrey machines seem to be having.

I have already tried the following, with no positive result:

• First, I tried to reset file sharing on all the machines to make sure that they are properly broadcasting their availability. No change.
• Second, I tried rebooting the machine to see if it was just not appearing in the Network sidebar. No result. Rebooted at least 5 times to see if it would pick up the devices: no change.
• Third, I tried to do a full reinstall of Monterrey from the Recovery Console, as possibly something was corrupted in system settings either from factory, or from an update that was run to get Monterrey current on the machine before use. Still no change, and cannot see the devices on the network.
• Fourth, I tried creating a brand new user to see if it was a corrupted user profile, and still, No change: no devices can be seen on brand new accounts either.
• Fifth, I have used the

  dns-sd -Q

  Command to see if the MBP can see anything broadcasting via Bonjour, and nothing shows up after it starts searching. I also downloaded the "DNS-SD Discovery" Browser to both the MBP and the Mac Mini: The MBP shows nothing but itself, the Mac Mini shows not only itself, but also my Time Capsule, the Synology storage, AND the MBP running Monterrey.

So at this point I am at an impasse: It looks like file sharing and network discovery for other Macs and Network devices on Monterrey is horrendously terribly broken, as nothing that is standard as a fix seems to remedy the situation. I've done absolutely EVERYTHING except completely wipe the machine and install a completely fresh and new clean copy of Monterrey. However, I don't think that would end up being a fix either, as one of the previous steps should have alleviated this issue if it was a simple issue of a corrupted OS or Profile.

I don't understand how they could have possibly made things even worse with Monterrey, but if anything, Apple is more than capable and they seem to have done it here.

Is anyone else having this issue on an M1 running the latest OS? Anyone have a fix that they may have discovered? I've searched around, and there seems to be ONE post about this on Apple Support Discussions from back when the M1's first came out and how Big Sur was having this issue, but that thread ended last April without a solid fix— and it technically no longer applies because we're on a different OS— and if this was a general issue I'd have thought it'd be resolved in a prior update.

This is no end of frustrating, and as someone who has worked on Macs in a technical capacity for over a decade and a half, I can only surmise that this network discovery function of MacOS Monterrey 12.2 is completely broken.

Any suggestions or advice on how to fix?

Thanks in advance.

 

[throAU]

It may be that Apple finally removed AFS network sharing in Monterey (I haven't checked, but its been coming for some time). Its been deprecated for some years. Are your other devices using SMB protocol?

Newer versions of SMB have much better performance than AFS, compatibility with Windows machines, etc.

For what it's worth I have not noticed any network file sharing issues with my 14" either at work or at home. But home is all Monterey / Windows machines running SMB, and work is a windows network running SMB...

 

[jyhash]

All devices are using SMB, none are using AFP since I know that has been deprecated (even though it still works on Big Sur; only time AFP has been activated was to test this issue and see if it had the same problems as SMB).

 

[jyhash]

Looks like I was able to resolve the issue by resetting my Router to factory settings, as well as flushing the DNS cache.

The DNS flush didn't do it on its own, looks like the network itself was abetting the faulty behavior.

Hard to believe that the reinstall of Monterey didn't fix it initially, but whatever, it is fixed now and I can continue to miss my Big Sur machine I had prior.

Thanks for the attempts at assitance.

Resolved.

 

[mi7chy]

Sounds familiar. SMB implementation in MacOS is a moving target with different behavior depending on MacOS updates. Some versions work with smb://hostname (current behavior with 11.6.3) while other versions require smb://hostname.local or not discover LAN SMB hosts. Also, SMB file copy/paste normally only has one pause during the paste but have seen two pauses, once for copy (CSAM checksum?) and another for paste.