Sync kills WiFi connection [A: WiFi + Bluetooth causing radio interference]
 

Following the update of my iPhone 3G to ios4, OmniFocus for iPhone has once again started to misbehave during Bonjour sync sessions. A recurring problem is the iPhone dropping my wireless connection during syncs. I have tried deleting the app and redownloading from iTunes. Although wireless bonjour works fine to start the sync session (the iPhone can see the mac server etc), the iPhone drops my wireless connection when transferring the mac based omnifocus database to the phone. I have archived old actions on the mac and tried rebuilding the database, all to no avail. Has anybody else seen this problem and found a fix?

Hi Calumma

I too updated my iPhone 3G to iOS4 and had to hack it back to iOS3 as it was unusable. It's rumoured that iOS4.1 may fix some of the problems that 3G owners have found in upgrading, but I don't have any idea when Apple will be releasing it.

In the meantime, have you looked at this [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=16634&highlight=ios4"]thread[/URL]?

I'm (painfully!) aware of the issues with ios4 on the 3G, but am sticking with it for the time being for the unified email inbox.

[QUOTE=endoftheQ;82487]Hi Calumma
In the meantime, have you looked at this [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=16634&highlight=ios4"]thread[/URL]?[/QUOTE]

I looked at that thread, but it seemed to be more concerned with *auto* syncing. My problem is that I can't get the iPhone to sync at all.

Calumma,

You have my sympathy re: upgrading your 3G to iOS4. I had a complete rant about Apple over this, and other issues, in the [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=16745"]Omni Lounge[/URL].

As you wait for wiser minds than mine to come online and give you the benefit of their experience, in the interim I'd email the Support Ninjas.

The only other temporary solution I can think of is to download a 60-day free trial of [URL="http://www.apple.com/mobileme/"]MobileMe[/URL] and sync over that until the issue is resolved.

Sorry not to be more helpful.

[QUOTE=endoftheQ;82491]The only other temporary solution I can think of is to download a 60-day free trial of [URL="http://www.apple.com/mobileme/"]MobileMe[/URL] and sync over that until the issue is resolved.
.[/QUOTE]

I do use MobileMe, but haven't used it for OmniFocus syncing, because I assumed the bonjour wifi syncing would be faster... I'll give my MobileMe account a go.

Hi - my first post here (so "hello"!....)

I've found sync (Bonjour) issues as soon as changed to OS4 on the iphone. No improvement with 4.01

Issues: Start up Omnifocus on iphone (fresh startup) and it will find the database on the mac no problem.
Leave from this wireless network and come back - can't find database.
I also work in different locations (different wireless networks) but with same imac brought to that desk (home + work). Try to open Omnifocus after move and resync without any other changes and cant find it.
Temporary Solution found:
Double click the home button to bring up recently launched apps (you know the "multi-tasking" section... yeah, right....) hold down omnifocus icon (or any others) until you can select the "x" to close it. Now reopen a "fresh copy" of omnifocus and it regains the correct wireless link and connects.

I'm guessing with the change to "multitasking" or some new wireless access tweak its effecting the ability of omnifocus to remember the wireless access settings. Perhaps a change is needed in omnifocus itself to work better with the new os4 - I dont know...

Have found the ability of iphone to "automatically" know and connect to a known wireless point a lot weaker since the os4 upgrade. Does drop sometimes and even ask for a password again for a connection its already been set to join.

Hope that helps. -David

Unfortunately the iPhone 3G doesn't have multitasking, so the temp solution doesn't apply to my particular problem. I have found MobileMe syncing to be too slow to be useful. I want to be able to open the application and be able to use it immediately - not wait an age for the sync to complete. I can live with syncing only when connected to my home network, hence my preference for Bonjour wireless syncing. Unfortunately, that now appears to be broken for me.

I wonder if my particular problem is due to my OmniFocus database being too large? I regularly send emails to OmniFocus as part of my workflow. Some of these emails have attachments (some can be quite large). I would prefer that attachments do not get sent, but this appears to happen automatically. Does anybody know of a way to strip attachments from emails when sending them to OmniFocus using the built in clip-o-tron tool.

You say you want to be able to use it immediately — if by that you simply want to be able to enter items immediately, just tap the Quick Entry button that appears very early in start up. If you want it to start up and not do the sync, turn off Auto-Sync in your settings page, but you'll have to tap the Sync button to cause a sync when you want one.

On the Mac, there's an Attachment List window under the Windows menu which you can use to track down large attachments.

If you want to add emails without attachments, and don't mind losing the Original Message link, use OmniFocus' Mail processing feature on the Mac and forward the messages to the address you set up instead of using the Clip-o-tron. Won't work with HTML email, though. See "processing mail" in the Help.

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;82731]If you want to add emails without attachments, and don't mind losing the Original Message link[/QUOTE]

There's the issue. The link to the original email is a key feature for me. My workflow is designed to clear unread email as quickly as possible (my job results in a large number of emails on a variety of topics that need processing at different times). Sending email to OmniFocus allows me to store actions using different contexts without needing to organise anything in mail. When it comes time to process a specific action, I can click a link to quickly go back to the original email message as required.

I'll look into the attachment control - thanks for that tip. Hopefully that will help to solve my particular problem. It would be useful to have a global setting to remove all attachments before they enter the OmniFocus database though.

Removing all attachments (there were a few!) has enabled me to successfully get the database onto my iPhone 3G. Follow-up syncing nearly works as well. Whilst the sync is successfully initiated and appears to complete (although relatively slowly), the iPhone still drops my wireless connection towards the end of the process.

I'm using an Apple Airport Extreme. What's interesting is that the wireless signal drops on my iMac at the same time as the iPhone, suggesting the Airport Extreme is struggling with the connection and dropping the link? The iMac immediately reconnects, the iPhone only reconnects if I manually select my wireless network in Settings. The iPhone will also automatically reconnect if I exit OmniFocus and use any other network application (such as mobile Safari).

Not a complete solution for me then, but the application is at least usable again. Thanks again whpalmer4 for the tip on stripping attachments.

Calumma,

I thought if, like me, you have a large quantity of reference materials associated with projects, you might be interested in my workaround. It requires MobileMe and GoodReader.

I've set up a folder on my iDisk called 'refs'. I drag all project-related reference material into there. I also copy the same files into a folder called 'refs' in GoodReader via File Sharing in iTunes (much faster than trying to do a wifi sync!).

I drag the reference files back from iDisk into an Action called 'refs' which I have for all my Projects, thereby creating a link for use on my desktop. This means that one Action 'refs' per Project can hold unlimited links to reference materials. I also then type into the same 'refs' Action, [I]gropen://refs/*.*[/I] (*.* being the name of the reference file) to enable the ability to open the reference material on my iDevices.

I'm currently managing a couple of gigs of files this way.

The added plus is that if you have iDisk Sync on, then you don't need internet access to open the reference material on your laptop. Likewise, if you don't have time to sync GoodReader via iTunes, you can get it to pull down from your email inbox, iDisk, etc. copies of the reference materials over wifi, 3g, etc., although not recommended if, like me, you have PDFs that are hundreds of megs in size!

I find another major advantage is that GoodReader opens file types that OmniFocus's viewer can't handle.

Hope the above is of some interest. :)

Following advice elsewhere on the forum, I tried putting the iPhone into airplane mode and then manually turning my wireless network link back on. This resulted in syncing working perfectly (and very fast). Once I turn airplane mode off and try to sync, bam! The wireless connection is killed (on both the iPhone and iMac). 100% repeatable. OmniFocus is the only app on my iPhone that causes this behaviour.

How long does a sync typically take? It was discovered a while back that the iPhone OS shuts off one of the radios to save battery in some circumstances, and I wonder if that is what you are seeing here. You've established correlation, but not causation.

Sync takes just a few seconds over WiFi. Regardless of whether OmniFocus is responsible for this behaviour it is currently the only app where the bug manifests. I note that others have reported similar behaviour.

Have you worked with the support ninjas on this issue yet?

Waiting for email response from support.

The bonjour related sync issue seems to only occur when iPhone connects to my wireless network using a remote base station (ie one set up to extend the wireless network). Bonjour sync appears to work as expected when I am in close proximity to the main base station. All base stations are Apple Airport Extremes with latest updates applied.

Interesting. What if you fire up something that transfers a large amount of data in a short time, like the FCC network bandwidth tester? [url]http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fcc-mobile-broadband-test/id357119507?mt=8[/url]

The FCC app works without problem. I also transfer Filemaker Go files to the iPhone using iTunes without problem.

Anything interesting in the logs on the Airport base stations when this is going on?

Not sure if it is particularly unusual, but the logs simply report that the remote base station has disassociated with the main base station and then disconnected from network. The logs then indicate CCMP key is installed, the TKIP group key is rotated and the remote base station is associated once again with the main base station.

Support ninjas have requested a copy of my iPhone console log. Looks like I've discovered a never before seen issue.

Support ninjas have suggested the problem is due to my Airport network setup. That is, with the standard Apple Airport base station set-up. Helpful.

[QUOTE=calumma;84237]Support ninjas have suggested the problem is due to my Airport network setup. That is, with the standard Apple Airport base station set-up. Helpful.[/QUOTE]

What, you don't think it is possible for Apple's base station software to have bugs? I used to routinely crash my older Apple base stations with certain types of traffic, and I'm not talking about injecting hand-crafted "packets of death" either, just ordinary traffic from programs any user could run, without admin privileges. OmniFocus uses Apple frameworks to do its WebDAV transfers, I'm confident. If legitimate data presented to the Apple networking code causes WDS to hiccup, it may not be practical for Omni to work around the problem.

Now you've got me curious enough to try reconfiguring part of my network with WDS instead of an Ethernet backbone....

Sorry for your frustrating networking experience! Perhaps I can elaborate on what the support ninjas concluded?

First, let's review the problem you've described:

[QUOTE=calumma;82744]I'm using an Apple Airport Extreme. What's interesting is that the wireless signal drops on my iMac at the same time as the iPhone, suggesting the Airport Extreme is struggling with the connection and dropping the link? The iMac immediately reconnects, the iPhone only reconnects if I manually select my wireless network in Settings. The iPhone will also automatically reconnect if I exit OmniFocus and use any other network application (such as mobile Safari).

…

Following advice elsewhere on the forum, I tried putting the iPhone into airplane mode and then manually turning my wireless network link back on. This resulted in syncing working perfectly (and very fast). Once I turn airplane mode off and try to sync, bam! The wireless connection is killed (on both the iPhone and iMac). 100% repeatable. OmniFocus is the only app on my iPhone that causes this behaviour.

…

Not sure if it is particularly unusual, but the logs simply report that the remote base station has disassociated with the main base station and then disconnected from network. The logs then indicate CCMP key is installed, the TKIP group key is rotated and the remote base station is associated once again with the main base station.

…

Support ninjas have suggested the problem is due to my Airport network setup. That is, with the standard Apple Airport base station set-up. Helpful.[/QUOTE]

Now, a little background on wireless networking and OmniFocus:
[INDENT]I'm running with the same basic configuration that you are (two Apple base stations, one remote and one local) and I've never seen this problem. But I did see plenty of general networking problems when I was setting up the wireless network—eventually I got everything positioned just right so that those problems went away.

Bonjour syncing in OmniFocus itself uses a few simple standard operations: first it figures out where your Mac server is on the network using Bonjour (resolving a service name to an IP address). It then connects to your Mac's WebDAV server (an apache server which comes built into the operating system) and uses standard networking APIs to make HTTP/WebDAV requests, asking for a list of transaction on the server (PROPFIND), then downloading and uploading any new transactions which aren't on the other side, recording its sync position, and finally removing any synced files that have been seen by every device. None of this should behave any differently with wireless than it does over the wire—assuming, of course, that the wireless network is working properly.

In practice, wireless networks are more fragile than wired networks: signals from wireless devices can interfere with each other, so even if things seem to work right when you're using a single device they might stop behaving once several devices are involved. Since you've said your remote base station is losing its connection to the main base station, it sounds like it's having trouble maintaining that connection when all four devices (iMac, iPhone, and two base stations) are actively transmitting. (If you're transmitting small enough chunks you might get lucky and the transmissions might not overlap, or be able to retry without overlapping.)

When your base station resets, it might be handing out new IP addresses to your devices, which would confuse any OmniFocus sync sessions in progress since they've already finished their Bonjour service-name-to-ip-address handshake phase.[/INDENT]
So, what to do? I can think of two ways to try to solve this:
[INDENT]One way would be to try to reconfigure your wireless network to something a little more robust, perhaps moving the base stations closer together or adding a repeating base station somewhere between the two. Or, ideally, replace one of the wireless links with a wire (say, between the iMac and the nearby base station) so that there's less radio traffic to cause interference. Making your wireless network more robust seems like a good idea in general, but depending on your physical layout it might be difficult to solve. Especially if the only app affected is OmniFocus.

The other approach would be to change your OmniFocus configuration so that it doesn't require all four devices to be transmitting at once. The easiest way to do this would be to switch to a sync server in the cloud, such as our [URL="http://sync.omnigroup.com/"]Omni Sync Server[/URL]. Even if your wireless network continues to have intermittent problems in this setup, OmniFocus syncing should still end up being a little more robust because it wouldn't be relying on a potentially-out-of-date Bonjour hostname lookup.[/INDENT]
I hope this helps!

Sync attempt knocks me off WiFi network
 

I have seen this for ages - way over a year - relatively consistantly and with 2 different iPhones and different MacBooks...

I have Bonjour based sync working fairly well.

However fairly often, I start up OmniFocus on the iPhone, and either just let it sync or force a sync, and you can see the WiFi icon on the top of the display wink out and be replaced with a mobile network connection (normally GPRS at this particular location).

Sometimes you can regain wifi by going to the prefs app and selecting the wifi network, often it appears that you have to kill OmniFocus off (at least in iOS 4), get wifi and then restart OmniFocus to get a successful sync attempt.

It really feels as though there is a correlation with OmniFocus and getting knocked off the network. Even more so there feels like a correlation between a second or subsequent sync session (ie after a weekend I tend to have changes on the phone, so I sync them back, do my weekly review etc, and then sync again) and this form of sync failure....

Other than this I have no problems with WiFi usage or with sync...

Oddly I tried using MobileMe sync for a while due to this, and I seem to get the same effect of knocking the phone off the WiFi network, but the sync still succeeds if somewhat slowly...

Sounds wacky, has anyone else seen this?

Nigel.

That sounds a little like the problem described in calumma's [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=17111"]Sync Issues[/URL] thread, which seemed to be caused by an unreliable Wi-Fi network being overloaded by too much local traffic. I guess I'd start by checking your Wi-Fi router's logs to see if it has any additional information, or perhaps your iPhone's console logs (which you can access using Apple's [URL="http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/"]iPhone Configuration Utility[/URL]).

My wifi network is perfectly reliable thank you. The only software that I experience issues with is OmniFocus on the iPhone. I can move GB of data between different macs on my network without problem, yet a simple ToDo app on my phone causes the network to fail. As others have also reported, turning on Airplane mode on the phone and manually reconnecting wifi, enables sync to function.

nigelm go into settings and turn on airplane mode. Then manually reconnect to your wifi network, reopen OmniFocus and retry the sync. Let us know if this works.

Just tried turning on web sharing on the mac with desktop version of OmniFocus and my Bonjour syncing problems went away. No need to turn on airplane mode and manually reconnect my wifi network. Note that I do NOT have a firewall set up on this machine (I have hardware firewall on my modem).

EDIT: don't yet know if this is a long-term solution, but it may be worth others giving it a try.

I appreciate the advice but I remain unconvinced. What I don't understand is if my airport connection is unreliable, why does the sync succeed when the phone is placed in airport mode and wifi is then manually reselected. If the wifi was being overloaded, presumably it would be overloaded whether or not the phone was placed in airplane mode? Surely the wifi network would be more likely to become overloaded if I force the phone to keep its wifi connection after turning on airplane mode?

Also, this problem occurs no matter how much or little information I am attempting to sync. Are you honestly saying that syncing just one item can overload a users wifi network? Note that I can copy large files and control other macs on the same network using Finders built in VNC client (that presumably push much more data back and forth), as well as macs at remote locations.

Bonjour syncing still working better than before, but dropped wifi connection does occur every now and again. Restarting OmniFocus on the Mac seems to fix this now though. Something about my setup has obviously changed. The only two significant differences I am aware of are the upgrade of iPhone to iOS 4.1 and enabling of web sharing on the mac.

EDIT: Had some time to play around with OmniFocus this morning so tried turning web sharing on and off, adding items to OmniFocus and syncing with iPhone. As far as I can tell, enabling/disabling web sharing is having no effect at all. I can only assume the upgrade to iOS 4.1 has fixed 'something' that makes bonjour syncing more reliable.

EDIT2: I spoke too soon. When I disable web sharing the first sync completes successfully, but repeat syncs fail with the message 'specified sync server could not be found'. Enabling web sharing on the mac and restarting OmniFocus on iPhone results in bonjour syncing working on successive occasions.

Dropping wireless connection when syncing MobileMe
 

Hi!

I discovered the same problem with the iphone dropping the wlan connection when syncing.

As im using a iPhone 4 (4.1) and a Cisco 581W Router.

So I don't think it's either a iPhone 3G problem nor a Airport problem.

Just my thoughts...


Mark.

Looking at the iPhone console logs you can see it dropping the connection to WiFi although not a lot of indications why.

As calumma suggested, putting the phone into airplane mode, enabling WiFi, and syncing always works - and very quickly. It is of course re-establishing the WiFi link when this happens. However when airplane mode is switched off (WiFi still on or just started if I had not explicitly started it in airplane mode), then OmniFocus goes back to very sluggish sync, and a tendency to knock the phone off WiFi entirely (leading to no sync).

Is it possible that [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=70823"]this[/URL] is what's going on, and putting the phone into airplane mode overrides that behavior by turning off the cellular radio?

Losing wifi on both ipad and iphone on sync
 

Hi all,
I'm a very recent convert to Omnifocus and have now invested in ipad, iphone and just about to take the plunge to purchase the mac version also. BUT.. i'm having issues that when i sync (im current using the beta of omnigroup, but have also tried my mobile me account) it seems to take an age.. (1 project with three actions as I'm testing the functionality before utilising the software correctly) and then both the ipad and iphone say they have lost wifi connection and stop syncing.

I've done a quick look at the forum but can't see anyone else having any issues. Any help really welcome.
thanks
Roy

UPDATE: I have just spotted a thread all about wireless sync dropping signals, but it does seem most issues are related to iphone 3 running ios4. I'm using an iphone 4 running iOS4. If mods wish to move this thread to another location.. thats fine, sorry for not picking up the other thread first.

[QUOTE=calumma;85372]I appreciate the advice but I remain unconvinced. What I don't understand is if my airport connection is unreliable, why does the sync succeed when the phone is placed in airport mode and wifi is then manually reselected.[/QUOTE]

I too have this issue. I have recently (today) taken the ipad /iphone apps and set up a beta sync server with omnifocus. Every time I try to sync my iphone or ipad, the wifi crashes out and I have to manually restart them. I tried the airplane mode solution you mentioned and the iphone works very quickly and without problems. Unfortunately the ipad still just crashes as it doesn't have 3g connectivity, hence no airplane mode.

I'm using iphone 4 with iOS4 and a draytek wireless router that is no more than 15 feet from where i'm sitting.

Not impressed with this solution, so I'm going to ask for a refund at the apple store as it clearly has bugs and does not work correctly.

Just a quick update. I never got the ipad or iphone OF to actually stop dropping the wifi connection (except by going into Airplane mode on the iphone).. so complained to Apple re the problem and they have refunded the money to me.

OF now removed from all devices.. shame really as it would have suited my requirements quite well.

Does this problem ever affect syncing through the cloud (e.g. to our free [URL="http://sync.omnigroup.com/"]sync.omnigroup.com[/URL] server), or does it only happen when syncing over Bonjour (as the original post seems to suggest)? And does it only happen when using multiple wireless routers?

[QUOTE=Ken Case;87637]Does this problem ever affect syncing through the cloud (e.g. to our free [URL="http://sync.omnigroup.com/"]sync.omnigroup.com[/URL] server), or does it only happen when syncing over Bonjour (as the original post seems to suggest)? And does it only happen when using multiple wireless routers?[/QUOTE]
If this was a question for me, then; I'm usingsync via cloud. I've tried both MobileMe and the omni beta server. Both have the same issues as I've described

If you guys are seeing the issue I linked to above, switching to Airplane mode would prevent the WiFi connection from by removing the option for the phone to switch to the cellular radio.

iOS will automatically switch off the WiFi radio a few seconds after the phone goes to sleep, and transfer the remaining data over the cell phone radio instead.

Does the WiFi connection always drop after the phone goes to sleep? If you use settings on the phone to prevent the phone from going to sleep, does the problem still occur?

My phone isn't going to sleep during the sync, in fact, I have my phone set not to sleep, I manually have to press the button on top to shut the screen down

What's happening with mine is that the phone trys to establish the wifi sync, it seems to be working ie get a message ( can't recall exact wording) then it just freezes, waits there for about 20/30 secs, then just shuts down the wifi and stops the sync.

Good to know - if you see that error message again, that text might help us determine what's going on here...

sync 'kick' work around
 

Occasionally I got kicked out too, but the biggest problem was the 'hesitance' sync behaviour. If one waits too long it kicks off the wifi. When working properly the sync process shouldn't take more than a second or two. This is what is working for me:

1) start sync process.
2) every time there is a hesitation during the sync-process go to wifi-settings and let it scan for networks.
3) until networks are listed go back to omnifocus (must run in background)
4) repeat switching until sync has been completed

Sound weird, but every-time I go back to OF it progresses in the sync process.

iphone 4, 4.1, OF 1.7.3
mac, osx 10.5.8, OF 1.7.5
sync with bonjour

[QUOTE=Brian;86525]Is it possible that [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=70823"]this[/URL] is what's going on, and putting the phone into airplane mode overrides that behavior by turning off the cellular radio?[/QUOTE]

Note sure if this is causing the issue I am seeing. The iPhone seems to hold the wifi connection for over a minute without any taps on the screen.

In my case the app will optimise the db, the sync icon will spin for a while and I then get the updating db progress bar. Typically the sync fails towards the end of this process and wifi is dropped.

Sync loses wifi
 

I'm seeing the same issue here.

I'm syncing to my own hosted WebDAV server, so it's likely not related to bonjour.

I'm running a Linksys WRT54GL running Tomato firmware, it's a rock solid wireless link for every other purpose. None of the other machines in my home ever drop a wifi link spontaneously.

Desktop version of OmniFocus syncs fine, iPhone version pauses for a minute or so and then my WiFi connection is dropped and the sync errors out. If I attempt to sync over 3G without first connecting to WiFi it works ok.

If, as others have suggested in this thread, I enable airplane mode, then enable wifi, then connect to my WiFi - the sync works perfectly in less than 5 seconds.

It seems like something to do with the Omnifocus iPhone app failing to detect the WiFi signal properly?

Sad that such a great app is hindered by this issue.

Turn off Bluetooth
 

I've had this issue with other apps, keymote, delicious library syncing. I would loose wifi connectivity when trying to sync or such.

I haven't seen any issue with omnifocus unless i had a problem with another app first.

I did the airplane mode thing and my problems went away.

I did more testing. Instead of turning airplane mode off, i turned off bluetooth and all my problems went away.

Ill keep yall updated.

Edit: I might have not sen problems with omni focus since i used a custom Webdav server.

The two apps i constantly have issues would have to be using bonjour now that i think of it.

Please don't make me regret this purchase... No sync option working
 

I'm trying to sync my new OmniFocus Mac with my iPad. And so far, apart from grey hair, I haven't got anything.

1. I registered with the Omni Sync Server, but when trying to sync from the Mac, it refuses my username/password combination (even though I can log on the website fine)

2. I then decided to try Bonjour sync. Tried to sync the iPad, but the sync seems to kill the iPad's WiFi connection (how's that even possible? It's not a problem of signal, that's for sure, since my iPad works perfectly fine in all other regards on my home network)

So, what, I'm left with nothing now? I'm certainly not going to fork out for MobileMe...

You might not have entered the right details for the sync setup. An easy way to make sure you have it correct is to sign into the web page, then click on the Send to OmniFocus button on the Account page. This will open OmniFocus and configure it properly to sync with the Omni Sync Server, and all you have to do is enter your username and password on the first sync. Also be sure that you are entering the OSS username, not your email address.

Those are exactly the steps I've taken first time around, and yet, it refuses to log me on...
I did try again multiple times and finally found the problem with the Mac <-> OmniSync problem: the username is case sensitive! (yeah, I know, don't ask me why OmniGroup have decided to not follow the standard way of doing things...)

Worse now, I've trying to connect my iPad to OmniSync, and I find the exact same problem as when doing it over Bonjour: OmniFocus for iPad KILLS the wireless connection!!!! How is that possible? How can an application costing 10 times the price of a standard iPad app be so bad? Evernote, DropBox, Klexi, all my other apps that have to sync with web based servers do it easily and reliably, but this one, no, it just KILLS THE WIRELESS!

Someone explain that one to me please...
I did try multiple wireless networks, and it does the same thing on all of them, so it's clearly not related to the WiFi hardware, it's the iPad itself (iOS 4.2.1 FWIW)...

This is VERY poor!

Contact the support ninjas and they'll get you straightened out, or you can ask for a refund. 800-315-OMNI or +1-206-523-4152 or email [email]omnifocus@omnigroup.com[/email].

Wabiloo, sorry for the trouble this is causing. If you contact us, we'll get you up and running.

I'm having the exact same problem - though with iPhone as opposed to iPad - in that any attempt to sync (I've yet to have a successful sync) literally kills my iPhone's connection to my wireless network. After that I have to manually reconnect my iPhone to my network...how an attempted sync wipes out a device's wireless network connection is beyond me, but it happens every time, without fail.

This is incredibly disappointing given that A) I desperately need a task manager/project management lite tool that will sync between my phone and mac and B) I was all but certain that between the reviews and especially the price (20 bucks for the iPhone app/80 for the Mac app) that I would not have problems doing so.

Same answer applies: contact Omni support directly and they will help you out or get you a refund.

If Apple has done its part of the work correctly, there should be no way any requests OmniFocus makes of the network stack should disrupt your network connection, any more than sending packages should cause UPS trucks to crash. There are thousands of people syncing OmniFocus in the same manner you are trying to do without trouble. There is also a large number of ways in which a network can fail mysteriously in a manner that is very difficult to understand without considerably more visibility of the situation than we have here. There's a reason why so many networking gurus have gray hair :-)

One of the developers here just noticed that another iOS app fixed a bug "which could cause wifi connections to drop when bluetooth is enabled".

On the off chance their bug is related to what's being reported here, can the folks that have encountered this let us know if they have both WiFi and Bluetooth enabled? If they do have both enabled, does disabling Bluetooth temporarily resolve the issue?

Oh look at the post immediately above mine. <sarcasm>I am smart.</sarcasm> :-)

JustSomeGuyYouKnow, can you let us know if Bluetooth is enabled on the device(s) you're having this trouble with?

We've gotten some info from another developer that appears to explain what's going on here. Bonjour actually tries to find your sync server using both the WiFi and Bluetooth radios. That traffic, combined with the sync traffic, can cause radio interference.

We've got a lead on a way to work around this, but for the time being, folks experiencing this should be able to work around the issue by turning Bluetooth off for the duration of their sync. Sorry for the inconvenience this causes!

turning off BT has solved the sync issue for me! (iPhone4).