Alu iMac Poor Wireless :(

[nidserz]

Well I'm sad to report that I have found my first peeve about my gorgeous new 20" Aluminum iMac...

So a little background: for the first 12 days of owning my iMac I was in my brother's room set up in the basement about 15 feet from our router. My router is set up like this - Modem > Dlink N Router > Apple Airport Express-N. Everything was working smoothly until today, when I moved back to my room, 2 floors up.

I have my HP Laptop and my iMac side by side and they are connected to the Wi-Fi given off the Airport Express. The DLink router is crap and has been giving problems. Anyways my problem is that the iMac is EXTREMELY slow at loading pages, downloading, everything! I am comparing it to my HP, which has a wireless-G, and I am thoroughly disappointed. The HP continues to load pages instantly, while my iMac stalls. However, I also noticed sometimes it is decent, but no where near the speeds of my laptop.

Is there anything I can do before I go ahead and add a 45$ 2nd internet connection?

Any advice is appreciated.

PS. Should I take it to Apple? Tomorrow is my last day!

 

[nidserz]

OMG. after a full day of searching, playing with airport, and having a router dropped on my head i finally figured it out... well apple support discussion board is a charm

Well incase this happens to someone else... after updating some firmware there was a problem (dunno why, how, or what), but thanks to this discussion and a helpful post from a member named "Hawaiian_Starman" i got the solution.

Well basically you gotta edit the DNS by going to System Preferences>Network. Select the network>Advanced>DNS Tab
Outside US enter: 208.67.222.220 AND 208.67.220.222
In the US: Verizon's 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2

Thanks again and cheers!

EDIT: welp, that didn't last long - i downloaded the new firefox (3.0) and it has gone back to being slow - firefox and safari. i guess i'll have to play with it once i get home from work. if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!

 

[sassenach74]

Sorry to hear you are having problems, unfortunately I have no suggestions for you (unhelpful I know) and I really hope you find your answer.
I will probably keep an eye on this thread incase I have similar problems when I get my iMac next month.

Good luck.

 

[brn2ski00]

Could be the fact the entire thing is aluminum and doesn't work well with wireless signals.

 

[nidserz]

Sorry to hear you are having problems, unfortunately I have no suggestions for you (unhelpful I know) and I really hope you find your answer.
I will probably keep an eye on this thread incase I have similar problems when I get my iMac next month.

Good luck.

thanks for the response.
well there isn't much i can do from work as my imac is sitting at home. i fixed it at 1am last night, upgraded to firefox3, and by 2am it was slow again - didn't wanna stay up any longer so slept on it. tried it this morning and still slow...will do further testing: iMac vs. HP laptop.

Could be the fact the entire thing is aluminum and doesn't work well with wireless signals.

thanks. i figured it might be that, but it picked up and was working amazing for about 1 hour last night, speedy and pages loaded in the matter of a blink. ill keep testing thanks again!

 

[sassenach74]

thanks for the response.
well there isn't much i can do from work as my imac is sitting at home. i fixed it at 1am last night, upgraded to firefox3, and by 2am it was slow again

It almost sounds like something is hogging the memory when you open up browsers, is there an osx equivalent of the windows task manager to see what is running/using up alot of memory when your browsers(s) slow down? Just a suggestion, I could be miles off base.

 

[nidserz]

It almost sounds like something is hogging the memory when you open up browsers, is there an osx equivalent of the windows task manager to see what is running/using up alot of memory when your browsers(s) slow down? Just a suggestion, I could be miles off base.

thanks. ill do that when i get home. there is an osx equivalent of windows task manager. ill fish around but its weird cuz i restarted a few times to see if it was the computer, etc.

ps. im still at work so when i get home ill give you a detail response to your post in my other thread.
thanks a lot for lurking around helping...i know the wait sucks, i waited 6 months to switch and it was well worth it! already planning my next mac protable purchase (haven't decided which of the 3 notebooks to chose).

 

[cloudnine]

Could be the fact the entire thing is aluminum and doesn't work well with wireless signals.

Um. The back is black plastic.

 

[cloudnine]

Well I'm sad to report that I have found my first peeve about my gorgeous new 20" Aluminum iMac...

So a little background: for the first 12 days of owning my iMac I was in my brother's room set up in the basement about 15 feet from our router. My router is set up like this - Modem > Dlink N Router > Apple Airport Express-N. Everything was working smoothly until today, when I moved back to my room, 2 floors up.

I have my HP Laptop and my iMac side by side and they are connected to the Wi-Fi given off the Airport Express. The DLink router is crap and has been giving problems. Anyways my problem is that the iMac is EXTREMELY slow at loading pages, downloading, everything! I am comparing it to my HP, which has a wireless-G, and I am thoroughly disappointed. The HP continues to load pages instantly, while my iMac stalls. However, I also noticed sometimes it is decent, but no where near the speeds of my laptop.

I would take it in to the Apple Store... sounds very strange. I live in a condo complex and not only is my connection at home perfect, but I have at least 10-12 other networks visible at any given moment, as well as the complex's "club house" (whose network I set up... hehe), which is literally across the complex... it's gotta be at least a couple minutes walk. I mean, I don't get it all the time, but every now and then it pops up with the network name and I'm like "uh... holy crap."

So yeah, all that to say that there's no reason you should have wireless problems... take it into the Apple store and see what they say.

 

[ag227]

i had a similar problem and what solved it temporarily for me was afew things....

1) restart the router
2) change the dns settings in the router itself AND add on the mac
3) make sure the wifi channel was 11, no other channel fixed it.

But to solve it permantly i had to change the security on the wifi or disable it all together.

I no changing the security makes no sense as the hp laptop works but this is exactly what i had, an iMac and a XP machine next to each other and only the iMac had slow internet that kept timing out. Once i changed the security the first time this reversed and the xp machine refused to connect, but changed it a second time and it both were fine!

Of course make sure the router firmware is fully up to date

Hopefuly this helps you.

 

[Benjic]

Got anything to do with running an N router through ANOTHER N router?

I'm no genius, but every time I've tried that I've had nothing but problems.

 

[nidserz]

Got anything to do with running an N router through ANOTHER N router?

I'm no genius, but every time I've tried that I've had nothing but problems.

well i don't think this is an issue because im typing on my HP laptop right now and its working great.
also i had the imac up and running at great speeds about 2 hours ago and now its back to being sluggish and macrumors is timing out on me.
it might be the horrible reception on the imac, im not quite sure. might have to start shelling out an extra 45$ a month for a new connection upstairs. ill try for one more night to see if i can figure something out.

thanks again and all suggestions are welcome!

edit: now my wireless is working great on the iMac. maybe its the location and distance between the router and the iMac, but I am very disappointed that my HP is beating it out.

edit x2: okay i guess i shouldnt say its working great/hold my breath on it because it is a very on and off thing...sometimes its fast other times its slow...my HP is dropping connection but when its connected its SUPER fast, faster than the iMac. im just confused cuz its (iMac) suppose to be better/faster.

question about airport express: does having it connect to my other router wirelessly in order to boost the signal slow down the internet at all?
so if my modem + router are in the basement, i install airport express on the main floor, and receive better reception in my room on the top floor, will the internet be significantly slower?

thanks

 

[thecrackerjack]

The AppleN wireless woes.

I have had nothing but problems with the Apple N routers.

The first time around I had to try three when they just came out before I had one the performed constantly (connecting to mac or pc).

This past spring it took me 5 tries before I gave up and returned the 5th router and purchased a d-link N for 70$CDN. This being my first d-link (previously only Linksys) and it has worked 100% out of the box with WPA2 solid for the past couple of months.

On the other hand from my first run with Apple N routers. This router is now setup at my parents place and he has .... 5 Mac's connected to it. 2 by lan and 3 by wireless.

The wireless iMac (white and aluminum and Mac book Pro Intel Core G no N) are in a 2000+ sqft home and the computers are in the opposite corners of the basement from the router on the main floor and receive 4 bars on both the white and aluminum iMacs.

Again it took me several tries on both the first generation Apple N router and the current GB LAN Apple N router. Junky and unreliable is the only words I can use to describe my experience with Apple N Extreme routers.

Sorry for the negative press.

Also consider there could be wireless interference... microwaves, cordless phones, perhaps a ceiling fan or AC. (room door closed/open, plaster walls). Some cards handle refracted signal better then others.

 

[nidserz]

okay i have no idea what to do.
this wireless issue is driving me up the wall.
i love this computer and im trying to be oblivious to the wireless issues, but i have been using my HP more than anything and realizing how much i miss webpages loading instantly.
i have messed around a little bit with the DNS (added the 2 that worked initially) and now its just painfully slow overall, but my HP is speedy as before.
do you think its worth giving a call to apple? take it in?
i tried seeing what i can do with my dlink router settings but it seems rather strange that 2 computers (1 2 years old, 1 2 weeks old) are going at 2 different speeds.

 

[pubjoe]

Have you yet tried the earlier suggestion of checking to see if something else is hogging resources?

I just sped up my imac 10-fold by realising that whenever I left the printer on, there was a program running hogging up 100% cpu! (this thread). - This also caused very slow internet load speeds.

Have a look in activity monitor and see what's going on - cpu "% idle" should be at around 95-98% if nothing's wrong.

Is there anything I can do before I go ahead and add a 45$ 2nd internet connection?

Is a $5 network cable extension not an option?

 

[Fonzijr1964]

just get a long ethernet cable and run it to the computer. if u have to fish it do it its worth it if that is the permanent place for the computer.