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intermittently slow internet on alu imac 20"

QCassidy352

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Original poster
Mar 20, 2003
12,141
6,224
Bay Area
my gf has a 2.66 ghz 20" imac and the internet sometimes is fine, but sometimes gets really slow. Turning airport entirely off (on the imac) and then on again fixes the problem, but it happens often enough that I don't really see that as a solution.

It's comcast internet and an airport extreme (n) base station. My macbook has no problems.

Anyone experienced anything like this? Any known fix?
 
Same here

I have a 24" running Leopard and have had slow internet problems - just created a new post. Try Open DNS servers as your DNS - google this - there are plenty of instructions on how to do this (basically you just specify two of their DNS servers as the ones in Network Preferences and on your router). It seems to work for lots of people.

Cheers

Marcus
 
I am also having a VERY slow connection. It started happening 2 days (also comcast). But it's happening on all of my macs. Web pages take forever to load, and forget trying to download anything. Tried rebooting, restarted Airport, restarted the modem, nothing works.

It seems worse after 12:00pm. Yesterday we were fine until just after noon, then it got VERY slow. This morning it was better (but not great) then again around 12:00-12:30pm it slowed to a crawl. It's driving me nuts.
 
Have you tried a different user account on your mac to rule out spyware/virus or bad settings?

I know a virus or spyware would be rare.
 
Passive101 said:
Have you tried a different user account on your mac to rule out spyware/virus or bad settings?

I know a virus or spyware would be rare.
Click to expand...

For me that does not seem to be the case, as it's happening on all 3 macs, and a PC. Slow connection on all of them. I'm wondering if it's a Comcast issue since QCassidy352 posted above that they also have Comcast?
 
I was running leopard on my macbook. I also tried the different accounts and it did not fix the problem. It only effected firefox, but uninstalls etc nothing fixed it. Safari was unaffected.

I did a reinstall and it solved the issue and never bothered me again.
 
Thanks for all the responses. Sorry I haven't been able to follow my own thread for a while. ;)

The Beardster said:
I have a 24" running Leopard and have had slow internet problems - just created a new post. Try Open DNS servers as your DNS - google this - there are plenty of instructions on how to do this (basically you just specify two of their DNS servers as the ones in Network Preferences and on your router). It seems to work for lots of people.

Cheers

Marcus
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's a good suggestion. I'll look in to it.

Passive101 said:
Have you tried a different user account on your mac to rule out spyware/virus or bad settings?

I know a virus or spyware would be rare.
Click to expand...

Actually, I did create a new user account, for other reasons, and it did fix the problem. However, I am also using a different browser than my gf is on her account.

Passive101 said:
I was running leopard on my macbook. I also tried the different accounts and it did not fix the problem. It only effected firefox, but uninstalls etc nothing fixed it. Safari was unaffected.

I did a reinstall and it solved the issue and never bothered me again.
Click to expand...

Very strange. So the different browser issue is not just me. Hmm, the mystery deepens.
 
Ok, the new user account did not fix the problem, nor does switching browsers. I guess I will try this Open DNS thing...
 
Not sure if this is the same problem but on my iMac the connection will sometimes drop, so it is usually on all bars and works fine then it will drop to 2 bars and pages will just stop loading, it would do this often until I noticed that to stop this happening is the put it the sleep and then wake it again which for some reasons fixes it.

This will only solve it until you put the mac to sleep but I can live with it.
 
2Sticky said:
Not sure if this is the same problem but on my iMac the connection will sometimes drop, so it is usually on all bars and works fine then it will drop to 2 bars and pages will just stop loading, it would do this often until I noticed that to stop this happening is the put it the sleep and then wake it again which for some reasons fixes it.

This will only solve it until you put the mac to sleep but I can live with it.
Click to expand...

You're the first one to describe my problem almost exactly. I'll give you an even easier fix - turn your airport off and on again. Unfortunately, I do not consider either that or sleeping/waking it to be an acceptable solution.
 
Yea I have been looking for a fix for a while but gave up, I have tried changing stuff on my router etc but my iMac is the only thing that has this problem.

Until there is a solution I shall just have to live with it.
 
Are you sure that the problem isn't in the comcast?
Are you that anyone else like neighbour etc. is not using your internet connection and downloading some heavy files?
 
2Sticky said:
Yea I have been looking for a fix for a while but gave up, I have tried changing stuff on my router etc but my iMac is the only thing that has this problem.

Until there is a solution I shall just have to live with it.
Click to expand...

I have the same situation. I am wondering if it's worth it to get it repaired.

Hellhammer said:
Are you sure that the problem isn't in the comcast?
Are you that anyone else like neighbour etc. is not using your internet connection and downloading some heavy files?
Click to expand...

No, it has to be the iMac because a MacBook on the same network has no issues.
 
Update: the imac has no problems whatsoever when using an ethernet cable. So the issue is with the airport module in the imac. Annoying, but good to know. Not sure if it's worth getting it repaired or not since it's not a huge problem to just use this cable.
 
Just an information because I do not live in USA.

What are slow connection for you? What is a good rate of download?
 
When it's working correctly web pages load basically instantly and downloads are I dunno, about 1 MB/sec? Network speed test gives me 5500 kbps down and 2500 up, in case that tells you anything (although a second test just gave me 11500 down/2500 up, so... take it for what it's worth).

When it's not working correctly pages basically don't load at all. Downloads time out.

So it's a dramatic difference. ;)
 
Yea its not a matter of connection speed, it either works or it doesn't.

If anyone ever finds something that solves this do let me know.
 
2Sticky said:
Yea its not a matter of connection speed, it either works or it doesn't.

If anyone ever finds something that solves this do let me know.
Click to expand...

Same. But at this point, I'm thinking it's a faulty airport module or a similar hardware issue.
 
I to am experiencing the same problem with my 20" iMac :mad:

Every now and again I'll be surfing the internet and Safari will slow down or won't connect to a page at all, when I look up the wi-fi icon is normally on 1 or 2 bars, sometimes none at all. As others have said the only temporary solution to this problem that I have found is to turn Airport off and then back on again which seems to fix it immediately, but it's not ideal.

Do you think Apple are aware of this issue? Has anyone looked into the matter further?
 
I don't know if apple is aware of this, or how widespread it is. But we've got 3 imac users with the exact same thing, and that sounds like a systemic problem to me.
 
Anyone resolved this problem? My parent's mac mini (PPC) does this over wireless. Also tried using a macbook in the same room and the mb doesn't do this.
 
other threads (which I can't link to right now) seem to describe the same problem and suggest changing your router to channel 11 as a fix. I've not tried that yet, but plan to tonight.
 
changed to channel 11 tonight... and the problems are GONE! Wow, I can't believe I first put up with this and then used ethernet for so long when there was such a simple fix! Give it a shot! :D
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Just one final update to this thread. Changing the channel seemed to fix the problem, but it came back. I ultimately took the iMac to an apple store for repair. They determined that the card was not faulty, but was seated incorrectly. They reseated the card, and now all is finally well.

So at least in my case, this was a hardware issue. The channel cahnging thing may still work for others tho.
 
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