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MacPro reduces to crawl
- Thread starter machenryr
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The WiFi works fine for my iPhone and MBP. The second MacPro has a WiFi card, not the main one. I haven’t seen whether it works for MacPro 2. The desktops are connected directly with Ethernet to the two ports of the modem. Comcast is coming tomorrow. Again. They get motivated when you post on Twitter. Lol. Tip of the day.
Yes the Comcast modem has two ports. Each MacPro has two ports. I’m using both ports on MacPro 1 - going to modem and the ULN-8s. MacPro to is just the modem
I used to use the Ethernet router to share the connection but I stopped it temporarily. I set it up for Vienna Ensemle Pro, which is s music software program that shares computers. But I have had that plugged in for awhile.
I used to use the Ethernet router to share the connection but I stopped it temporarily. I set it up for Vienna Ensemle Pro, which is s music software program that shares computers. But I have had that plugged in for awhile.
Did you possibly notice your internet glitches AFTER you removed the router from your system? Or were you already having problems BEFORE removing the router?
Test by connecting the router again.
So, one ethernet cable from modem to router.
Connect both Mac Pros to the router.
That shouldn't affect the ULN-8 stuff, as that should be on its own network, still connected to the one Mac Pro, I suppose.
(Is there any possibility that the ULN-8 interconnect is contributing to your local network problems? )
Test by connecting the router again.
So, one ethernet cable from modem to router.
Connect both Mac Pros to the router.
That shouldn't affect the ULN-8 stuff, as that should be on its own network, still connected to the one Mac Pro, I suppose.
(Is there any possibility that the ULN-8 interconnect is contributing to your local network problems? )
I thought this would be the solution. It made sense. I do think the problems may have started around the same time as I stopped using the router. So I hooked the router back up. Ethernet to the modem. The MacPros connected to the router. For good measure I rebooted the modem and the MacPro. Only one though. I’ll try them both again now.
But yesterday I hooked one Mac up to the modem directly and I had the same problem.
Well it really is a mystery. The Comcast guy came, indicated that the signal was super strong, download speed 293 mbs . Upload 11. So he was confused. It does vary from DL anywhere from 90 to 150 to mostly 290. He change the wiring up at the telephone pole. And didn’t know why certain some pages wouldn’t open and why some things wouldn’t download. These tend to be from specific sites. I have a hard time opening some pages and downloading from a specific 15 MB file is impossible. And yet other people do it all the time. Not the computer.
Are you using an old version of Safari - you mentioned being on OS 10.12 ?
You might want to try Firefox if your issues are related to particular websites .
Older versions of Safari don't work properly on some websites, or not at all , while Firefox is backwards compatible and supports the latest technology .
Thank you barmann. My main browser is Chrome. I use Safari from time to time. I tested the same with firefox just now. The same nothing on all three. This certain file will not download at all. Everything is slow as molasses. So it's not the MacPros, not the connection speed, not the browsers, not the modem, not the router, not the drives, not the OS. WTF?? Wifi seems to work fine on my iPhone and MBP. Just my two MacPros don't work well.
Here's a weird deal. It took me maybe 3 minutes to type this response. I hit post reply and I got the error that I must wait 24 seconds before posting . . . Hit it again and I still had 4 seconds. I don't know what's going on here.
So -- it's NOT downloading pretty much anything. I'm trying to download the latest cocktail and onyX but they won't download at all.
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Well, I’m back. I thought being gone with everything powered down for 5-6 days would help. I finished installing more SSDs. Tried installing OS high Sierra for a new boot SSD PCIe drive. I used OnyX to clean up the OS drives. Still no useable internet. I think this makes installing software and OS virtually impossible. Yikes.
I’m still stumped.
I’m still stumped.
You really need to eliminate variables here. Here's my advice if you really want to get to the bottom of this:
Take one of your Mac Pros, pull out/disconnect everything that's non-essential--HDDs/SDDs, USB peripherals (except your mouse and kb) and PCIe cards except for the GPU and your new SSD. Then, install High Sierra on your new PCIe SSD as a fresh install--NO upgrades or migration assistant or even installing Chrome. You want it 100% stock for the purposes of testing this. In fact, don't even sign into your Apple ID during setup, because that could possibly trigger iCloud syncing a bunch of stuff that could complicate testing. Just set it up totally generic.
Then connect your Comcast cable modem (no router for now) directly via ethernet to one of the ethernet ports on the Mac Pro. Using Safari, try to load up the pages and download the file(s) that were giving you problems before. Do they work now? If not, then make sure you've tried another ethernet cable just in case.
If it still doesn't work then you have 99.99% eliminated your Mac Pros as the cause of your problem. That means that the problem indeed lies with Comcast despite what they are saying. Have the tech come out and show him your fully stock computer struggling to load those sites. Make him plug his laptop in and load the same sites--they shouldn't work for him either. At that point it's their issue to solve.
And if everything does work with your barebones setup then you begin the painstaking process of adding back one thing at a time and re-testing the sites that didn't work until you see the problem return. Then you've found your culprit.
Take one of your Mac Pros, pull out/disconnect everything that's non-essential--HDDs/SDDs, USB peripherals (except your mouse and kb) and PCIe cards except for the GPU and your new SSD. Then, install High Sierra on your new PCIe SSD as a fresh install--NO upgrades or migration assistant or even installing Chrome. You want it 100% stock for the purposes of testing this. In fact, don't even sign into your Apple ID during setup, because that could possibly trigger iCloud syncing a bunch of stuff that could complicate testing. Just set it up totally generic.
Then connect your Comcast cable modem (no router for now) directly via ethernet to one of the ethernet ports on the Mac Pro. Using Safari, try to load up the pages and download the file(s) that were giving you problems before. Do they work now? If not, then make sure you've tried another ethernet cable just in case.
If it still doesn't work then you have 99.99% eliminated your Mac Pros as the cause of your problem. That means that the problem indeed lies with Comcast despite what they are saying. Have the tech come out and show him your fully stock computer struggling to load those sites. Make him plug his laptop in and load the same sites--they shouldn't work for him either. At that point it's their issue to solve.
And if everything does work with your barebones setup then you begin the painstaking process of adding back one thing at a time and re-testing the sites that didn't work until you see the problem return. Then you've found your culprit.
Good advice from the poster above , just a few more thoughts from my side .
Do you have any issues at all with internet performance on your MBP ?
You mentioned it seems to work fine, but are you certain ?
Reading your posts, I assume the MBP connects to the same router/modem as your MacPros; the MBP uses Wifi, the MacPros ethernet, but one MP has a Wifi card, correct ?
The internet account is the same ?
If the MBP works fine, this is what I'd try .
Take the MacPro with the Wifi card, disconnect all ethernet cables , switch on Wifi/Wlan and connect to your Wifi network .
If that doesn't work, or doesn't work well, go to System Preferences, Network, and create a new network environment . Choose and enable that environment, turn on Wlan if it isn't on yet, connect to your Wifi and try again .
Here’s the latest. I thought I posted this yesterday. I swapped modems. The bad modem in the studio I put in the house and the good house modem I put in the studio. Voila. It works. The bad modem now in the house behaves the same.
The first tech from Comcast claimed he switched the modems out, but I didn’t see him do it. Maybe he meant to and spaced out. Or maybe they’re defective. They look exactly the same.
The first tech from Comcast claimed he switched the modems out, but I didn’t see him do it. Maybe he meant to and spaced out. Or maybe they’re defective. They look exactly the same.
For the love of god ....
And most likely in 2019 it's not a modem, but a damn router .
Not that it makes a difference .
Either way, you might want to try resetting the 'bad modem' in the browser interface, update the firmware and such, and reconfigure it with your access data .
And most likely in 2019 it's not a modem, but a damn router .
Not that it makes a difference .
Either way, you might want to try resetting the 'bad modem' in the browser interface, update the firmware and such, and reconfigure it with your access data .
Seems you don’t understand... It IS a modem and it probably has an integrated router. Just because dial up has been superseded in 2019, it doesn’t mean modems aren’t necessary. They are, but most cable companies now supply the cable-modem with an integrated router.
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Thankfully my ISP still allows customers to "BYO" their own modem. I'd die if I had to use one of those crappy ISP-provided routers. 
I stand corrected .
I wasn't considering cable .
But isn't that more like a splitter-router-modem combo ?
splitter of what? If you mean coax, then no. It takes a single coax input. The only exceptions I've seen are some FIOS boxes that use MoCA to transmit ethernet over coax lines.
If you mean an ethernet splitter, that's referred to as a switch, which almost all consumer routers incorporate.
So in practicality, you end up with a device with a coax input and several ethernet jacks as output (usually 4), plus WiFi. That's what most cable-based ISPs are providing these days.
No, it's a cable-modem (most have WiFi) / router combo. You can usually configure the router to be a switch if you want, but in a home environment it generally wouldn't make any sense to do so.
Update - Comcast guy came today. The third time. I had discovered it was the modem and it was. So he replaced it. He didn't know whether the guy simply forgot to replace it the first time, lied about it or whether I had two defective units. But it's working. Thank god. Thanks everybody.