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aaron5566

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 23, 2012
254
90
Hey guys, I just relocated and my router which is a TP-Link TD W8970, has terrible connection to my Mac and iPhone but fast on my Windows. I'm Bootcamping a 2012 MacBook Air. The connection is so bad on Yosemite that I can't even load google or youtube. It just sits there 5% of the load bar in and gets stuck for a few minutes and then when you refresh it, everything loads fine for about 1 minute and everything returns to being stuck again. I have tried this on both Safari and Firefox, same result. On Windows on the other hand, everything is fast, no hesitance from any websites. I don't think it's an issue with the distance between my laptop and the router as the router sits in my room. This is incredibly frustrating... Anyone have any insights?
 

michelg1970

macrumors 6502
Jul 26, 2011
306
140
The Hague - The Netherlands
Hey guys, I just relocated and my router which is a TP-Link TD W8970, has terrible connection to my Mac and iPhone but fast on my Windows. I'm Bootcamping a 2012 MacBook Air. The connection is so bad on Yosemite that I can't even load google or youtube. It just sits there 5% of the load bar in and gets stuck for a few minutes and then when you refresh it, everything loads fine for about 1 minute and everything returns to being stuck again. I have tried this on both Safari and Firefox, same result. On Windows on the other hand, everything is fast, no hesitance from any websites. I don't think it's an issue with the distance between my laptop and the router as the router sits in my room. This is incredibly frustrating... Anyone have any insights?

Maybe reset the whole router and reset your MB Air? Or delete the wifi connection and re-connect?

I use a D-Link too and get fast response both in Yosemite, El Capitan PB 5 and Windows 10. Though my router I can copy to/from my NAS at around 5 GB per minute.... Internet is maxing out the capabilities of my connection: 100 Mbps...
 

aaron5566

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 23, 2012
254
90
Maybe reset the whole router and reset your MB Air? Or delete the wifi connection and re-connect?

I use a D-Link too and get fast response both in Yosemite, El Capitan PB 5 and Windows 10. Though my router I can copy to/from my NAS at around 5 GB per minute.... Internet is maxing out the capabilities of my connection: 100 Mbps...

Hey michelg1970, thank you so much for your reply! I did try resetting my router and deleting the Internet. Still the same. I haven't tried resetting my MacBook yet. Is this a re-installation of the OS? My iPhone is having the same issue too.
 

rthpjm

macrumors 6502a
Jan 31, 2011
720
309
U.K.
Hey michelg1970, thank you so much for your reply! I did try resetting my router and deleting the Internet. Still the same. I haven't tried resetting my MacBook yet. Is this a re-installation of the OS? My iPhone is having the same issue too.
You should probably check the DNS settings on your MacOS/IOS devices, compare them to your Windows settings. From your very brief description it sounds like you may have a DNS server in the list of servers that is not responding. If you only have one DNS server listed, make sure that it is your router.
If that all looks okay, check that you are running the latest versions of MacOSX and IOS. Apple reverted back to the mDNSresponder due to unresolved problems with the newer Discoveryd.
 

aaron5566

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 23, 2012
254
90
You should probably check the DNS settings on your MacOS/IOS devices, compare them to your Windows settings. From your very brief description it sounds like you may have a DNS server in the list of servers that is not responding. If you only have one DNS server listed, make sure that it is your router.
If that all looks okay, check that you are running the latest versions of MacOSX and IOS. Apple reverted back to the mDNSresponder due to unresolved problems with the newer Discoveryd.

Hey, thanks for your reply! I just checked my DNS, it's the same with my Windows. The DNS is my routers'. Everything is updated to their latest versions.
 

rthpjm

macrumors 6502a
Jan 31, 2011
720
309
U.K.
Hey, thanks for your reply! I just checked my DNS, it's the same with my Windows. The DNS is my routers'. Everything is updated to their latest versions.
No problem. So the next most likely area to focus on is the wifi settings. I'm going to assume all your comparisons are wifi connected?
Your router is N-capable, but sometimes the N-standards are a bit fluidly interpreted. It's "possible" that your Mac/IOS devices are "hunting" for the best wifi connection, whereas the Windows driver is "locking on" to a good configuration. I'm not sure how you would do it, but I'd now check to see how the router is connecting to the three setups, looking for any obvious differences: band, frequencies, channels, n-g-b, type of authentication WEP/WPA/WPA2 - believe it or not I've seen issues where performance is affected if you use one authentication protocol over another.

If your router has a log function, check it to see if the Apple devices are utilising the full capabilities of the router

This article might help, it also suggests you check the firmware version of your router...
http://www.tp-link.com/en/faq-722.html

As a quick test you could try connecting you laptop to the router with an Ethernet cable. Turn off the wifi to ensure you are only using the cable. Check if your observations persist....
 
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aaron5566

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 23, 2012
254
90
There are other similar posts here
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-ox-but-fast-in-windows-on-intel-mini.206351/

The general solution is to manually set your Mac/IOS DNS server settings to be the DNS server addresses of your ISP (or perhaps Google's 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 servers)

Hey, thanks for your efforts! Sorry for the late reply, haven't been able to get a good signal to reply. I've seen that thread before and tried changing my DNS to Google's DNS. Didn't work unfortunately. Internet at night seems fine, everything seems to run almost as good as on Windows, however same cannot be said about the iPhone. I have another Windows laptop in the house too complaining about the same issues as me. I might try get hold of an Ethernet adapter to see if this problem precedes.
 

hobowankenobi

macrumors 68020
Aug 27, 2015
2,125
935
on the land line mr. smith.
The fact that you have two devices that are having an issue would make me think the router is the issue. Fastest way to check.....would be to use the devices on a friend/neighbor/business network that is know to be good, and see if the device(s) behave the same, or have good speeds.

If they behave well, it's the router. If they are slow on multiple networks, it is the devices.
 
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aaron5566

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 23, 2012
254
90
The fact that you have two devices that are having an issue would make me think the router is the issue. Fastest way to check.....would be to use the devices on a friend/neighbor/business network that is know to be good, and see if the device(s) behave the same, or have good speeds.

If they behave well, it's the router. If they are slow on multiple networks, it is the devices.

I just went out and connected my phone to a local free wifi. Everything worked brilliantly. I'll try get hold of another router and see things get better.
 

hobowankenobi

macrumors 68020
Aug 27, 2015
2,125
935
on the land line mr. smith.
It may be possible to fix the issue with a firmware update (...or downgrade), or resetting it and starting over.

Unfortunately though, it has been my experience that when consumer grade routers fail, they often behave weirdly, such as dropping devices, dropping internet, needing frequent reboots, etc. Replacing them is often the only real fix.

Just had a similar experience with a Buffalo router that had been rock solid for about 3 years. One day it started dropping wifi clients, and it steadily got worse over a week or so. A few resets and firmware reinstalls made no difference. Replaced it. Problems all went away...
 
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