Had my iMac for 2 weeks; a question about download speeds

[Thomas_Davie]

Hi all, I just had a quick question about download speeds if anyone knows.

I am on an uncapped 8/1.5 mbps dsl line, and my iMac is directly connected to my router via an ethernet cable, I am using SABnzbd+ to download from binary newsgroups and am getting a sustained 1046 kB/second. Previously, only a few weeks ago when I was running XP, and downloading from newsgroups, I was getting a systained 821 kB/sec.

Is there any reason, technical or easy for the difference?

thanks in advance

Tom

(and yes, my iMac has been a blast)

[JNB]

Easy if you understand how the OS manages the TCP/IP stack. OS X 10.5 self-tunes the stack, unlike Windows which required manual intervention to get the best performance. Adjusting RWIN and MTU values, followed by a reboot every time used to be so much fun!

With Leopard, that's not necessary, as it adjusts itself to optimize its connection to the world. You can, however, still play around with the settings, if you like to muck around in Terminal, and there's a GUI tool from Sourceforge.

More info on the topic and some tools found here (http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks).

[Thomas Davie]

Thanks for the reply. I thought it might have been something like that. I was into manually adjusting parameters in XP, but have obviousl been pleasantly surprised by the numbers in Leopard. As an add on/follow up, when I was receiving 821 kB/sec download speed in XP, other online web surfing would crawl to a halt. In Leopard, I still have snappy, almost instantaneous page loads; so quick that I find I forget I am downloading.

thanks again for ther pointers/heads up.

Tom