Slow Internet Speed

[albeik]

Hi everyone,

I have a PC (Windows XP) and my Powerbook (15" 1.25GHz) connected wirelessly (802.11b) via a WAP. I have a 2MBps broadband connection connected to the WAP. On my PC I used Firebird as my web browser, while on my Mac I use Safari.

In comparison, my PC is way much faster surfing the net, while Safari takes longer time to load the same page. (I have tried many sites and downloading different files from different servers). I am downloading big files from my PC then move them to my Mac, because its faster that way.

I used Camino and it was "a bit" faster than Safari but still not compared to my PC.

Do you know if I need to setup something on the Mac or configure something... I am really not sure what to do. I am new to Mac community.

Thanks in advance everyone!

[snickelfritz]

Try doing some bandwidth tests at dslreports.com
This will give you some concrete, imperical data to work with.

[albeik]

Using the Speakeasy.net servers...

PC
Download Speed: 1303 kbps
Upload Speed: 250 Kbps

Mac
Download Speed: 713 kbps
Upload Speed: 66 Kbps

Any ideas?

[oldschool]

Are they both connected wirelessly? Is the mac farther away from the wireless hub?

[albeik]

Yes both are wirelessly connected. They are right beside each other. The Mac is actually closer to the WAP.

[chinamac]

I have the same problem. Not on wireless however, but on office LAN. The PC s are faster.

Tried Safari, Camino and Mozilla, all to the same effect? Very frustrating.

[Thirteenva]

go to google or version tracker and look for broadbandOptimizer it changes some ethernet settings that may improve speed on a broadband connection.

[bousozoku]

It's probably the byte orientation of the data stream. If it's PC-oriented, it has to be byte-swapped before it can be displayed. Changing things around takes time, whether it's a Macintosh or a large system with thousands of users.

[advocate]

Originally posted by bousozoku
It's probably the byte orientation of the data stream. If it's PC-oriented, it has to be byte-swapped before it can be displayed. Changing things around takes time, whether it's a Macintosh or a large system with thousands of users.
Network byte order is MSB first, so it's the PC, not the Mac, that has to swab before sending bytes on the wire.

[tomf87]

What wireless cards are in your systems? Are they both 802.11g or 802.11b or a mix?

What access point are you using? Did you buy it as a bundle with a wireless card for the PC? If so, they may be optimized for use with each other, by using compression or what-not.

[ohsweetnothin]

I'm having a similar problem with slow (crawling, really) wireless connectivity. I just got my mac (newbie), and I'm using a pre-installed airport extreme card along with a roadrunner router. What's really frustrating is that my pc laptop, which is also running a wireless card, picks up a much stronger signal, even when it's placed right next to my mac. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. A techinician from TWC is coming out tomorrow, but based on past service I'm not hopeful.