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Please Help to Solve Mystery of Painfully Slow Internet

U

utakata

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 20, 2008
3
0
Hi everyone,

I have been facing painfully slow internet connection over the past few weeks, and it's been driving me up the wall. I use a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo 2.5GB Ram Imac, using Leopard. I have about 100GB out of 250GB free.

Since encountering this problem, I have used both Airport and Ethernet connection, even simultaneously sometimes, to no avail.

As for me, the real mystery is the connection is only really slow on Safari and Firefox. If I'm using other applications that need the internet, like Skype or Bittorrent, there's no snag at all. In fact, on Bittorrent I've been downloading at up to 1000kbp/s.

I have rang my service provider, who say there's no problem on their part, which seems likely considering that both my flatmates have no problems with their connections. I've run online internet speed testers, and the results are a respectable 7907kbp/s.

Yes, and I've also ran a ping test on my modem, results are 0.014ms with no packet loss but on www.apple.com it was about 90ms, which seems pretty high?

Have emptied cache on both safari and firefox. Also, repaired disk permissions on disk utility. nothing worked.

If anyone could advise on how I could get my Safari and/or Firefox up to speed again, that would be most helpful. Thanks!!
 
well if you ran speedtests and they gave you good results then whats the problem? i mean, you browsed them with your internet browser right? (which is the one that apears to have the problem as you said). Some times, some sites can load really slow but the problem can be server-side. Popular sites often get too much visits so the server overloads.

PS: Is this "IceClean" also available for tiger? it looks such a great tool
 
sOwL said:
well if you ran speedtests and they gave you good results then whats the problem? i mean, you browsed them with your internet browser right? (which is the one that apears to have the problem as you said). Some times, some sites can load really slow but the problem can be server-side. Popular sites often get too much visits so the server overloads.
Click to expand...

Well, to reiterate my problem, I have no problem downloading data once a website has been completely loaded, hence YouTube works, but only once the whole page has been loaded. But to actually get something to show up on Safari takes about half a minute, which I am sure you must agree is pretty darn slow. And sure, I understand that popular sites get too much visit sometimes so the server overloads, but surely this can't be the case since I have been facing this problem consistently every time I'm online for the past three weeks.

AND it is not just specific sites, rather all sites I've visited, and not only content heavy sites. Google takes 10 seconds to load (which you must agree, cannot be a server problem, nor is it a content heavy site). Hence, the mystery.

Chappers, I've conducted MacJanitor cleanups on my mac, but no difference. will try iceclean.

Also, I've downloaded Camino browser, seems to work, but only marginally better. Sigh. I'm getting a bit frustrated.
 
utakata said:
Well, to reiterate my problem, I have no problem downloading data once a website has been completely loaded, hence YouTube works, but only once the whole page has been loaded. But to actually get something to show up on Safari takes about half a minute, which I am sure you must agree is pretty darn slow. And sure, I understand that popular sites get too much visit sometimes so the server overloads, but surely this can't be the case since I have been facing this problem consistently every time I'm online for the past three weeks.

AND it is not just specific sites, rather all sites I've visited, and not only content heavy sites. Google takes 10 seconds to load (which you must agree, cannot be a server problem, nor is it a content heavy site). Hence, the mystery.

Chappers, I've conducted MacJanitor cleanups on my mac, but no difference. will try iceclean.

Also, I've downloaded Camino browser, seems to work, but only marginally better. Sigh. I'm getting a bit frustrated.
Click to expand...

When you tried using a wired connection, have you tried that with the wireless turned OFF? Typically that is the only way to get a proper connection (or like-wise, turning wired off and wireless on). Otherwise your computer may be getting confused which network to connect to.

Also, if that doesn't solve your problem, is your wireless network secured? You may have a intruder getting into your network and stealing your internet connection -- in which case, your connection speed will slow down drastically.
 
robbieduncan said:
Sounds like DNS lookup issues. Try changing your DNS servers to OpenDNS.
Click to expand...

I concur - I moved to another country back in fall and my internet was working fine, until about 3 months went by, then I started having major issues with a page taking FOREVER to load initially, then once it 'connected' to the site- i could browse any of the contents without a problem. I was going mad trying to clean out preferences and strange background tasks... well one day i opened up the settings for my network preferences, and realized that I still had the DNS server settings punched in from my internet provider back in the states... well all I did was delete that information, save the settings.. and PRESTO - my internet was lickitysplit faster!

Just to be safe- I'd even setup a new network setting.. just to get everything fresh. - but in all likeliness from the symptoms you describe, its DNS server problems. hope that helps.
 

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utakata said:
[...] and I've also ran a ping test on my modem, results are 0.014ms with no packet loss but on www.apple.com it was about 90ms, which seems pretty high?

Have emptied cache on both safari and firefox. Also, repaired disk permissions on disk utility. nothing worked.

If anyone could advise on how I could get my Safari and/or Firefox up to speed again, that would be most helpful. Thanks!!
Click to expand...

If your PING tests work but you are having problems browsing sites on the Internet:

1. If you could ping external sites by both IP address and Name, but cannot browse the web, likely your web browser is misconfigured.

2. Double check that you don't have an incorrect or not needed Proxy server assigned.

For the Internet Explorer - Tools / Internet Options / Connections tab / LAN settings button. Uncheck both Automatically detect settings and Use a proxy server for your LAN.

This may also be a firewall issue too, if your problem still persists. With all inbound communication, most software firewalls have settings that let you set up a trusted range or trusted zone.

a) Find the IP address of a router or computer on your Network (you can see the IP address on the details tab from the Network Map). The most common IP addresses are 192.168.0.x for x between 1 and 254.

b) Set the trusted range based on your IP address. The first three numbers should stay the same, and the last number should start at 0 and end in 255.

Code: 
Example IP 	Example Range
192.168.0.2 	192.168.0.0 through 192.168.0.255
192.168.124.66 	92.168.124.0 through 192.168.124.255
10.0.0.10 	10.0.0.0 through 10.0.0.255
10.255.255.3 	10.255.255.0 through 10.255.255.255

Some Firewall software won't allow for a range from 1 IP address to another IP address. In this case, the software should ask for an "IP address" and a "Subnet Mask". For these firewall programs, the IP address can be the IP address you found in step a (above), and the "Subnet Mask will be "255.255.255.0". This will tell your firewall to trust everything from 0-255 in the same range as your IP address.

Finally, if none of these work and you're still having intermittent wireless connection problems; I'd like to suggest you try the most current version of Network Magic. Click here to learn more.

If you've got Network Magic version 4.7.8023.0 - (for :apple: version, go here):

Go to Tools menu and choose Options, then go to the Advanced tab.

Set "Network device response time:" to "Slower"
Set "Retry attempts before showing offline status:" to "10"

This should speed up you wireless connection - or at the very least, the network adviser will diagnose what the problem is for you and provide possible solutions to help resolve the problem automatically. Hope this helps!
 
a fix to slow web browsing on Leopard

Utarka,

A likely reason why you're seeing slow web browsing is because of the way Leopard does DNS lookups (translating website names to IP addresses).

Here are detailed instructions on why you're seeing slow Internet on Leopard and how to fix the slow DNS problem. It's mostly how to avoid router DNS proxying / forwarding, which is the culprit the majority of the time.

Slow Internet when browsing the web is really noticeable because you hit different websites often, which requires DNS lookups, which happen "on-demand", i.e. right after you click on a link going to a new site, or type a URL into the address bar.

Bittorrent and skype are streaming services that use IP addresses, not domain names, thus, you're never hitting the name to IP lookup delay.

For example, when you launch Skype, it will immediately connect to dozens of hosts out in the Internet in the background, even before you've made a call. It works on the peer to peer / bittorrent model, spreading out network traffic amongst all the people using the service. Who are these hosts? Other people who have Skype running. And every single one of these hosts is simply an IP address, which Skype can contact without ever asking DNS for help. Keep in mind that all these Skype end users are connected to the Internet via their home DSL connection, which is an IP address, not a domain name like "apple.com".

Once you get connected to a server or host via its IP address, transfer speeds between you and them should be fast. It's only when you're connecting to a new server where your Mac doesn't already know the IP address do you see delays.

Let me know if this helps.

Ben

utakata said:
Hi everyone,

As for me, the real mystery is the connection is only really slow on Safari and Firefox. If I'm using other applications that need the internet, like Skype or Bittorrent, there's no snag at all. In fact, on Bittorrent I've been downloading at up to 1000kbp/s.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks

installingcats,

thanks for the advice, your explanation made the most sense and sounds exactly like what's going on in my mac. I will try to follow the suggestions you posted and will let you know on the status.

thanks again for your explanation, it's good to finally know why it's all gone tits up. Cheers

Kat xx
 
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