Choppy mouse while heavy network traffic over Airport Extreme

[maahonen]

I have the saucer-shaped Airport Extreme, and have hooked up my DSL cable model and NAS (network attached storage) box to it. Whenever I download large amounts of stuff (e.g. >1Gb of video footage from the NAS, or try an online network speed test), the connection to my mouse gets bad. The cursor won't track well and will jump around the screen with huge latency. It seems that the worse the traffic, the worse the choppiness.

I have tried this with 2 types of mice - the Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse (which was so bad I switched to a Logitech G7, using USB Overdrive X). The bug shows up on both. Note that the MM works over Bluetooth, while Logitech runs using its own USB dongle. The touchpad on the laptop is not affected. Occasionally I've also encountered situations where, while typing with my Apple Wireless Keyboard, letters will stickkkkkkkkkkkkkk for no apparent reason.

Any similar experiences?

(One theory I have is that the Bluetooth MM uses the USB protocol as part of its comms stack (don't know why... just a wild guess) and somehow USB Overdrive X could be interfering with it.)



//markus

PS. Oh yeah - I have an Intel Macbook that's 3 months old.

 

[DoFoT9]

have you tried with a corded mouse!? i would suggest that. ive never heard of such a thing but it sounds like there is interfearance comming from the two devices (mouse and airport).
very wierd

 

[maahonen]

Response...

I don't have a wired mouse, unfortunately. It's apparent, though, that it's not the Airport causing the issue - it's the Mac itself. I guess the next thing to try is to uninstall the USB software I used for the mouse... Let's see if that helps...

 

[Jestered]

I had the same thing happen to me when I got my AppleTV and was syncing everything over to it.

What I have:

AppleTV
Airport Extreme (new with wireless drive)
MBP SR
Mighty Mouse

Whenever I was syncing a large amount of stuff over to the AppleTV my Mighty Mouse would track very slow and was very jumpy. The trackpad worked fine. As soon as the sync was over, I got my MM back with normal operation.

I don't know if it was fixed with a channel change on the airport (or maybe an update to the firmware), but I have not noticed it for a few weeks now.

It could also be that since I have already synced the large amount of stuff to my AppleTV, that it is not moving much data anymore so I don't see the problem.

I did have the same problem though.

 

[DoFoT9]

maybe theres a certain limit to the amout of network traffic that all of your devices can use.. or a certain percentage. or something. thats very interesting though.

 

[maahonen]

Interesting? Appalling...

I gotta say, 3 months into actually using a Mac, I'm not impressed.

I was under the impression that Macs are more solid than their PC counterparts. My major gripe with the mouse interface is that the mouse acceleration curve design is crappy. You really notice the difference when using a mouse on a PC, and then moving to the Mac - something that was easy is now hard... After this new network-related issue with both a Bluetooth Mouse, Keyboard, and a Logitech mouse, I'm surprised to find that some very basic usability issues have been overlooked...

I don't think this will be enough to make me a hater yet, though - I suppose I have too much invested as the whole house is soon apple-ized!

Let's hope I can get this mouse issue resolved by buying a cordless Microsoft mouse. Perhaps their drivers will be better -- and better yet, maybe their driver overwrite the default crappy mouse acceleration curve?

 

[DoFoT9]

this is really wierd. ive never heard of such a thing. maybe once u check it with a corded mouse and see if its actually a wireless problem or not.. ery intersting and off putting