Slow surfing speed but bittorrent is fast

[teohyc]

I think there's something wrong with my Mac.

The surfing speed for web pages can be extremely slow, even when I checked bittorrent download speeds to be above 25kbps.

Even for webpages like major sites like amazon.com and flickr.

Any ideas if there's any setting I need to tweak. I've tried different browsers and it's still the same.

Here are some extra info:
- Max possible download speed 800kbps
- Torrenting and downloading at same time. I download small items so torrent speed is typically around 25kbps
- One other user in network. I'm using wi-fi on a Buffalo router, and cable modem.

Problem starts after surfing for a while. Maybe 10-20 minutes after logging into the network.

 

[vandozza]

you havn't given us much information.
- what's your max download speed?
- are you torrenting and surfing at the same time?
- are there other users on the network?
- what type of internet do you have? router? wi-fi or ethernet?

have you tried changing the default DNS servers?

try using OpenDNS's servers, see if that speeds up your web browsing.

here are the instructions for Leopard - https://www.opendns.com/smb/start/device/apple-osx-leopard

and for Tiger - https://www.opendns.com/smb/start/device/apple-osx-tiger

 

[thomahawk]

go to speedtest.net and check your speeds

but then it could be your router or ISP
you need to tell us more info like

ISP
type of connection
router
etc

 

[teohyc]

Thanks guys.

I've updated more information at the first post.

 

[pcguru83]

I just went through the exact same thing, but on my Windows Server 2003 file server/BitTorrent box. The culprit? My router firmware wasn't allowing enough simultaneous connections and was taking too long to timeout.

I have the DD-WRT firmware loaded on a Linkysys WRT54G, so these settings are easily modified. I'm honestly not sure if these are typical settings available in most stock router firmwares. However, I understand it's very easy to put DD-WRT on Buffalo routers, so you might want to seriously consider that.

All I did was bumped up the "Maximum Connections" option from 512 to the maximum of 4096. I also decreased the TCP and UDP timeout from something I don't remember to 90. In uTorrent, I also reduced the maximum connections per torrent to 100 I believe.

This made a HUGE difference. Prior to making these changes, I literally couldn't browse the Internet if uTorrent was running on the file server, even if nothing was being downloaded.