Why is my internet so much slower than my roommates?

J

johnbro23

macrumors 6502a
We all share a connection to the same router, but my connection is much slower. It takes at least 10 times as long to load a page.

Once a download starts, its pretty quick. For example, I'm downloading Apple's iPod Touch intro video and getting speeds at 500 KB/sec. Its just opening new pages that is unbearably slow. For example, MacRumors.com just took 55 seconds to load.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me to get a better connection?
 
I've tried that. I primarily use the latest version of Firefox 2. I tested macrumors.com in Safari 3 and got 48 seconds. This thread took 28 seconds to load in Firefox.

It just doesn't make sense because downloads are relatively fast. I consistently get download speeds of over 100 KB/sec, with fast websites, such as Apple's, going at 500-600 KB/sec. There's five of us who share a 16 MB/sec connection from Comcast, through a password protected router (so no one steals our connection).

If anyone has any suggestions of what I should do, it would be greatly appreciated!
 
Backup/format/reinstall OS X.

Alternately, you can use traceroute to find out where you packets are getting stuck.
 
taylorwilsdon said:
You're surprisingly honest on a forum that so intensely condemns hackin-toshing.

But rock on, you've got some bitchin' hardware.
Click to expand...

Not to threadjack or anger the fanbois but thanks :) Its made me gain a deeper respect/knowledge of MacOS X. Granted Ill never run it on Apple hardware again..

Ooooh, johnbro23! Do you have a lot of misc crap installed on your Mac? Because I can probably walk you through some spring cleaning over AIM/MSN if you like (but not tonight, im tired and tomorrow is going to be hellish.).
 
It just started happening when I connected to this network. So I don't think its an OSX thing.

I just noticed that iTunes is very sluggish too. I tried downloading some podcasts, and the speeds were very fast (around 500 KB/sec), it was just the loading of store pages that took long to load (podcasts homepage: 18 seconds).

:confused:
 
Well to check that:

Open Applications>Terminal

type

traceroute www.google.ca

Paste back what looks like this


morgan:~ eric$ traceroute www.google.ca
traceroute: Warning: www.google.ca has multiple addresses; using 72.14.205.104
traceroute to www.google.com (72.14.205.104), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 jimmy (192.168.1.1) 6.278 ms 4.085 ms 8.562 ms
2 10.143.58.1 (10.143.58.1) 155.917 ms 11.040 ms 14.840 ms
3 gw03.lndn.phub.net.cable.rogers.com (66.185.90.65) 10.984 ms 11.300 ms 11.674 ms
4 24.153.4.121 (24.153.4.121) 11.593 ms 11.488 ms 10.017 ms
5 64.71.241.105 (64.71.241.105) 14.537 ms 15.612 ms 14.835 ms
6 pos-4-0.igw01.front.phub.net.cable.rogers.com (64.71.240.53) 98.819 ms 183.234 ms 294.650 ms
7 24.153.3.70 (24.153.3.70) 13.652 ms 15.736 ms 15.686 ms
8 66.249.94.92 (66.249.94.92) 23.559 ms 16.708 ms 66.249.94.96 (66.249.94.96) 15.703 ms
9 72.14.236.142 (72.14.236.142) 21.539 ms 33.408 ms 72.14.232.66 (72.14.232.66) 14.643 ms
10 qb-in-f104.google.com (72.14.205.104) 16.455 ms 24.392 ms 13.677 ms
morgan:~ eric$


This will tell us where your packets are getting stuck and where we need to start looking.
 
Sorry it took a while to post back, I had to get to bed, I've got an 8 am class this morning. So here's what I got...

John-Brozicks-MacBook:~ johnbrozick$ traceroute www.google.ca
traceroute: Warning: www.google.ca has multiple addresses; using 64.233.169.99
traceroute to www.google.com (64.233.169.99), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.947 ms 1.637 ms 1.546 ms
2 * * *
3 * * *
4 * * *
5 * * *
6 * * *
7 * * *
(etc.)

I let it go all the way to 22 when I just quit Terminal. I have no idea what this means, hopefully you can make sense of it...
 
So basically what we did there is see how long it takes your data to reach its destination.The speed to your router is phenominal! Faster than mine actually It would seem that your notebook isnt the issue. Reset the router to factory defaults and try the traceroute thing again. Also maybe try without encryption vs. w/ encryption. Paste back your results with both settings.
 
I didn't do any customization to the router settings, so all I did was restart the router. And then to take off encryption, I just disabled WPA-PSK security.

Here's with encryption...

John-Brozicks-MacBook:~ johnbrozick$ traceroute www.google.ca
traceroute: Warning: www.google.ca has multiple addresses; using 64.233.169.99
traceroute to www.google.com (64.233.169.99), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.930 ms 1.566 ms 1.608 ms
2 * * *

And without...

John-Brozicks-MacBook:~ johnbrozick$ traceroute www.google.ca
traceroute: Warning: www.google.ca has multiple addresses; using 64.233.169.104
traceroute to www.google.com (64.233.169.104), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 4.272 ms 1.987 ms 1.324 ms
2 * * *
 
Well, I think you should look into actually resetting it or updating/reinstalling the firmware. The problem definatly is with your router.
 
Firstly do you have Interface Robustness selected? If so, turn it off. Secondly check that your DNS server settings are blank in your Networking preference.

rhpenguin said:
Well, I think you should look into actually resetting it or updating/reinstalling the firmware. The problem definatly is with your router.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. The administrator of the next-hop device may have configured it to drop ICMP packets.
 
rhpenguin your advice is like using a chainsaw to prune the roses...

Reformat your hard disk? Revert router back to factory settings?? :rolleyes:

Where's the troubleshooting?

johnbro23 - what are your network settings? Do you have any hard-coded DNS server entries? The router looks like its dropping ICMP (ping/traceroute) packets which doesn't help diagnosis.

The problem sounds like its having problems resolving names and times out (perhaps falling back to another DNS server). Once it resolves to an IP address, the connection seems fine. You can test this by entering the IP address into your browser instead of the FQDN. Try http://216.218.211.130/ for Macrumors to see if this is faster


Try comparing the assigned DHCP information with the other computers on the network to see if they differ - specifically the DNS information.
 
Never thought about that. But if the other machines arent having an issue and the defaults are set on the router, I dont see how that would make a difference. And resetting the firmware was the easiest/least technical solution I could come up with.

l33r0y: I am all about the overkill/least work solution.
 
rhpenguin said:
Never thought about that. But if the other machines arent having an issue and the defaults are set on the router, I dont see how that would make a difference. And resetting the firmware was the easiest solution I could come up with.
Click to expand...

The router may have ISP information encoded which may get wiped after performing a factory default...
 
Fair, but im assuming that our good friend johnbro23 has that information written down somewhere like all responsible web users should.


Im done with this.

/Back to getting the new build of Leo working on my desktop.
 
dynamicv, thanks for the DNS server tip. I had been manually putting in DNS servers starting with 10.x.x.x. I guess it didn't match my 192.x.x.x IP address I was pulling.

So that seems to have fixed the problem. Good thing I didn't try reinstalling OSX or anything like that. Macrumors.com loaded in 4 seconds. Not bad. :)
 
rhpenguin said:
Fair, but im assuming that our good friend johnbro23 has that information written down somewhere like all responsible web users should.
Click to expand...

What do they say? Assuption is the mother of all **** ups :p

As for having the information written down, this may not be possible as in some cases this information is not supplied or viewable on the router (asterisked out). This is the case for my ISP's supplied router.

johnbro23 - glad you got it working and it backed up my theory.

/smug mode off ;)
 
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