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You sir are SLOW, very slow

M

MarcheurDeCiel

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 6, 2009
17
0
My relatively (3 months) new MB alu (2.4, 4Gb) is giving me internet headaches. It's very slow in opening internet pages and rendering internet information in general. I've scanned several previous entries on slow connections in the forum and tried a number of solutions and here's what I can conclude so far:

- Not a connection speed issue - connection just dandy (fiber optic - 18mb down/ 8 up), ran speed tests on computer to confirm.
- Doesn't look like a wireless issue - turned off airport and plugged directly in to the router, same lag;
- Doesn't look like a browser issue - equally slow with firefox and safari
- Not just webpage issue - noticed it on google earth too.

My wife's white MB runs circles around mine, as does my old HP/Vista (horror!) laptop.

I'm stumped. Where to look next? Could this be a graphics card issue?

Anyone else having similar problems?
 
Firefox can go faster

I don't know how to change Safari, But if Safari and Firefox are running the same speed, you can make firefox faster in a lot of ways, you just have to find them.
here, try these suggestions:
1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!
Type about:config and press [Enter], then right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) somewhere in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.notify.interval as your preference name, click OK, enter 500000 (that's five hundred thousand, not fifty thousand) and click OK again.

Right-click again in the window and select New > Boolean. This time create a value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to True to finish the job.
If you haven't moved your mouse or touched the keyboard for 0.75 seconds (the content switch threshold) then Firefox enters a low frequency interrupt mode, which means its interface becomes less responsive but your page loads more quickly. Reducing the content switch threshold can improve performance, then, and it only takes a moment.

Type about:config and press [Enter], right-click in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.switch.threshold, click OK, enter 250000 (a quarter of a second) and click OK to finish.
 
New Computers

You could also probably just wait for a firmware update. New Computers tend to need quite a few bug fixes to the OS and all that stuff.
 
MarcheurDeCiel said:
Saw that mentioned elsewhere, but must confess i don't know anything about DNS or how to diagnose it. How can I test?
Click to expand...

Update: looks like it was a DNS problem. Still don't quite understand why it was, but I went into the DNS and deleted a couple of non-active server addresses, and 'hey presto', i'm surfing with speed again!

Many thanks Beerfloat!
 
snakemaster1992 said:
I don't know how to change Safari, But if Safari and Firefox are running the same speed, you can make firefox faster in a lot of ways, you just have to find them.
here, try these suggestions:
1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!
Type about:config and press [Enter], then right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) somewhere in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.notify.interval as your preference name, click OK, enter 500000 (that's five hundred thousand, not fifty thousand) and click OK again.

Right-click again in the window and select New > Boolean. This time create a value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to True to finish the job.
If you haven't moved your mouse or touched the keyboard for 0.75 seconds (the content switch threshold) then Firefox enters a low frequency interrupt mode, which means its interface becomes less responsive but your page loads more quickly. Reducing the content switch threshold can improve performance, then, and it only takes a moment.

Type about:config and press [Enter], right-click in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.switch.threshold, click OK, enter 250000 (a quarter of a second) and click OK to finish.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips: I had forgotten how to 'tune' firefox and was just about to go searching.

And with regard to Safari, I thought the new version was supposed to be lightening quick at java. Firefox still beats it hands down on my machine.
 
MarcheurDeCiel said:
Update: looks like it was a DNS problem. Still don't quite understand why it was, but I went into the DNS and deleted a couple of non-active server addresses, and 'hey presto', i'm surfing with speed again!

Many thanks Beerfloat!
Click to expand...

i use OpenDNS - several pages were just not working on my the dns that was provided by my ISP... opendns works great.
 
MarcheurDeCiel said:
Just went to their site to read about it. Looks very cool. Thanks for the tip!
Click to expand...

Instead of OpenDNS I'd recommend you use the public resolvers:

4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6

OpenDNS not only blast you with ads and "sponsored search results" when you try to visit a non-existent site, they also intercept and alter DNS results (ostensibly in the name of safety.) Given that they're not any faster than the 4.2.2.1-4.2.2.6 servers, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to use them...
 
ppc750fx said:
Instead of OpenDNS I'd recommend you use the public resolvers:

4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6

OpenDNS not only blast you with ads and "sponsored search results" when you try to visit a non-existent site, they also intercept and alter DNS results (ostensibly in the name of safety.) Given that they're not any faster than the 4.2.2.1-4.2.2.6 servers, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to use them...
Click to expand...

Interesting. What are public resolvers?
 
i've never had a problem with OpenDNS before... and the reason i changed is because some of my own sites were not showing up on my ISPs DNS, even after weeks. at least it's a quick alternative.
 
MarcheurDeCiel said:
Interesting. What are public resolvers?
Click to expand...

DNS servers that recursively respond to queries from any host.

Basically, DNS servers that anyone can use.

The ones that I posted are multicast, so they're extremely low latency for most people, and unlike OpenDNS they don't infringe on your privacy or attempt to inject ads into your browsing session.
 
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