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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Internet Connection

verylongtime - Aug 28, 2005 - 12:38 am

I running OS 10.4.2 (Tiger) on a new G5 iMac. My internet connections over a standard telephone connection (56K internal modem) are sloooooowwwwww, i.e. 0.1 to 0.3 kps.

Is there anything I can do to speed things up? There seems to be a blackout on this topic, so send whatever advice you have.

P.S. My cables are fine, the provider is okay, etc., etc. Apple even replaced my modem. E-mail it better than wheh I started, browser downloads continue to be very slow.

verylongtime

MacIT - Aug 30, 2005 - 5:15 pm

Roland,

OK, that does seem slow. When you make a connection what speed does it say you connect at? You can find this out by opening an application called "Internet Connect." It can foudn in your application folder, of if the little telephone icon is in your menu bar it can be started from there.

For at 56k modem i would expect is to be in the 40's, although it is possible to be in the high 30's, depending on phone line, ISP and modem.

OK, next question. If you were to web browse to www.yahoo.com, www.msn.com and www.google.com how quickly do those websites appear. I alwasy recommend them because they are designed to have a lot of bandwidth on their end, so if they are slow it's a sign of problems on your end.

So this can help us limit our problems but what i'd really like to do is see if we can take your phoneline out of the equation.

Can you take your computer to a friends house and test it out? If it's fast there then you have a serious complaint you can send to your phone company.

The last thing i will say is Apple modems seem very seceptible to bad phonelines. I had my Windows machine consitently able to connect at a higher speed then my Apple iBook, both machines had 56K modems. The phone line i know was bad, (could sometimes here static when talking to people).

Hopefully this can get you started, let me know if i can be of more help.

Terry

verylongtime - Aug 31, 2005 - 12:15 am

My download speeds are 0.1 to 0.3 kb/s. My old teal iMac downloads >3.0kb/s on the same telephone line. Google does load a lot faster, but slower than on my old system. If I disconnent and connect again things usually get better. It's as if the connection has to be reenforced.

I monitor traffic with MenuMeters. Traffic is in spurts with long dead times in between. The CPU is constantly working as if it is processing something.

I will try different a phone line.

By the way, the new Safari update (2.0.1) doesn't run any better as far as speed is concerned.

Thanks for the feedback. Either most people are not having this problem or just don't want to talk about it. Even Apple doesn't seem to know what's going on.

verylongtime

MacIT - Aug 31, 2005 - 7:16 am

That does sound like a modem problem, so i could see why Apple swapped it out.

If you open up activity viewer when you are connected, does it say which process is taking up so much of the processing... some of the more geekly sites might identify the problem by the actual process.

You might also want to look to see how the process changes when email or safari are running.

No chance i could convince you to go DSL or cable?

Terry

verylongtime - Sep 1, 2005 - 10:47 am

Re: DSL or cable.

Of course you can. There seem to be plenty of fixes for both. I live in an area where Comcast has a lock on everything. I don't have to access to DSL (unbelievable, but true) and don't want to pay $49.95 per month for cable. I don't download files large enough and often enough to justify the additional cost (+$38.00/mo.). Fortunately my e-mail (Entourage) is working well as long as I don't get large attachments. I use POPmonitor to screen out the big ones I know I don't want.

I'll probably start hounding Apple as to why their new modems are worse than their old one.

verylongtime