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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Slow/nonexistent Internet Connection With Apple Extreme Base Station

Albo - May 2, 2005 - 3:42 pm

Hello. I was running a powermac g5 1.6 with a d-link wireless router (DI-624) and cable modem under Panther (10.3.9) and everything was working fine. I installed Tiger (I did an upgrade--stupid me!) and the wireless router would no longer work. (The g5 was not getting an IP address from the router and was using a self-assigned "169" address.) I reset it, redid the installation, but it wouldn't work. I went out and bought an Airport Extreme Base Station and set it up through the setup assistant. Network status says I have an internet connection and network diagnostics says there's nothing wrong. (The IP addresses seemed normal to me.) However, when I try to connect to the internet, sites will load VERY slowly or not at all. Both the ethernet and wireless connections are the same (I have an Airport Extreme card installed on the g5 as well). Everything works fine if I plug the g5 directly into the cable modem. I called Apple and Comcast but they couldn't help me, both saying it should work.

I've tried everything I could think of: power cycling, changing ethernet cables, reinstalling over and over, changing setting in Airport Admin, unplugging peripherals, etc. I also set up the base station with my laptop (running Panther) and that didn't work either. I put on a clean install of Tiger and the same thing happened. All wireless clients are affected in the same manner.

Although this happened after installing Tiger, I'm not entirely sure it's a Tiger problem. (I previously had trouble installing the d-link router under Panther but a firmware upgrade fixed the problem. [I have the latest firmware now, so that won't work.] I also tried an Airport Express once under Panther and had a similar slow internet problem. I just ended up getting rid of it.) I know, I suppose I can downgrade to Panther, but I already shelled out the money and made the switch, so I'd prefer not to do that. (And like I said, that's not a 100% sure solution any way.) Thanks in advance.

ericl - May 3, 2005 - 1:09 pm

Hi Albert. Iv'e got a couple of easy & cheap ideas.

I suggest you try a different Ethernet Patch cable. There are different "catagories" of these cables. You want to use catagory 5E (E is for enhanced).
Make sure the cable is over 4 feet long. Make sure it is a Patch, and not a Crossover cable.

It sounds like a typical autonegotiation problem; your computer's network interface and your router or Base Station cannot agree on what speed and mode to do ethernet communications. This problem is so common it's silly. A complication is that we can set speed and mode using advanced configuration on the Mac side, but in general you need what is known as a "Managed Switch' to be able to alter your router/switch device

You could help confirm this as THE cause by running the following command both before and after the cable swap:

(1) Open a terminal window FINDER/UTILITIES/terminal
This will put you at the UNIX command prompt

(2) Enter:
netstat -i

Be sure to cut & paste the output into any reply back to me

Good luck
Eric Lilleness



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Albo - May 4, 2005 - 2:18 am

Hi eric. i appreciate your thoughtful response. here's what i've done so far. i replaced the two ethernet cables (the one from the computer to the base station and from the base station to the cable modem) with 14' 5e patch cables. the problem persists, however, with no noticeable change in performance. here is the before (on top) and after for the "netstat -i" on the terminal:

before cable switch:

name mtu network address ipkts ierrs opkts oerrs coll
lo0 16384 13146 0 13146 0 0
lo0 16384 localhost ::1 13146 - 13146 - -
lo0 16384 localhost fe80::1 13146 - 13146 - -
lo0 16384 127 localhost 13146 - 13146 - -
gif0* 1280 0 0 0 0 0
stf0* 1280 0 0 0 0 0
en0 1500 00:0a:95:96:3f:fe 936243 0 14325 0 0
en0 1500 albert-krat fe80::20a:95ff:fe 936243 - 14325 - -
en0 1500 192.168.1 192.168.1.2 936243 - 14325 - -
en1 1500 00:0d:93:7d:2c:70 0 0 0 0 0
fw0 4078 00:0a:95:ff:fe:96:3f:fe 0 0 0 0 0

after cable switch:

name mtu network address ipkts ierrs opkts oerrs coll
lo0 16384 14689 0 14689 0 0
lo0 16384 localhost ::1 14689 - 14689 - -
lo0 16384 localhost fe80::1 14689 - 14689 - -
lo0 16384 127 localhost 14689 - 14689 - -
gif0* 1280 0 0 0 0 0
stf0* 1280 0 0 0 0 0
en0 1500 00:0a:95:96:3f:fe 936786 0 14638 0 0
en0 1500 albert-krat fe80::20a:95ff:fe 936786 - 14638 - -
en0 1500 192.168.1 192.168.1.2 936786 - 14638 - -
en1 1500 00:0d:93:7d:2c:70 31 0 40 0 0
fw0 4078 00:0a:95:ff:fe:96:3f:fe 0 0 0 0 0

i'm sorry it's hard to read. this reply window is not very wide. i hope you can make some sense of it. thanks again for your help.

albert

Albo - May 4, 2005 - 3:03 am

Hi Eric. Here is an update. I tried configuring my D-Link wireless router with my powerbook g4/400 running Panther (10.3.8). It works flawlessly. I get fast internet connection both through ethernet and wireless. I have an airport extreme card installed on my g5, so I thought I would try to connect wirelessly. When I turned on the airport on the g5, however, it not only did not work, but it prevented my powerbook from getting online. The D-Link began resetting itself every few seconds and became completely worthless. When I turned the g5 airport off, i.e., the D-Link had no connection to the g5, it worked fine again. I tried the same thing with an ethernet connection and the same thing happened. (When I connected the g5, the D-Link began to reset itself and stopped when I disconnected.) I hope this info is useful. Thanks.

Albo - May 4, 2005 - 3:33 am

Here's another update. I tried setting up the apple extreme base station on my laptop. It worked, but the connection (both ethernet and wireless) was pretty slow (especially compared to the d-link), but not as slow/nonexistent as on my g5. My g5 was able to connect wirelessly to the base station, but it was intolerably slow. Same when I hooked the g5 up to the base station with an ethernet cable. It was much slower than on my powerbook!

ericl - May 5, 2005 - 2:01 pm

Hi Albert, thanks for all your hard work.

The netstat info you sent me does not indicate a speed/duplex mismatch setting. Your cabling sounds good as well.

At this point it sounds like your issues do not have anything to do with what is under your control, but sound like valid issues that Apple Computer needs to deal with. Apple does not make things like bug reports available to the public.

I suggest you contact Apple.

Eric Lilleness


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Albo - May 5, 2005 - 3:19 pm

Thanks for trying, Eric. I'm glad to know it wasn't anything I was doing. Take care.

ericl - May 6, 2005 - 10:58 am

Hey - thought of one more thing:

open system preferences
choose network
choose configure
choose ethernet
choose configure: maunually (advanced)

Now, on 10.3.8 the defaults are set to:

Speed: autoselect
Duplex:

Check this out. If not set to this go ahead & set it to this

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