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Satoru Murata

Q: Slow Wireless LAN in Leopard

All right, I've spent the past 12 hours (on and off, of course) looking through all the threads in here, doing a lot of experimentation, and a bunch of clean installs and whatnots, and I've decided to start a new thread, since in many of the said threads, some people seemed to have similar issues, but the other issues in the same threads seem to be different problems, and it just becomes confusing when you try to trouble shoot something and people are talking about different problems.


So, this thread is specifically for people who satisfy these criteria under Leopard:

1) You're having issues with very slow file transfers in your *local network* when at least one end is connected wirelessly; that is to say, when both ends are connected to the router via ethernet, you see no problem at all.

2) Your wireless connection doesn't display problems when connecting to the internet.

3) It is not specifically an 802.11n issue; i.e., the problem can be duplicated when in Mixed b/g only mode and/or using an 802.11g router.

4) It's not a router connection issue; i.e., your wireless connection isn't being dropped, and you are able to find your AP and connect to it without any problems.




So basically, that more or less sums up my problem. My equipments:

MacBook Core2Duo 2.2GHz, 802.11b/g/n, OSX 10.5.2
iMac Core2Duo 2.13GHz, 802.11b/g/n, OSX 10.5.2
Router 1: TRENDnet TEW-631BRP (Draft N router), H/W V3.0R, FW v.1.0.3.7
Router 2: NETGEAR WGR614 v.5 (g), FW v.1.0.3_1.0.3

Internet: RCN Cable, 20Mbps/2Mbps


In my usual setup, the iMac is connected via Ethernet and the Macbook is connected wirelessly.


I know that this is a Leopard problem, but I'm not so sure it's a 10.5.2 specific problem. Let me explain.

I'd been using the TRENDnet more or less happily for the last couple of months. My iMac and Macbook have been in sync in terms of Leopard versions, so I know things were OK till last night when I first noticed problems. Transferring a large video file from the iMac to the Macbook would start off fine, then really slow down, and finally almost completely halt. Naturally, I blamed 10.5.2.


After trying all the different "fixes" in the Leopard/network related threads with no avail, I tried booting my laptop into Tiger (10.4.11) installed on an external HDD. Voila, wireless file transfer speed is fast at around 8MB/sec (obviously using N). I did a fresh install of 10.5, and the speed immediately dropped down to 1-2MB/sec, although not necessarily stalling. Then, updating to 10.5.2 slowed it down more, and now the transfers will sooner or later almost completely stall.


Again, I tried all the suggested remedies (use b/g Only mode, adjust RTS/Fragmentation thresholds, use WEP instead of WPA, delete all the Network Services in System Preferences -> Network, etc., etc.). Nothing helps. I tried swapping the router to an older Netgear (802.11g/b), and it's the same deal, so it's not a router issue.


A definite characteristic is that the transfer seems to stall after a certain period of sustained transferring; i.e., this will usually only happen when transferring large files (>200MB). If I were to download a folder with 600 JPEG files @ 1MB each, there won't be a problem, and the transfer rate will be pretty fast (although not as fast as under Tiger @ 7-8MB/sec), and it won't stall. It's only when I try to transfer big video files, etc., that this problem occurs.



If you are having similar issues, please share your experiences, suggest remedies, offer insights. I will try to answer any question you may have and that I may have missed to address.


PLEASE: if your symptoms are different from what's listed up there, please try to refrain from posting here, unless you are absolutely certain that the issues are related. Thanks.

iMac 20" Core2Duo 2.13Ghz/ MacBook 2.2 GHz Superdrive (White), Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Feb 14, 2008 12:39 AM

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Q: Slow Wireless LAN in Leopard

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  • by farlow,

    farlow farlow Mar 24, 2008 6:25 PM in response to Satoru Murata
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 24, 2008 6:25 PM in response to Satoru Murata
    Same issue.
    Confirmed with 10.5.2 - both fresh and upgraded/updated (through today) installs.
    Multiple wireless laptops (MBPs & MBs) have slowdowns when connected to a wired Leopard (Server or standard install) server.
    When the server connects to the wireless laptops there is no slowdown.
    Occurs with AFP, not FTP.
    Usually occurs with larger files, though has also occurred with files as small as 90mb.

    Frustrating
  • by Bjoure,

    Bjoure Bjoure Mar 24, 2008 8:32 PM in response to Satoru Murata
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 24, 2008 8:32 PM in response to Satoru Murata
    I don't know the situation I encountered today counts as the same problem here, and I hope someone can tell me:

    My macbook and another windows laptop are connected via a wireless router. I see the windows machine in finder's sidebar -- then I decided to transfer a 4.3GB file wireless to that computer. I dragged & dropped the file into the "SharedDocs" folder, and the transfer took place. The speed is unexpected slow -- my macbook estimated it'd take about an hour to transfer the 4.3GB video file.

    There's little or no activity on my wireless router at the mean time, so I don't think it's because the router being too busy.

    I am using Leopard 10.5.2 and the windows version is SP2 with the latest hotfixs.
  • by Bjoure,

    Bjoure Bjoure Mar 24, 2008 9:26 PM in response to Bjoure
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 24, 2008 9:26 PM in response to Bjoure
    Hmm.... I just read some previous posts and downloaded the "TM and airport update 1.0" -- still, a 4.3GB file took estimated an hour to transfer via wireless router. And somehow I sensed the actual speed is SLOWER.

    I haven't tried to boot into safe mode or clear PRAM yet -- these methods just sound intimidating to me.

    P.S. Since many network-savvy people look at this post, I have another little question about networking on mac. Usually I see other computers in the "shared" place in finder. But somehow I can't see a machine as soon as it powers on -- sometimes even after 5 or 10 mins until I see it. Sometimes other computers just appear immediately without issue.

    Mac has made networking so simple I don't even know where should I go to configure this. Any thought?

    Message was edited by: Bjoure
  • by overclockedmind,

    overclockedmind overclockedmind Mar 26, 2008 9:25 AM in response to Satoru Murata
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 26, 2008 9:25 AM in response to Satoru Murata
    An update to my situation: removed the older drivers, as the issue still existed, and went for the drivers in the Airport and Time Machine Update. Big surprise, same issue.

    Not too many people have listed what router they are using; I think this might be good to do. Personally, I have a Linksys WRT54G, and have noticed from Googling that I am not the only one with Airport troubles and this router.

    Sigh.. networking is a critical aspect of work for me, and right now my 850MHz PIII Latitude C600 (value, maybe $100?) blows away my brand new MacBook for network performance. I'm waiting to have that "just works" experience, havent had it yet...

    -- Joshua

    Message was edited by: overclockedmind
  • by ibosie,

    ibosie ibosie Mar 26, 2008 9:38 AM in response to overclockedmind
    Level 4 (1,119 points)
    Mar 26, 2008 9:38 AM in response to overclockedmind
    I use an Apple Base Station 802.11n for router. Even though the latest 7.3.1 firmware hugely improved performance, actual wireless is still too slow for my needs. I decided to eliminate wireless for everything other than simple internet access. Have a look at the Ethernet Home Plugs - mines a nice steady 50Mbps throughout the house now.

    http://www.devolo.co.uk
  • by overclockedmind,

    overclockedmind overclockedmind Mar 26, 2008 10:08 AM in response to ibosie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 26, 2008 10:08 AM in response to ibosie
    I'm seriously considering something like this, too. The major problem with that is, I often work in a shed-now-workshop-office, and it may be on a different phase/completely incompatible with HomePlugAV and the like.

    And no, the issues arent caused by just being out there I'm in the same room as the router, right now and have the same issue. Plus the router has upgraded antennas and I can get full 54Mbps signal there.

    I'm going to try changing channel, encryption, et cetera; then, I'm going to blow away the memory on the router and try setting it all up from scratch.

    But while I am here, I thought I would also do this: WRT54G, as stated, Tomato v1.17, no MAC filtering, Channel 11, WPA w/TKIP & AES, SSID broadcast on. Issue was still present with frame burst off, afterburner off, long preamble, RTS CTS etc at defaults, and at 2304.

    -- Joshua
  • by ibosie,

    ibosie ibosie Mar 26, 2008 10:22 AM in response to overclockedmind
    Level 4 (1,119 points)
    Mar 26, 2008 10:22 AM in response to overclockedmind
    True the home plugs need to be on the same ring main (electricity circuit) to find each other but you can run an extension cable (say to the shed) and it works fine. Getting rid of my reliance on wireless has been an absolute god send. 802.11n? Pah, rubbish. The base station makes a nice Gigabit Ethernet router though:

    http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6878919#6878919
  • by overclockedmind,

    overclockedmind overclockedmind Mar 27, 2008 2:17 PM in response to ibosie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 27, 2008 2:17 PM in response to ibosie
    Just read that thread you linked to... ouch.

    I've tried b/g Mixed and g only on my router, no change.

    Found this Googling myself senseless:
    http://www.stuartcheshire.org/papers/NagleDelayedAck/

    Seems to make a lot of sense in relation to the issues... considering I've tried so many different driver revisions... but surely it would also manifest itself in Gigabit as in the example? So I dunno.

    I've often thought of Cat6-ing the whole house, perhaps starting with just the rooms where access makes most sense. But I'm heavily researching homeplug.

    Lovely to make concessions for a brand new machine... but oh well.

    -- Joshua
  • by ibosie,

    ibosie ibosie Mar 27, 2008 2:26 PM in response to overclockedmind
    Level 4 (1,119 points)
    Mar 27, 2008 2:26 PM in response to overclockedmind
    Hi,

    Setting delayed_ack to zero had no effect on my network. Still, i'm not worried now, the plugs removed a major headache and I'm pleased with that result.
  • by Ted Durant,

    Ted Durant Ted Durant Mar 31, 2008 7:20 PM in response to Satoru Murata
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 31, 2008 7:20 PM in response to Satoru Murata
    I have had exactly the same problem on my network, and I have not yet "upgraded" to 10.5. In my case, I have my iMac connected directly via cable to my Airport Extreme N, which has a LaCie 500GB disk attached to it. Performance copying files to the disk is abysmal, and I noticed the stall at around 230MB.

    I've tried the ack no wait trick and changing the MTU, neither of which made a bit of difference. In playing around with different folders and files to copy, I've discovered that the issue only crops up with bundles. For example, one of the folders I tried copying was my Apple Works v6 application folder. As soon as it gets into the AppleWorks 6.app file, it slows to a crawl as it tries to copy each file within the bundle. If I archive the folder into a zip file it copies to the AirDisk in a few seconds. Then if I try to unzip the archive on the AirDisk, well, I don't have the patience to wait it out. After 10 minutes I killed it.

    This reminded me why I stopped trying to use the AirDisk for backups in the first place. No backup software I tried could deal with Quicken files, which also are bundles.

    Pretty clear to me that the Airport OS is not handling bundles at all gracefully.
  • by overclockedmind,

    overclockedmind overclockedmind Apr 3, 2008 10:15 AM in response to Satoru Murata
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 3, 2008 10:15 AM in response to Satoru Murata
    After having watched this for a long time, I'm going to note that if I pop open AP Grapher (actually, I've been running it just about all the time) and watch the speed thats been negotiated (54/54 Mbps,) whenever I am having the issue, it drops all the way down to 1Mbps and stalls out, losing link and then re-establishing it.

    Could it be the problem is negotiating speed properly with the wireless router? Not that that provides a clear solution, but I'm throwing it out there for informational purposes.
  • by puck99,

    puck99 puck99 Apr 3, 2008 12:21 PM in response to overclockedmind
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Safari
    Apr 3, 2008 12:21 PM in response to overclockedmind
    you might be on to something there
  • by JOHN ALBERGO,

    JOHN ALBERGO JOHN ALBERGO Apr 3, 2008 2:21 PM in response to overclockedmind
    Level 2 (239 points)
    Apr 3, 2008 2:21 PM in response to overclockedmind
    overclockedmind wrote:
    After having watched this for a long time, I'm going to note that if I pop open AP Grapher (actually, I've been running it just about all the time) and watch the speed thats been negotiated (54/54 Mbps,) whenever I am having the issue, it drops all the way down to 1Mbps and stalls out, losing link and then re-establishing it.

    Could it be the problem is negotiating speed properly with the wireless router? Not that that provides a clear solution, but I'm throwing it out there for informational purposes.


    Sounds like a separate problem. I did considerable monitoring with AP Grapher and other utilities when I was examining my slowdown. I never saw any correlation with signal quality or link speed. My problem was tied to delayed_ack and completely repeatable. I've left the startup item in place and haven't retried things after the last few rounds of updates. Sort of waiting for someone to declare uniquivocally that it's fixed and we know what was wrong and what fixed it. sigh, wishful thinking?
  • by overclockedmind,

    overclockedmind overclockedmind Apr 3, 2008 2:52 PM in response to JOHN ALBERGO
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 3, 2008 2:52 PM in response to JOHN ALBERGO
    It could be a seperate issue, but I'm torn: I can just as easily start up a new thread, but everyone seems to be doing that, with their specific issue, and either a ton of responses, or no responses because they were too specific.

    I dont mean to go against the spirit of this thread; initially my symptoms lined up with the OP's description...

    Really though, if you added up all of us that are having AirPort trouble, and we werent all in seperate threads, thatd really give a clear idea to Apple that AirPorts in big need of help, ya know?

    I may do both and move to my new thread... I'll think it over for a bit I guess.

    -- Joshua
  • by overclockedmind,

    overclockedmind overclockedmind Apr 9, 2008 8:37 AM in response to Satoru Murata
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 9, 2008 8:37 AM in response to Satoru Murata
    It was mentioned earlier in the thread that it would be beneficial for someone to post the results of an iperf test on a machine exhibiting the issue. I would have done this sooner, but it's hard to a) catch it, as it's intermittent, and b) drop everything and run nothing but the test.

    But here are my results while the issue is present. Of merit is the time window of 0-60 seconds, where the issue is occurring, *and throughput drops to 36Kbit/sec;* as you can see, on my 802.11g network, transfer speed is generally around 29Mbit/sec.


    ---


    bash-3.2# ./iperf -i 60 -t 600 -c 10.0.0.2 -p 5000
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    Client connecting to 10.0.0.2, TCP port 5000
    TCP window size: 128 KByte (default)
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    [ 3] local 10.0.0.6 port 49330 connected with 10.0.0.2 port 5000
    [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
    [ 3] 0.0-60.0 sec 264 KBytes 36.0 Kbits/sec
    [ 3] 60.0-120.0 sec 171 MBytes 24.0 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 120.0-180.0 sec 207 MBytes 28.9 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 180.0-240.0 sec 208 MBytes 29.1 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 240.0-300.0 sec 208 MBytes 29.0 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 300.0-360.0 sec 208 MBytes 29.0 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 360.0-420.0 sec 208 MBytes 29.0 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 420.0-480.0 sec 208 MBytes 29.1 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 480.0-540.0 sec 208 MBytes 29.1 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 540.0-600.0 sec 207 MBytes 29.0 Mbits/sec
    [ 3] 0.0-600.0 sec 1.79 GBytes 25.6 Mbits/sec


    ---

    - Joshua
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