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10.5.6 causing terribly slow Internet access

I have of course been searching on this for a while now, a few weeks, but every result is usually some conclusion about DNS issues, which I find tough to believe is the cause for two reason.

1) I have wiped clean my iMac and reinstalled everything fresh, no restored data and everything was as quick as it had ever been up to 10.5.5, installing 10.5.6 either by 5.5>5.6 patch or the entire combo update has caused many internet enabled applications to take a painfully long time to load information.

2) One of my friends supporting a university Mac OS (etc) network has said that this same issue has been reported on about 190 of his machines.

My DNS is cached locally on the router and is used by my PS3, 360, iPod Touch, PSP, DS, Windows XP machine & iBook (10.3.x), the only two devices with any problems at all are the two 2008/iMacs and only when they run 10.5.6.

So, getting that out of the way has anyone got any news about this? Has anyone found a solution that does not lay blame entirely on the DNS server?

The two prime examples would probably best be Safari 3 had gone from loading pages with ease to the connecting phase for several seconds to upwards of a minute before a page even starts to load, on other occasions loading about 70% of a page and the last 30 taking a good while to complete. This is also true of Safari 4 beta.

I use dashboard a lot, I use the weather widgets every morning before I go to work and under 10.5.5 or below the access time was from immediate to 2 seconds maximum. I am now waiting 20 seconds or double every time I load DB up to check.

There were other examples but I fear this is long enough as it is. Any information would be appreciated as I finally caved in and updated my girlfriends iMac because I was not happy leaving it on old security updates for so long. She is not at all pleased.


We have two times:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00
SMC Version: 1.29f1

Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 26, 2009 1:54 PM

Reply
90 replies

Feb 28, 2009 7:09 PM in response to James Snook

I am having the same issues. I updated to 10.5.6 this week and ever since my internet access has been HORRIBLY slow. If I turn the Airport off and then turn it back on, things are better for about 5-10 minutes, but then back to the slowdown.

(I've tried replacing the DNS but that did no good)


help!

My other (PC's) don't have this issue.

iMac (intel), Leopard 10.5.6, Airport Extreme base station, Comcast cable

Mar 3, 2009 6:36 AM in response to unclemiltie

This situation has not improved! I really do not believe no one else has had any problems, I can find too many examples across the internet, let alone my own friends who have this issue.

One of the things I dislike about Apple isthe refusal give information on things like this, similar to Airport still causing a whole lot of people to not be able to auto connect to WPA2 networks post sleep; I have to wonder if they expect to ignore it to the point people forgot what performance they had previously. But that is me being angry. Even saying "We're working on it" is helpful.

No news on 10.5.7? No reason for the obscenely degraded internet performance? It is not the users DNS server.

Mar 3, 2009 6:52 AM in response to James Snook

I have the same issue with Safari AND Firefox. I am getting a spinning beachball as I type this.

I have disabled the automatic form fill, and most of the bells and whistles from my browsers.

My activity monitor is showing Disk activity data being written at 1.2Mb/sec even though Safari is the only app running.

While downloading Safari 4 beta from Apple, the download froze and beachballed.

Mar 3, 2009 6:58 AM in response to hydralucent

It is possible this is not the same topic, though I hope you find a solution.

This topic is based on 10.5.6 update specifically causing generic Internet access problems for multiple applications. None of the symptoms (I have found) in this specific topic relate to application's directly, such as locking or unusual disk access.

Sorry, probably will not find the fix you need under this one.

Mar 3, 2009 7:13 AM in response to hydralucent

hydralucent wrote:
I have the same issue with Safari AND Firefox. I am getting a spinning beachball as I type this.


A spinning beachball means the system is busy, and denotes a completely different root cause than the other queries here about "slow Internet access."

Most often a spinning beachball will be due to a background process using lots of resources.

If things are being written to disk at 1.2 Mb/sec, that's the problem right there - something is scribbling to the disk and you need to find out who and why.

Do you notice a lot of messages in your /var/log/system.log file?

As far as other folks with complaints, try the OpenDNS DNS servers first.

For various reasons, many ISPs' DNS servers are neither fast nor have they kept up with recent Internet standards changes.

Mac OS X Leopard uses those changes as do newer versions of Windows, many of whose users experience similar slowdowns that are also corrected by switching to OpenDNS' servers for DNS service.

Mar 3, 2009 7:57 AM in response to Dogcow-Moof

Thanks for adding to the topic, William, but as I said I have 9 devices in this house all using a LOCAL DNS point on my router (although possibly it only acts as a gateway to the ISP one, this I am not certain on) and of them only 2 devices have any issues at all. Both iMacs, both when 10.5.6 is applied. 10.5.5 is perfectly ok. As is Windows XP (and 7 beta) and a 10.3.x system.

As I said, the chances of it being DNS seem incredibly unrealistic. But since I would be foolish to ignore any option, do you happen to have this list somewhere? For the record, if Apple managed to break the normal operation of DNS with an update, I think they need to un-break it fast. Because the average user does not even know what DNS is.

Mar 3, 2009 8:13 AM in response to James Snook

Most people having similar DNS issues with Windows are running Vista or beta versions of Windows 7.

Apple did not break anything; instead earlier versions of Leopard started using DNS records that were added to the standard over eight years ago but that many ISP's DNS servers still don't support. (There's no additional revenue to be made in upgrading one's DNS servers, so most ISPs don't.)

Apple also fixed that in Mac OS X 10.5.3, but some Apple applications do still make DNS SRV queries, one of the causes of the apparent "delays" in web browsing when interacting with some ISPs' DNS servers.

(Also be sure to turn off "IPv6" in your network preference pane, or the DNS resolver will default to making SRV queries.)

That's why changing to use OpenDNS' DNS servers is a great test of where the problem actually lies.

To try using OpenDNS, follow the instructions (on the first page only) here, except in step 3 select the interface you are actually using, not "Built In Ethernet."

There's no need to click on the "Continue to Step 2" button at the bottom of the OpenDNS page.

You can read a bit more about the root causes of this issue, if you're interested, here.

Mar 3, 2009 8:24 AM in response to Dogcow-Moof

I am indeed interested, I will get back in here after having a read.

I'm still unsold on two things though. If I can have Windows 7 beta run without issue on the same DHCP W/LAN in my house, would this not again point to 10.5.6 specifically causing the trouble?

No matter what the cause 10.5.5 and below still work, after the .5.6 patch it all starts to choke up. Even if it is the ISP it is leaving many Apple users with machines that now do not work as the did before updating. Most of them will never solve this.

I formatted my machine and clean installed, sat on 10.5.5 for a while and happily used it again, all slow connections vanquished. I of course could not sit on that forever, there were updates worth applying that demanded 10.5.6. And again, I am back into the misery!

Mar 3, 2009 8:41 PM in response to Dogcow-Moof

William

this certainly is not my issue. I've changed the DNS servers on my Airport (didn't seem to make a difference) and the Airport Extreme sends the DNS from there to me on my iMac.

Interesting enough, my MacBook Pro, also upgraded to 10.5.6 sitting right next to the imac, running through the same Airport has no issues.

For example, if I run the Activity monitor on the imac and go hit a web site and then look at the network traffic rate, I see something like 90 bytes per second throughput on the receive end.

If i do the same on the MBP I see something like 400Kb/sec throughput.

Something in the 10.5.6 upgrade screwed my iMac.

This is really driving me crazy. Maybe I should take it into the Apple store and see if the Genius guys can make it go?


-bill

PS. One difference between the two: The MBP started out as Leopard when it was purchased and I subsequently wiped it between jobs so that I could certify to my client that I had cleaned it. The iMac started out with I think Panther (maybe Tiger) and has been upgraded numerous times to get to 10.5.6. Other than the upgrade to 10.5.6 and the other Apple upgrades that I did that day, nothing else

Mar 4, 2009 6:04 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

The issue is it's not the iMac that is sluggish, things that run locally are just fine. The issue is that internet access is painfully slow.

Another thing that I mentioned earlier. If I turn the Airport off and then back on, things are ok for a while and then it goes to **** again. Almost to the point that it seems like I have some kind of memory leak or resource restriction that is reset by the Airport being reset.

Mar 5, 2009 8:38 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

Neville

I looked at the linked list and nothing there was really relevant other than clearing the DNS cache, but that didn't seem to work. (I'm a cable customer, I can't use a wire since it's in another room)

(and yes, I did change over to OpenDNS and that didn't seem to make any difference)

what's confusing is that everything was working good, I upgraded to 10.5.6 and then everything went down hill, FAST.

Mar 6, 2009 2:46 AM in response to unclemiltie

Have you unchecked fraudulent sites? This alone causes my browsers (especially Firefox 3 and Safari) to run very slowly. Perhaps try Camino.

I run long UTP (ethernet) cables under my floor and only expect visitors with laptops to use wireless. In the UK wireless is often slower than ADSL especially if the signal is weak.

During the past year web adverts have increased and many respond slowly. Depending upon the sites you access this can be the limiting factor which is why I block most with a hosts file.

Try manually running the 10.5.6 update again - many reported less than satisfactory updates the first time.

10.5.6 causing terribly slow Internet access

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