Slow Web Page Loading in Safari & Firefox

well....your not alone. before i had 6 mb down and 768 kb up for internet. pages always loaded quick then i ended up moving and getting a higher speed connection for my gaming. 18 mb down and 1.5 mb up. now i have trouble browsing with safari. it started to act up between now and march 9th. i since then d/led firefox, although a little faster. i am not impressed with it. i thought it was my connection speed so i went to speedtests. net to see if i wasnt getting that connection. it said i was doing fine 17 mb down nd 1.4 mb up. i think it might have to do with one or the other. by chance who is your internet provider?

Before this problem began, a web page would usually take an average of about 15-20 seconds to load

I would call that slow! 1-5 seconds should be the maximum.

The following usually works on both Tiger and Leopard:

(First, if yours is an Intel Mac, check that Safari is not running in Rosetta, which is enough to slow it to a crawl.)

Adding DNS codes to your Network Settings, should gives good results in terms of speed-up:

Open System Preferences/Network. Double click on your connection type, or select it in the drop-down menu. Click on TCP/IP and in the box marked 'DNS Servers' enter the following two numbers:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

(An explanation of why that is both safe and a good idea can be read here: http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/opendsn-what-is-opendns-why-required-2/2587 / )

Whilst in System Preferences/Network you should also turn off 'IPv6' in your preference pane, as otherwise you may not get the full speed benefit (the DNS resolver will default to making SRV queries). If you want to know what IPv6 is:

This is Apple's guidance on iPv6:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8708.html

Click on Apply Now and close the window.

Restart Safari, and repair permissions.

If that didn't do it, then try this as well:

Empty Safari's cache (from the Safari menu), then close Safari.

Go to Home/Library/Safari and delete the following files:

form values
download.plist

Then go to Home/Library/Preferences and delete

com.apple.Safari.plist

Repair permissions (in Disk Utility).

Start up Safari again, and things should have improved.

ok i have done everything that everyone has metioned. clear cashe, disable eye candy, added new dns servers, checked for trojans, reset safari ran speed test at speedtest.net URL=http://www.speedtest.netIMGhttp://www.speedtest.net/result/437135541.png[/IMG][/URL] 19 mb down and 1.4 mb up. i have been searching for a week now and have done EVERYTHING mentioned. Maybe they need an update for safari 4....but i uninstalled 4 and went back to 3. samething is happening. pages loading extremely slow. what took 8 secs before now takes over a minute to load. weather.com animation map. even regular pages like google search used to load in 3 secs. now it takes 25 sec. any other suggestions greatly appreciated.

Have you tried an old fashioned power down and power up of the router? 🙂

of course. thats the first thing i did cause before i had to power down and back up a couple times after safari 2 was installed. but thanks for info. little details like that can easily be overlooked.

FWIW I have what sounds like the same problem with a recently purchased mac mini. For a while (hours to day) pages load normally, then pages begin to partially load then hang for 20-60 seconds before finishing. Speed tests (via 2Wire) show that the DSL connection is fine, as also shown by my numerous Window's-based PC's that have no problem. Same experience with Firefox. A restart of the system clears the problem for a while. System has also hung on two occassions and my airport adapter is prone to the "connection timeout" problem menioned elsewhere. Talk about a bad initial user experience for someone new to Mac. My PC is more reliable!

Thanks so much. My Safari is at lightning speed now.

well i had the same problems before so i did everything everyone suggested and also uninstalled beta 4 for safari, then i checked my internet provider on some support issues. it just turns out that they updated their dns servers. i then entered in the new numbers and hit apply. that instantly changed how fast everything was. before i was loading a web page that took 1 and a half mins. to load before. i went to speedtest.net to check to make sure i was getting the speed i had ordered. according to the site my d/l speed and u/l speed checked out. 18 mbps down and 1.5 mbps up. then after the updated dns server #'s were entered, that page that took 1 and a half mins. to load now takes 3 secs. it was an animated map for weather.com in motion. i now am going to currently update to safari 4 beta and see if everything still works fine. i will keep people updated.well i updated to safari 4 and everything is in working order. so the problem was having the wrong dsn server #'s

I am having similar problems, sometimes taking 20 seconds to load a secure page from a site like ups.com. I am running OS X 10.4.11 and Safari 3.2.1. I followed Klaus1's steps; it has not improved. I also called my broadband provider Verizon FIOS and got their DNS server numbers and plugged them in. No change. Downloaded Apple Broadband Tuner, no change. This was not an issue up until about a month ago, seems like after the last security update, all of this started happening.

We replaced the router but I am confident that is not the issue, speed is 2512.3 kbps.

Plugged in my other OS 10.5.6 and Safari 3.2.1, not any better. So I am stumped. Thanks to all for their continuing help...

Interesting. Hope that turns out to be the solution for you.

However in my case the problem is intermittent and begins in the middle of normal use, the problem is also not seen on my other PC's which obtain and use the same DNS addresses. Still smells like a Mac OS defect to me.

what did you use to check for trojans? thanks

Jeff

+Start up Safari again, and things should have improved.+

With all due respect, things have not improved. There are obviously dozens of users here who have reported the same general issue: something has happened to slow down Safari 3.2.1 for Mac as well as Firefox, and it has nothing to do with DNS servers, etc. etc. I, along with many users here have followed every suggestion step by step. While very much appreciated, it is not working to resolve the issue: ALL of these browsers worked extremely fast at one time and have recently slowed dow. I for one believe it has something to do with recent Security updates. I hope Apple is looking into the problem.

I had a similar problem last year and I ended up doing an archive and install to correct the problem. Calls to AppleCare didn't help. Actually, they were the ones that suggested I reinstall the system, which seems to be their solution when they don't know what the problem is. Currently, my sister is having the problem with her computer which is why I'm in the discussion groups looking for a resolve.

I know that adding the DNS numbers didn't help with the problem and I recall that hitting the "Renew DHCP Lease" made the pages come in fast and proper for a short time. I was using that button on a regular basis until I gave up looking for a solution other than doing the archive and install, which by the way works pretty good but I'm not sure if that feature is available with the install disks that come with the computer. If I hear of a solution I will post it.