Slow wireless with Snow Leopard

Lot's of discussion forum on this topic but here is the short list...

1. Delete "-" Airport and Internet services in Network System Preferences and recreate "+".

2. Repair Permissions.

3. "Reset" Safari.

4. Reinstall SL 10.6.4 Combo by downloading it to your desktop and then run it from there.

5. WRT54g is very inefficient so I wouldn't use that as a benchmark.. even if you have dd-wrt installed as the firmware.

I am not suggesting you reinstall the O/S.. the 10.6.4 Combo "upgrade" is painless. If you originally upgraded from 10.6 with Software Update you may have received a corrupted update. The 10.6.4 gives you everything, it is not an incremental update.

I'm really amazed at the amount of users having the same problem..and across the board just the same solutions such as flush dns, delete system pref, repair permissions but it does not adress the problem...

I have 2 MBPs in the house, running Slow Leopard...no problem with the wireless since we moved in 1 year ago...and suddenly within the past month both of the MBPs are unable to connect while my Powerbook 17" and windows laptop wizz past the internet...

Are there any concrete solution?

Put me down as one of the affected users.

Brand new 15" MBP. Can't keep a signal. Especially bad when waking from sleep. Will usually require a reboot.

Changed channels on my TC from 1(auto) to 6. Not sure it made a difference.

I am having the same problem.
I installed all the updates and am having slowness problems with everything. Randomly in various applications, and especially in Mail and Firefox.

I had installed from my friend's family pack a year ago, I did not have any slow connectivity problem (or at least unnoticeable).

My OS crashed recently and I had to install it again. So I installed Leopard on it and updated it to 10.5.8.
Life was smooth until I bought the single instance snow leopard (v 10.6.3) and updated it with 10.6.4 combo.

The net connectivity has slowed down severely (both wired and wireless). Simple google takes either very long time to load or just does not load at all, I have to refresh the tab (sometimes more than once). I have a slow internet but this is simply unacceptable even with it.

I read in other posts where some users solved this with a new router, but I don't want to spend money on a trial and error solution. Moreover, my router is just an year old.
I am also wondering if there is any difference in fresh snow leopard installation and leopard->snow leopard upgrade.

Add one more to the list. Upgraded my wife's imac from Tiger to Snow Leopard 10.6.4 so she could use her new ipad. Now the network, which was fine, is extremely slow. Doesn't Apple ever get tired of doing this stuff to its customers!?! Even my wife made the comment that every time we upgrade anything on her computer, something breaks.

I had exactly the same problem after updating my mac to 10.6.4. I did the usual and trawled the net but could not find a decent fix. It became very very frustrating so in the end I rang apple and luckily I spoke to a technician who had exactly the same problem with his machine. He explained it doesn't effect every mac for reasons I wont go into here but in order to fix this problem 100% guaranteed, you need to do a reformat and a reinstall. This should be done periodically anyway to keep your machine running in tip top condition. I wasn't happy to have to do it but in the end I'm glad I did.
For those who have not done this before see instructions below.

1. Back up your disk with time machine to an external HD
2. Boot from installation disk (holding down C)
3. After choosing english language select utilities from menu bar and select disk utilities.
4. Select your mac hard drive, erase, and in security options select "zero out disk" and erase.
5. Reinstall operating system with installation disk, when done update to 10.6.4 assuming that was the system you had installed when you backed up.
6. Reboot again holding C with installation disk, select utilities then restore option, choose your time machine backup and away you go. FIXED!

It takes a while but you will probably spend just as much time hunting the net for fixes that just wont work and anyway you end up with a clean install that will probably fix other little bugs you were unaware of.

I am posting a solution that worked for me on this issue.

This was similar to an issue I had back with Leopard (10.5) and Entourage. Using Entourage with my Exchange Server, every time an OS update would come up, my connection was unstable and would routinely disconnect for no reason. I found a solution on one of the Mac Boards on the Internet (I do not remember which) that fixed the issue, and that same fix seems to work for this slow WiFi connection problem. This assumes you have the problem with your home WiFi, or the WiFi WAP (Wireless Access Point) you are having connection issues with. In my case I was using an Apple Airport Time Capsule Access Point.

I write these steps in the simplest terms possible to ensure even a novice can understand and follow.

1- Go to you Keychain Access (Applications -> Utilities -> Keychain Access)
2- Look for the name of your WiFi WAP/Server (It should say AirPort network password next to it)
3- Double Click and then click on Show Password on the Attributes window (May ask you to Authenticate yourself for access to the Password)
4- Write down the WAP Password (it may be case sensitive, so be exact)
5- Close Attributes window
6- Delete the entry with the name of the WiFi WAP name you selected on Step 2 above.
7- Close Key Chain Access window
8- Turn off your Airport on the menubar at the top of the screen (Airport Symbol -> Turn Airport Off)
9- Open System Preferences (Icon on your Dock) and then Click on the Network Icon
11- Click on the Airport entry and then on the Advanced button
12- Click on the Network Name of the WiFi/WAP you deleted in the Keychain Access (Step 6)
13- Click on the minus ➖ sign below the Network Names section (This deletes the WAP entry)
14- Click OK
15- Restart your Mac

What these steps do is erase the main entries that automatically connects you to your Airport WAP/Network account.

After Restart, do the following:
1- Once your Mac has restarted, then turn on your Airport (Airport Symbol -> Turn Airport On)
2- Once the Airport has scanned for available WAP's/Networks click on your chosen WAP/Network (assuming it is your Home WAP)
3- It should ask you for the WAP/Network password (If it automatically connects to your WAP then you did not delete one of the entries listed previously in step 6 and/or 13. You will have to start over.)
4- Input the Password you copied in step 4 above
5- Airport Icon should show that you are connected by going from Grey to Black lines.
6- You are done...

Once you follow these steps you should be connected to the Internet. You can test your Internet speed at www.speedtest.net

One optional step I do, which may make a difference for you, is that while the MacBook is restarting I disconnect power to the DSL modem for 10-15 seconds, and then re-connect it. This ensures you have a clean and renewed DSL connection with your provider.

One note of caution on this... when I did this fix for my Entourage problem under Leopard (10.5), every time an incremental OS update would come up, I found myself having to repeat these steps over again. It was not until Snow Leopard was installed that this issue completely went away. It seems that a new OS installation fixed whatever gremlin was laying underneath all of this.

This "Fix" did recently work on a 15" MacBook Pro 2009 model (10.6.5) that belongs to a friend of mine, and was experiencing very slow Internet WiFi speeds at his home. I hope it also works for you.

Good luck....

Just a note to say, I have two WI-FI points in the house - one with a non-Apple router and the other with an Apple base-station connected to the non-Apple router. After upgrading to Snow Leopard, the WI-FI was slow to unusable via my non-Apple router. On the Apple Network (going via the non-Apple router) it works fine. So, it's something to do with the non-Apple router WI-FI and compatability with Snow Leopard (simply erasing the keychain password and rebooting does not solve the non-Apple router problem).

Okay - I fixed the problem and it was very simple.

My router was automatically choosing a broadcast channel (for example, channel 1). I logged into my router and selected a manual channel (for example, 11) and hey presto - back to full speed WI-FI.