Slow internet after Lion OS X Upgrade

My wifi/internet speed went from 8mps to 0.1mps after upgrading to lion, I uninstalled Norton programs, now it's running like a champ.

Installed lion on 2011 27" iMac the day it came out...lil sluggish but ok. Then installed on my 2009 MacBook pro. It seems like it has been trying to climb a stainless steel sheer cliff to do anything Internet wise. Monitor shows download speeds on iMac before at 209 kb/s. after lion install, 65 kb/s. with latest patch it is back up to 157 kb/s. albeit after getting a new airport extreme. Oh and guess what...went back to 10.6.8 on MacBook pro today and speeds are back over 210 kb/s. Something is not right with lion networking and it's not only wifi...lags bad wired as well.

Hi. I was having same issue and solved it. Here´s the description on my problem and my solution to it. Hope it helps (I was writing a longer post but hit the wrong keys and lost what I wrote).

The thing is that the bandwith was being consumed by iCloud iPhoto Streaming which was turned on. The machine was uploading all the photos to the cloud. So, steps to know if it is your problem and to solve it.

0. Open iPhoto, click on "Photo Stream" and watch the text up in the right (in the title). Is there something saying "Uploading 230 photos"? Then this could be the issue. Close the iPhoto and follow the steps.

1. Open "Activity Monitor" and go the the "Network" tab. Close all the programs, downloads, dropbox, etc. and check if there is some activity in the "Data sent/sec" section. If there is some data being sent there is obviusloy some program in the background using your bandwith. If this is true then it can be the photo stream agent in charge to upload all the photos to iCloud. If not, then this may not be your problem but you could check this out also.

2. Open a "Terminal" and type: "launchctl list | grep com.apple.photostream-agent" (without the quotes of course). This will show you if the photostream-agent is currently running. If there is a line being printed after the command like: "- 0 com.apple.photostream-agent" then the photostream-agent is stopped, but if you get a line with a number instead a dash like "279 - com.apple.photostream-agent" (see the difference? dash + 0 in one case and a number different than 0 and a dash in the second case) then your photostream-agent is running. If this last is your case try stopping it. There is no problem by doing this since after a reboot the agent will start again. So don´t worry in executing this and being afraid on braking something. After a reboot everything will still be the same as before running this command:

3. Stop the photostream-agent. Run. "launchctl stop com.apple.photostream-agent". Once stopped check out with the "Activity Monitor" if there is some data being sent. If this were your problem you shouldn´t see any data going out now (unless you had this problem and another one like a "Dropbox" sending more data in the background or another service you just didn´t noticed yet).

4. If this solved your problem, just be happy and let other people now about the solution.

5. If this didn´t solve your problem and your are still wathing data being sent in the "Activity Monitor" and you are pretty sure that the agent has been stopped (try that 2nd step command again and see if you get a "0" indicating that it has been stopped) I can point you out some command to check where is your data going to:

a. Try this command in the "Terminal": "netstat -n | grep ESTABLISHED". This will show you the connections opened. Check the second and third column. Second column is the receive queu and the third one the send queue. If you got one line showing a number different than 0 (and if the Activity Monitor shows network activity then some of those lines will be different thatn 0) write down that 5th column numbers down. Numbers are separeted by dots. Write them down (those line which have send/receive queue other than 0).

b. Run "whois <ip_address>" where ip_address are the numbers you wrote down WITHOUT the last dot+number. Example: "whois 73.125.231.172" (where your numbers you wrote were "73.125.231.172.80" (note I removed the ".80" in the whois command). Watch for the company name and domain and see if it says something to you.

c. Run "lsof -i -Pn | grep <ip_address>" to check WHICH program is using your bandwith. Try to close that program manually or with the "Activity Monitor" and check if that solved your problem.

d. Force that program to quit if it doesn´t with the "Activity Monitor" or it just doesn´t appear in the "Activity Monitor": "ps -ef | grep <program_name>" and write down the second column number of the program. Run "kill -9 <pid>" where the pid is the second number you wrote down. Check again and repeat steps until no program is using your bandwith.

I really hope this helps.

I would tend to agree to a certain extent. Some of your solutions came after the introduction of IOS 5 which added photo streaming and iCloud. Most of our issues were before they were introduced and these are after clean installs with no other manufacturers products introduced to the equation. Again there appears to be in all aspects something going on with Lion's networking, either wired or wireless, and the patches are slowly improving that performance, just not to SL performance to date.

I have been having the same problem with the slow download speeds but the upload speeds were as expected under Lion - Windows computers seems not be having any issues. It seems that Lion has the option, not sure if it is new to set the MTUs. FiOs MTU is 1492. Problem solved - at least for my desktops.

Hi Mr.Ron. Thanks for your message. How do you setup the MTU? And what is it if you don't mind explain. Thanks again!

I have had the same problem including internet connectivity problems. I just got off the phone with an Apple rep and he had me change Location within the Network System Preferences. So far the speed and usability is just as good as with Snow Leopard.

System Preferences —> Network —> Location (I changed mine to "Test" —> apply and then restart.

Not sure why something that insignificant would make a difference but it sure has. Hope this helps anyone that needs it!

Perhaps others have tried this but I noticed that when I just upgraded my macbook pro to lion the airport speeds tanked, I could not even get speedtest to load and get a ping much less start the speedtest. Now the only thing that changed was I installed lion. My Imac running snow leopard still gets fast internet speeds both on the airport and cable connections.

I tried the memory reset, tried the airport extreme reset, network settings, clear the cache, new dns etc. None of that worked, however when I turned off the lion's firewall the wireless internet works great again. I doubled checked my Imac and it's firewall is also on, so it seems to me there's something new in the Lion firewall that the airport extreme does not like etc.

I also tried the internet connection on the macbook off the cable, and it runs fine with the firewall on, if I go back to the airport connection with the firewall on the connection tanks. I can repeat this consistantly every time. Turn the firewall on, the airport connection speeds tank so bad it won't even load pages for minutes at a time, turn the firewall off and it's 20-30mb/s working as normal before lion.

I found the solution. I enter my router settings and in firewall options turned off ( unchecked ) IP Flood Detection . Really tried with it or without it and that seems to be the problem. I hope that this post will be seen by APPLE and will be fixxed in another update so i don't have to turn that off. Hope it's nothing dangerous turning it off.

Rock on... this worked for me! I've been banging my head against the wall for a couple of months now, ever since I updated to Lion... and simply removing IP Flood Detection from my router fixed the problem. Only thing is, I actually want IP Flood Detection turned on in case of a malicious attack to my IP address. With this off, I am now more vulnerable to the WWW. Apple, PLEASE FIX THIS and notify your customers of the update so we can reset our routers!!!

I encountered this problem after an update for Lion. I previously tried all the solutions here presented, but to not success. The solution for my problem was a very simple one: changing my DNS. Go to the DNS tab in Network (System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> DNS) and put a reliable DNS server IP, such as Google's (primary: 8.8.8.8 secondary: 8.8.4.4) and that did the trick. At least for the last 12 hours 🙂 Hope this helps.

Thanks pachuss2. Had a same problem as you, iCloud iPhoto Streaming (with Aperture) used so much bandwith that it slowed down everything else. I noticed this while on the move and using my iPhone to access internet and during which my dataplan went to 100% in just half a day. I bought OS Track - http://ostrack-app.com from App Store and confirmed Photo Streaming bandwith usage with it.

Now Photo Streaming is disabled and need to do some investigation on what is wrong with settings as it should defenely not be stream all my +100Gb photos to iCloud...

Anyway thanks for the tip.

Hi everybody,

I have tried all the solutions you have described above:

- reset pram/smc/vram

- change dns

- tracking programs using badwidth

Still in the same situation: sometimes safari hangs and does not load anything.

This happens especially after some inactivity, which sometimes require to wake up the computer.

I am connected via cable.

Any idea/suggestion?

Hi nordicgoofy. I appreciate your feedback and am glad it could help somehow. It's really beautiful helping each other.

Hello all,

I just purchased a mac book pro with Internet issues as many of you have had. I recently discovered a solution to the issues some might be having. Changing my router from broadcasting at 2.4 Ghz to broadcasting both 5Ghz and 2.4 Ghz made a world of a difference. Many routers have this option and even to broadcast both or either frequency. It allowed the speed to increase drastically from 10 min on youtube to 20 sec full load clip. I have done nothing other than change the frequency settings on the router no ip, dhcp, dns, subnet, or anything else. I hope this might help others which have had this issue. Best wishes!