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Very Slow Internet Lion (This one is for the "Apple Network Team")

hello,


i'm joão from Portugal, Europe.

a couple of weekends ago i've updated three macs to Lion.


2009 MacMini, 2007 White Macbook, 2010 iMac 21".


problems? only with the iMac.


no connection drops but slow slow slow very slow internet. wired, speedtest marked 15Mbps download. wireless? 1Mbps, 0,3Mbps, 3Mbps, very unstable.

with Snow Leopard everything was ok.

tried every solution from every site and finally got it working flawlessly.


tried clean install instead of update.

tried new dns servers.

tried disabling ipv6.

tried remove wifi interface then add it again.

tried service order.

tried PRAM, NVRAM, SMC, you name it, reset.

tried removing preferences folder.

tried different browsers -> same symptoms.

tried disable/enable airport.

tried 10.7.1, 10.7.2, combo, delta.

tried router's firmware update.

tried putting the computer closer to the router.

tried resetting the router, factory defaults.

tried changing router's channel.

tried disabling router's firewall.

tried watch router's event log, nothing suspicious.

tried disabling router's wep password.

tried pinging a site for a couple of minutes, 2% packet loss.

tried hundreds of pages and forums...


during this attempts, macmini and macbook showed very good wireless internet speed.

iMac? slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, like seeing gmail's loading screen for more than one minute...

again and again speedtest 1Mbps, 0,3Mbps, 1Mbps, 1Mbps, 0,3Mbps, 3Mbps.

discovered the pingtest utility in the same site and iMac's ping was grade C, grade F, grade D, with big values...mac mini and macbook were alwas grade B, with low pings (imagine 25ms on them vs. 138ms on the iMac).


i was fed up with the situation, every week tried and failed. iMac's owner was wanting to get his Lion money back and stick to Snow Leopard again. imagine recent Windows switchers thinking they went back to the same situations....


but then i found this website. and then realised macbook and macmini's wi-fi were both powered by a broadcom chipset. iMac's was powered by an Atheros chipset! did what the guy says on that site (replaced Lion's Atheros kernel driver by the one on Slow Leopard), and now everything is perfect, like on Snow Leopard. very good speed.


what a relief. thank you sir.


hope it can help you.

hope it reachs apple's network developers...this is not good, you can't fail on something so simple and essential as decent wifi quality...

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7), slow internet lion

Posted on Oct 15, 2011 3:43 PM

Reply
14 replies

Nov 4, 2011 8:01 AM in response to darwinfromdenmark

hello Darwin,


first of all, the medal should go to the guy on my link, on my final hours of despair i found it after many searches, that guy saved my "life" because i was starting to see my destiny as a long waiting game on apple support lines...thank him. 🙂


i did what i could to alert other people. i'm so glad it worked for you.


at that time i've contacted Apple through some page with a form like the one on the site you linked but i don't remember where it was and never got the reply (i know it's hard to see so many mails with problems and some of them are just problems between the chair and the screen 🙂).


just in case, i've just reported this topic to both iMac team and Mac OS team. wope they see it.


finally, i always recommend Macs to friends that ask me for the best computer, and bugs like this are a very sad situation, 'cause, it's a simple situation for the user (just surf the web, right?) but the solution is very hard to find (even for the guys on Apple's support).



thank you and my best regards.

Nov 4, 2011 1:34 PM in response to joelfromalcobaça

I did an upgrade. I plan to do a clean install at some point, but never really have enough time! Hence hardly using MacBook.

Totally same symptoms: was really perplexed at how it seemed fine on some routers, but awful on my old-ish Motorola router.

Haven't done speedtest or pingtest as I don't know how to...


Because I figured it couldn't hurt, I tried the update you did (even though I have a Broadcom machine) and, fingers crossed, it seems to have made life quite a bit better... I don't know how that can possibly be, but I'll try it for a few days and see what happens!

Nov 4, 2011 4:05 PM in response to treyno13

humm...


i've clean installed one macbook (late 2008?) and one mac mini (early 2009) both with broadcom adapters and both of them were ok, after the install.


so, speedtest and pingtest are websites (speedtest.net and pingtest.net), both test your internet connection with the help of a 'local' server. it's useful, for instance, if you want see if two different computers connected to the same router have the same connection quality.


so if you can connect to some routers nicely and you have problems with your router, to me, it seems like you have some problems with the connection between your computer and the router.


an old router might bring you problems (there are some advices on the internet to change router's channel and so...), i would recommend to see if motorola has some sort of firmware update to your router. if you don't have complex router configurations, you might try to reset to factory defaults (search the manual). that, once, fixed a problem with a smc router and two macbooks (one, older, could connect easily, the other wouldn't connect to the router).


if that atheros driver trick, resolved your issue, that's strange 🙂

make sure broadcom isn't your ethernet adapter and not your wireless adapter 🙂


did you resetted your pram and smc? do you have Mac OS 10.7.2?


i hope you can figure that out.

Nov 7, 2011 4:39 AM in response to joelfromalcobaça

PRAM etc yes - done!


The atheros driver has not done the trick! it was ok for a bit then not ok again. Have observed sometimes it being fine, other times it's awful


It looks like a clean install is my next stop. Never done one before, and don't want to lose emails, calendars, contacts, photos, music, docs etc...if I clean install then restore a time machine backup, will that just un-do the clean install?

Very Slow Internet Lion (This one is for the "Apple Network Team")

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