Slow internet speed slow after connecting DSL Modem > AEBS > Gigabit switch > two PC's. AEBS wireless router serves my mini-mac in the living room and the gigabit switch serves my two PC's connected with ethernet cables. Both Mini mac

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Slow internet speed slow after connecting DSL Modem > AEBS > Gigabit switch > two PC's. AEBS wireless router serves my mini-mac in the living room and the gigabit switch serves my two PC's connected with ethernet cables. Both Mini mac

I've been searching for a solution to my problem below on this forum as well as others, but to no avail yet, so I decided to post it here:

All my gear is in my office, except for my wireless mini-mac in the living room and I'm using less than 6 ft Cat5e cables in the office. (I checked all my cables) Also, no laptops or other users, just me.

My internet connection slows down considerably when I connect my AT&T DSL SpeedStream 4100 modem to the WAN input on the AEBS then out to my Netgear Gigabit switch, then from my gigabit switch to two Window OS PC's via Cat5E ethernet cables. The only wireless connection I have and the reason for the Airport Extreme Base Station is to connect to my mini-mac, which is hooked up to my Samsung HDTV, 30 ft away from my office in the living room.

Safari on my mini-mac tries to connect to a website, but it eventually drops out, it's so slow. In my office, the two PC's or even just one of them connected to the gigabit switch are slow as well. But if I bypass the AEBS, the speed is lightning fast to my PC's (DSL > Switch > PC's). Also, if I connect just (DSL > AEBS), then my mini-mac internet connection is very fast. But when connecting (DSL > AEBS > Switch > PC's), then everything slows down. I don't want to run a long Cat 6 ethernet cable from my office to my living room to connect my Mini-mac (both Mini-mac & AEBS purchased new in 2011). I'd prefer the wireless route for the mini-mac, which is why I purchased the AEBS. Even taking the gigabit switch out of the loop and connecting (DSL > AEBS > PC's) is slow.

When all gear is connected, Port 1 on the Netgear Switch is green (coming from the AEBS LAN connection), thats good, but port 2 & 3 are amber representing the ethernet connections to my PC's, which also have gigabit network adapters.

However, that's about the full extend of my understanding, so why, how or what is slowing down my internet connection when combining (DSL Modem > AEBS > Switch > PC's), then mini-mac being serviced wireless from AEBS? Do I need to configure the AEBS, which for now, simply found my mini-mac and configured itself. I haven't installed the utility on my PC desktops, because I didn't think it would be necessary, since I'm only using the AEBS as a wirless router to my mini-mac and to receive the ISP's DSL connection. Or perhaps I need to configure something different on the mini-mac..???

Sorry for this long post, I just didn't want to answer questions to things I've already tried on my own. Can anybody help me out with this?

It's late, so I'm going to bed and will check back throughout the weekend, so if you got this far, thanks for your patience.

Posted on Oct 19, 2012 10:26 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 26, 2013 6:15 PM in response to solo99

It doesn't look like anyone replied, but I've been having similar problems for some time and haven't found a solution.

I'm a principal systems engineer w/25 yrs experience mostly in networking and unix so this problem is particularly perplexing.

I have a mac mini late 2011 that ran Snow Leopard, Lion, Lion Server, Mountain Lion, ML Server, a Netgear GW724Tv3 w/latest firmware, AEBS Gig-E 802.11n model, MBP 17" mid 2008 ML server,

Wired to Netgear: MBP 17", MBP 15", AEBS, iMac 27" Late 2012, Mac Mini. All are full-duplex (top LED green=1G, orange=100M/10M), bottom LED is link. First 4 have green/green, MacMini is orange (top LED turns green 3 times, then orange on initial connection).

I've tried setting the port for mac mini from auto/auto to 1000M, full-duplex fixed on both netgear and mac-mini (from Preferences and CLI) and neither make a difference, link never comes up in this setting. The mini *used* to connect at gig-e some time ago, but at some point it stopped and was 100Mb everytime since.

The mini doesn't connect at GigE on AEBS ports either, everything else does.

I've tried booting the Mini using LinuxMint 14 with same results so it's a firmware/hardware issue. Since the mini is the only device with this problem (everything else including newer macs work fine) it's a Mac Mini issue.

I'm going to revert the firmware to v1.8 and see if that fixes the issue, because there have been a few hardware updates to the mini since I first got it. I didn't get applecare for this Mini, it's only 1.5 years old (I missed the cut off date) so if I can't prove it's a software issue, I'll need to pay for repairs.

As an option, I purchased a USB->Gig-E adapter, Thunderbolt->Gig-E adapter in the hopes it'll fix this issue. USB won't perform better than 100Mb but the thunderbolt might if it can establish link.

I'll report back if anything fixes my issue.

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Answer 2

Jan 28, 2013 7:51 PM in response to sadmac5150

Here's an update ...

I tried rolling back my firmware to 1.7 and after several hours and tries, I gave up, it seems they make it impossible [for non apple genius folks] to rollback to a previous version to see if it gig-e works, then apply each update until it stops working. I didn't take it in to an Apple Store to have them try because it's not under applecare and it'd probably cost me $$$.

It was pretty difficult to figure out the original firmware version that shipped with my mac-mini (1.3?) and which firmware restoration CD to use to get it back to the earliest possible version.

I tried running Apple Test (hold D on boot), that only ran memory tests, I ran extended test and memory is good.

Anyway, I got my thunderbolt to gigE adapter today, plugged it in, booted the computer and bluetooth keyboard repeat was messed up, I couldn't unlock the filevault2 boot volume until I unplugged the thunderbolt adapter, after logging on, I plugged the adapter in and viola! I get green/green gigabit full-duplex flow-controlled link. I'm running Shared TimeMachine backups now, hopefully they're significantly faster than over wireless, a full backup said it'd take 3 days.

I'm going to call it quits since it's working and "stable" for me now. Hopefully configuring a couple vlans doesn't make it [more] complicated [than it needs to be].

I also bought the USB to Ethernet adapter, I was hoping it was gig-e capable, but I just tested, it's 100Mb/s only (orange/green on netgear) so I might as well use the internal NIC for that if I need it.

I'm using one VLAN for netboot/netinstall and a couple other vlans for other testing [that's the hope anyway].

I hope this helps you or someone else, I've surely spent a month or more on this issue and am ready to move on to ML Open Directory debugging next.

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