my internet connection is incredibly slow - I know it is not the fault of the modem as other devices are fast. This article was suggested to me as a solution. I think they were just trying to get me off their back. Anyone else experience this?

If Safari is getting very slow:

(Presumably you regularly empty your Safari cache by deleting the following file:

Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/cache.db

and clear your History)

Adding Open DNS codes to your Network Preferences, should give good results in terms of speed-up as well as added security, (including anti-phishing and redirects) (Full information about Open DNS is here:
http://www.opendns.com/home-solutions ) and further independent information can be read here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57338784-263/free-dnscrypt-tool-enhances-ma c-web-security/?tag=mncol;txt

and here:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1146064/troubleshootdns.html?t=234

If you are using a single computer: Open System Preferences/Network. Double click on your connection type, or select it in the drop-down menu, and in the box marked 'DNS Servers' add the following two numbers:

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

(You can also enter them if you click on Advanced and then DNS)

Sometimes reversing the order of the DNS numbers can be beneficial in cases where there is a long delay before web pages start to load, and then suddenly load at normal speed:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2296

If your computer is part of a network:please refer to this page: http://www.opendns.com/start/best_practices/#your_network and follow the advice given.

If you use a Router, make sure it has the latest firmware installed.

One reason for a slowness in page loading may be the 'DNS Pre-fetching' feature of Safari 5.x as is described here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3408?viewlocale=en_US

You can cancel DNS pre-fetching by going to Terminal and typing:

defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled -boolean false

You have to restart Safari for it to take effect.

If Safari seems to hang for ages:

If you have a lot of tabs open and/or a lot of pages running Flash, Safari can sometimes 'hang', requiring a restart of Safari. This can often be inconvenient, and as it is rarely Safari itself that is hanging but merely one of its plug-ins, usually Flash, there is a way using Terminal to restart the plug-ins (without restarting Safari and losing your tabs) by quitting the WebPluginHost process:

Open the Terminal from the Utilities folder in /Applications and type

killall -9 WebKitPluginHost

Note that this command kills all Safari plug-ins, not just Flash. All plug-ins should start back up when you reload the page.

Then go back to Safari and refresh any pages that were using the Flash plug-in. This also fixes the Beachball of Death. Try this whenever Safari gets slow or freezes. The later versions of Flash 10.1 onwards appear to have improved the situation somewhat, but haven't completed eliminated it.

For this and other reasons Apple switched their websites to HTML5 in January 2011:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/26/apple_revamps_its_public_website_u sing_html5.html

For Snow Leopard/Lion users this should also be read:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3408

Diagnosing Internet connection issues is rather difficult without more information.

What is your ISP?

Do you have a router + modem or a combination router/modem device?

Did you connect directly to the router/modem (reset it) with a Ethernet cable or is the slowdowns only occuring on Wifi?

What is your WiFi encryption used or type? (open WEP, WEP encrytped, WPA, WPA2 etc)

How secure is your password? Do you have a Admin password and a guest Internet password?

What other machines are using the same Internet connection?

How did you set up your router, via ISP or did it yourself?

Have you checked for updates for your router firmware?

What is your router make and model if your providing it?

What browser do you use, tried another and did the issues go away or continue?

Tried another user account on the same machine?, same problems or they go away?

Are there any others using your Internet connection?

Have you installed any soft of software like MacKeeper, from P2P sources, unverified sources, video players or Flash updates when perhaps adult sites asked you too?

Have you run through these links and confirm the issue is a Mac specifc one?

..Step by Step to fix your Mac

..WiFi, Internet problems, possible solutions

Note that using OpenDNS won't speed up your internet connections. It could speed up DNS lookups, if your ISP's servers were slow, but no more than that. However, while using OpenDNS is not the solution to your problems, it also is not the ultimate evil that ds store claims. Distance from the server means very little on the internet. I'm not sure what ds store is talking about when he warns Klaus about reporting him "for higher up review." ds store does not have the power to do more than report posts to the moderators here, and the moderators have never expressed any interest in censoring the kind of information that Klaus provided.

Now, as to your problem, Klaus has given you some good information. Another thing I would add is to ask whether you have any kind of anti-virus or network filtering software installed. That kind of software could have an adverse effect on your internet speeds. Try restarting in safe mode (hold down the shift key at startup), then test your internet speeds that way. Do they speed up when in safe mode, and slow down again when you reboot normally? If so, some third-party software you have installed is responsible.

One thing that can help you quantify your internet speeds is a good speed test site, like:

http://speedof.me

OpenDNS is easy to setup and easy to remove. If all of the other devices in the house are running fine, then the problem could be with a flaky ISP DNS server that isn't working well with the Mac. If that is the case, then OpenDNS will result in a dramatic speedup. It is easy enough to try and won't hurt a thing.

ds store does not have the power to do more than report posts to the moderators here, and the moderators have never expressed any interest in censoring the kind of information that Klaus provided.

Apparently the technical details involved is too complicated for many here to understand.

I have reported the post, informed Matt K via the Hosts Forum and will be contacting Apple via upper level contact connections.

mildly ot - it's PluginProcess here , rather than WebKitPluginHost

& possibly easier to quit it in activity monitor where Flash shows as

Flash Player (Safari Internet plug-in)

I have reported the post, informed Matt K via the Hosts Forum and will be contacting Apple via upper level contact connections.

Even supposing that you actually have "upper level contact connections," which I doubt, what do you suppose that will do? OpenDNS is a perfectly legitimate service that, like all things in life, has advantages and disadvantages. Do you really think that the moderators will step in and censor recommendations for OpenDNS just because there exists the possibility that it might cause some problems? They don't censor recommendations for things like MacKeeper, Norton, various "cleaning" utilities, etc, which are far more harmful and have no real advantages.

The threats you are making are baseless and inappropriate. I think that Matt will be far more interested in that.

>>...will be contacting Apple...

you might remind those upper level contacts to amend or remove http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3408 , since that was seemingly overlooked after your earlier warning.

oakedave wrote:

my internet connection is incredibly slow - I know it is not the fault of the modem as other devices are fast. This article was suggested to me as a solution. I think they were just trying to get me off their back. Anyone else experience this?

Do NOT follow the OpenDNS Klaus gave you unless you live in one of these cities OpenDNS services.

• Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Dallas, Texas, USA
• Frankfurt, Germany
• London, United Kingdom
• Los Angeles, California, USA
• Miami, Florida, USA
• New York, New York, USA
• Palo Alto, California, USA
• Seattle, Washington, USA
• Singapore
• Washington, DC, USA
• Hong Kong, China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

If you do so anyway, your Internet downloads from Akamai based content servers that Apple uses to reisntall OS X (among other things) will be drastically reduced or not function at all because the server will be too far away.

OS X 10.7 and later issues are strickly Internet downloaded now.

http://apcmag.com/why-using-google-dns-opendns-is-a-bad-idea.htm

Klaus's infomation and knowledge is outdated and his methods need to be revised to take in account a users location as to avoid this issue.

The apcmag article you link to is three years out of date.

The potential speed boost of OpenDNS is confirmed here:

http://lifehacker.com/5835775/google-dns-and-opendns-users-are-getting-a-web-spe ed-boost

as well as by Apple:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3408?viewlocale=en_US

Please spare us from any more of your paranoid ravings.

Answer me this:

Is Akamai supporting the edns-client-subnet extension or anycast or not?

Because the latest data I could find is 6 months old and they are not supporting neither, neither are a lot of other Content Delivery Networks as of yet.

http://www.cdnplanet.com/blog/real-world-cdn-performance-googledns-opendns-users / is similarly dated (october '12), and tests only small file requests.

the 'big table' can be ordered to show locations that seemingly benefit/suffer from opendns/google accessing a number of cdn's

Unless you know something I don't, don't you think it's wise to advise users to keep a copy of their ISP DNS figures just in case they do suffer download performance issues under OpenDNS?

And what happens if a user has a need to reinstall their operating system from Recovery?

Are the alternate DNS setting transferred to NVRAM too and if they suddenly find out they can't do large downloads how are they supposed to change their DNS back if they can't boot into OS X to change it?

I think the issue is your in the UK and everything is fast for everyone due to the island, however in other parts of the world it's not the same set of circumstances.

Look at Grant (Level 7) issue with OpenDNS in Boston, he had to switch back to his ISP's DNS server

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3971890?start=0&tstart=0

(sorry Lounge access only link)

andyBall_uk wrote:

http://www.cdnplanet.com/blog/real-world-cdn-performance-googledns-opendns-users / is similarly dated (october '12),

Ah yes I was looking for that #3 in the series, thanks.

Bingo