iMac slows entire wifi network
I have within the past week setup a brand new iMac and have all software up to date. Specs:
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My typical wifi connection speed is 10 Mbps. After seemingly working fine for 2-3 days, whenever the iMac wifi is connected to the network the speed on all connected devices slows to about 1Mbps. After calling Apple support, the senior advisor I ended up talking to led me through a complex procedure of changing settings and turning the computer on and off with the result of getting the problem to go away. About 30 minutes later (the first chance I had to look again, during which time the computer was not being used) the problem was back. While reading the forums I saw someone suggest to another person that they might set up a new use profile to see if the problem they were having went away. Armed with this info, I logged into the Guest User account and the problem was not evident. Speeds for all devices, including the iMac were 10 Mbps as expected.
If I am logged into my original user account, I can run a speed test on another device, turn on the iMac wifi, and watch the download speed drop from 10 Mbps to 0.5 Mbps.
Has anyone seen this problem before? I am relatively new to Macs (I use them at work, but have never owned one) but if this was a Windows computer I would set up a new user account and delete this one. Is there any reason not to do this? I will continue to work with Apple, but was curious if anyone here knew anything about this.
If it is important, I am connecting to an Airport Extreme, and I would stress that the problem is very predictable and repeatable. Also, I do not know of any programs that are running in the background that might be using bandwidth. When I go to Force Quit, even when Finder is the app listed this problem occurs. I have Dropbox running in the background, but it does not seem to be the problem (and for what it's worth, there are no files that are syncing). Finally, when I look in Activity Monitor I see no network traffic, but the slowdown still occurs.
Thanks.
Message was edited by: jaycaustin
iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.4), null