Incredibly Slow Internet. What am I missing?

1

I am consistently getting speeds of 2mb or less on one of my machines. I can't figure out why. I have already tried:

  • Other Devices - All seem to work fine, speeds ranging from 7.6mb to 8.3mb
  • Wireless Receiver - It is a USB reciever and I have installed it and had it working fine on another machine, running the same driver and operating system (Os X 10.6.8)
  • Location - I have moved machine around to see if location makes a difference. Not a tangible one, all working machine maintain a decent speed. The broken one seems capped at 2mb still.

Mild Fuzz

Posted 2011-12-13T22:19:14.133

Reputation: 693

Just to be sure, are those speeds in megabits or MebiBytes? What happens if you use a tool like IPerf between two machines? I want to know if the problem is slow local networking, or if it's specific to going to the Internet. – Spiff – 2011-12-14T02:20:08.150

It's whatever speedtest.net measure in. – Mild Fuzz – 2011-12-14T09:15:40.870

Haven't used iPerf, scares me a little. As I mentioned, though, I moved the wifi dongle from machines to no effect. The problem is with the machine, and not it wifi or my internet connection (or so it seems) – Mild Fuzz – 2011-12-14T09:17:03.770

On your wireless machine with the problem: iperf -s. On another machine, preferably wired into a LAN port of your Wi-Fi AP: iperf -c IPAddressOfWirelessMachine. Report that, and also report the make and model of your AP and client Wi-Fi adaptor, so we can see what they're supposed to be capable of. Also report what signal strength (RSSI) and connection rate (raw 802.11 signaling rate) your client Wi-Fi USB adaptor reports. – Spiff – 2011-12-14T10:00:33.330

1Have you tried the USB device in other ports on the machine? It's possible that your bottleneck isn't in the network but in the USB bus. – Justin Pearce – 2011-12-15T05:53:52.323

Good idea, will try that before trying iperf. Although, the speed it settles on is too fast for USB1 (if that port is behaving like one) but too slow for USB 2. Does that make sense? – Mild Fuzz – 2011-12-15T11:52:09.960

Yeah, getting some specs on the machine would help. Quote: "USB 1.1 allowed a maximum transfer rate of 12Mbits/second. It is now obsolete, but both of its speeds (1.5Mbps & 12Mbps) are being adopted into USB 2.0, and they are now called Original USB officially." from http://www.everythingusb.com/usb2/faq.htm

– Chad Harrison – 2012-01-12T15:00:50.483

No answers

Asked: 2011-12-13T22:19:14.133

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Active: 2011-12-13T22:19:14.133