Mac and iPad Browsing Speed Pitiful, Win 7 OK

Folks, here is the situation. My sister in law (SIL) has a Comcast cable connection, which is accessed via the cable modem and a Linksys wifi router.

SIL and husband use a Mac laptop and an iPad to access the internet. For two months now, their internet browsing has been absolutely horrible... websites like CNN or MarketWatch take forever to come up, if they do at all, and usually all pictures are not loaded.

As a side note, the Mac laptop has been direct connected to the cable modem with a cat5 cable with the same exact result.

They have been blaming it on Comcast cable because they can take their iPad and/or Mac to another network (friend or office) and they do not suffer this kind of browsing problem. Comcast has come out three times and they swear the broadband connection is working just fine.

I went over to their house last night and brought my Windows 7 laptop. We fired up browsers (Safari for the iPad and Mac), and Chrome for the Win 7 machine. We all were connected to the internet via the Linksys wifi.

The result: I was able to connect to any and all websites without issue. Meanwhile, they cannot connect to the exact same website. They are able to send/receive email and I was able to open a Skype video conversation which they were able to see without issue.

I had my SIL load Chrome for Mac onto her Mac laptop to see if this was a browser issue. Chrome behaved exactly the same way, that is, SIL could not access the internet.

To summarize:

a) The Mac and iPad browse just fine when using a different network
b) The Mac cannot browse even when hard connected to the cable modem
c) I was able to browse all websites (at high speed) and at the same time, they could not.

I think this eliminates Comcast as the source of the problem, and I think that the hardwire test eliminates issues with the wifi system (as does my ability to connect). But, now I have no idea what the issue might be.

Thoughts, anyone?

TIA

Welcome to Mac-Forums

How fast is the Comcast Internet connection rated? Can you have them run a Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test on the Mac and iPad followed by a Pingtest.net - The Global Broadband Quality Test..

These two tests should give us a rough idea of bandwidth and data integrity. If Speedtest reports atrocious upload/download speeds and Pingtest reports really long ping times with packet loss..that combination will make loading web pages hard..

What version of OS X is the Mac running?

I don't know the rated speed for the line but I did run speedtest.net while there and it was in the vicinity of 7 to 9 megs.

As soon as I ran the speed test, I asked them to go to pbs.org. I asked each of them to try and stream a Downton Abbey trailer. They couldn't even get the main PBS page to load on either the Mac or iPad. Then, I accessed pbs.org and was able to stream trailers without issue while they were still waiting for pbs.org main page to load.

Can't tell you what the IOS version is on the iPad, but I would guess it is current as they took the iPad (and the Mac) to an Apple store to see if they had a virus (Apple guy says not possible to have a virus )

The Mac OS was updated to whatever the current version is on December 29, and FWIW, it seems that the browser access problems started at about the same time.

It sounds like a DNS problem with your SIL's connection through Comcast. Your Win machine was not impacted by it because of the way Windows connects.

I had the same problem here in my own home with a Verizon connection. My Macs were having the same problem as you describe but yet my old Toshiba notebook was not effected at all. The resolution was to change from the Verizon DNS settings to using OpenDNS. Once I did that, the problem went away.

If you need instructions on how to change DNS settings, post back. But as a quick reference, the easiest way is to access the Comcast router thru its setup menu and make the change from there.

Thanks for the quick comeback... much appreciated. First, it's not a Comcast router, it is a Linksys. I did the original setup for them dogs years ago... at least three... and there was no issue until recently... the settings have not changed.

The cable modem was recently changed by Comcast in an attempt to resolve the problem but its settings must be the same as I did not have to make any changes to the Linksys router WAN parameters.

Nevertheless, I'd be interested in the settings changes you made and how you went about them. If you'd be kind enough to tell me what you changed, I'll drop over to the SIL's and see if that makes a difference.

PS: I also have set up a second router as an access point elsewhere in the house and connected via a powerline adapter.

TIA.