03-01-2008, 10:24 AM

Hi!

I have a Macbook 2.2 with Leopard and a ISP conection wih 2MB speed. I´m having some internet problems, the pages take minutes to open and it is very slow sometimes.
recently I instaled VM Fusion and Ubuntu in a virtual desktop. I tried to open some sites in ubuntu using the same conection that mac does, and it is very diferent. Much more fast...

I use a D-link Router trough my Airport.

Can you help me??

Thanks

03-04-2008, 03:41 AM

For those people finding that safari takes a long time to respond to a new address, and the internet is generally quite slow to respond to anything (even though you may be getting normal download speeds), I've done a bit of research and discovered some ways to fix it.

It seems to occur when you are connecting through a router (airport or otherwise) to the internet. The problem appears to be some new technology in leopard that handles DNS resolution differently. DNS (domain name servers) are the addresses of the servers that translate what you type into safari or other apps into IP addresses and thereby allow your computer to retrieve information from the server you want. For example, if you type in google.com, your dns servers are what translate that into the IP address 64.233.187.99. You will notice you get google if you type in that number into safari.

Now, for some reason, I'm not sure why, leopard doesn't play too nicely with wireless connections, routers and automatic dns servers. You can get around it by specifying non-router-assigned dns servers (for example, your ISP's ones, or opendns.org's ones). If you don't want to use opendns, find out your ISP's dns servers before going further - either by looking in your modem config pages, or phoning them.

Setup: Your computer -> wireless connection -> airport base station or wireless router -> modem -> internet

If you have airport, under your airport config, change the DNS servers to whatever the WAN IP of your airport is. You will notice that under system prefs -> network -> advanced -> dns, you cannot remove the first one or two there, which are the automatic router (and possibly your modem) dns servers. We want to make sure that these aren't used, so we're assigning the airport base station to look up itself, error immediately, and move onto the ones that you want to use.

If you don't use the airport base station (like me - I have a linksys router and a dlink adsl modem, both very substandard) it might be slightly different. My method was to go into both the modem and the router config pages (192.168.1.1 and 10.1.1.1) and turn off DNS services. Some routers and won't let you do this, so you might have to try the above method for airport and tell it that the servers are itself.

After this is done, head to system preferences -> network -> airport -> advanced -> dns. Click the plus sign and enter either your dns servers of choice. It shouldn't matter whether you put in opendns or your isp's, it's entirely up to you. If you want the opendns.org ones they are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

With any luck, your internet problems should be fixed now. Post here if you are still having problems.

03-06-2008, 03:41 AM

I am having similar problems. Would this include pages stalling half way for a minute then finishing?

I'm not sure how to access the modem, I believe it's a Scientific Atlantic cable modem.

How do you find out what your isp's dns server is?

03-06-2008, 08:39 AM

Great post! I was about to throw away my router! I thought it was something with the router not being able to resolve dns addresses. Thanks for the post, everything is working really fast now!

03-11-2008, 10:35 AM

I am not sure it is the router or not. I had blazing speed until about 2 days ago. Something has changed and I am not sure what it is. I have the latest OS 10.5.2 and Safari 3.0.4. I have had those for a while w/o problems, but the past 2 days I have experienced really slow connections to websites. I haven't changed my router settings. I have also experienced it at work using a different router. Prior to about 2 days ago I had zero problems.

Basically when you type in an address in the address bar area, the blue progress bar stalls for a few seconds (around 10-30 seconds) before loading the page.

When I typed in the IP address for google it did load right away. Your suggestion about going into the router doesn't work if you don't have access to it, like the router at my work.

I have also noticed that Airport is constantly scanning or at least seems to scan more than it should.

Here is a link talking about that.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....sageID=6773006

03-11-2008, 12:40 PM

I am still so confused how to fix this problem!!!

03-11-2008, 03:34 PM

I did the following and it seemed to fix my problem.

Adding the OpenDNS DNS server addresses (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) to Network Preferences > Advanced > DNS.

Not sure what the heck this does, but I am able to load web pages about as fast as I was before the problem occurred.

Here is how I did it.

1. Click on or your System Preferences icon from your Dock to open up System Preferences
2. Click on the Network icon to open up the Network window
3. Click on the Advanced button
4. Click on the DNS Tab
5. Add the DNS Server addresses 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 to the DNS list by clicking the + button.

03-11-2008, 03:35 PM

I am now able to browse at normal speed and the browser doesn't hang like it was doing before I did this.

03-11-2008, 04:19 PM

thank you so much. anyone know exactly what OpenDNS is??

03-25-2008, 07:56 PM

I am a new mac user. Bought my first mac last november. Until a couple of weeks ago, all was well. Then, all of a sudden, my browsers and email slowed down, in the extreme.

I have been cursing myself for jumping to the mac world, after many years of putting up with one windows issue after another. I had just about given up on this mac (already had switched back to windows email and browsing via bootcamp) when I came upon this thread.

The only reason I joined this forum is to give thanks to muso and others for there suggestions about using the opendns dns addresses in the network preferences dialog. This fixed my problem. I had already spent many hours with applecare...to no avail. They had me go through many hoops, but none fixed this problem.

One more time...many thanks.

04-30-2008, 09:47 PM

I am using OS X 10.4.11 had the same problem but downloaded a patch from the apple support site which seemed to fix my problem. The patch was for a intel based computer which I am using. Is 1.3 MEG and said it would fix most airport extreme problems. It seems to have done that for me.

05-02-2008, 01:17 PM

Ok I have battled this for a little while and have found what appears to be the answer. The connection problem with my linksys router and leopard 10.5.2 is a simple fix. I had to update the router firmware from liksys. This seems to have solved the problem with leopard and had no impact on any of the other wireless items I use. This may be a problem you run into if you take your Macbook to another location (hot spot) where they have not updated their firmware. Or you could buy a new router with more up to date firmware. A lot like getting a new windows system and having to update the drivers for things like cameras printers etc.. I think this is the right fix and not a work around. Apple Care suggested this fix.

05-02-2008, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by TomKatt

I am using OS X 10.4.11 had the same problem but downloaded a patch from the apple support site which seemed to fix my problem. The patch was for a intel based computer which I am using. Is 1.3 MEG and said it would fix most airport extreme problems. It seems to have done that for me.

This worked for a day or so then quit working again I am hopeful that the firmware update will be much better.

05-29-2008, 04:39 PM

I suffered the same sort of problems and spent half of a day with support...

It seems that Apple finally issued a correction for this problem. Version 7.3.1 of Airport Utility solves the problem of DNS handling by AirPort Base Statation. The update itself I did in 2 steps:
1) download software when MacBook was connected to internet via cable
2) update AirPort Base Station when connected to MacBook by ethernet cable (it simply didn't work through wireless connection)

Hopefully your problems will disappear as well...

06-06-2008, 08:12 PM

The most common problems, symptoms, reasons and fixes for slow Internet connections on Leopard lists routers as a common problem where they don't handle SRV or IPv6 DNS requests. I wouldn't doubt that Apple changed Leopard to use SRV based domain name lookups even when their AirPort Express base stations didn't support it until the latest firmware update.