05-03-2008, 09:00 AM

I came home last night, and turned on the computer to surf the web. What i found was a really slow connection. I thought. WTF? y?

i did recognize this slowness b4, on three occasions the connection was excruciatingly slow, so i panicked and tried all my apps connected to the web. mail, didn't connect. adium, same. safari, loaded slower than dialup., and so i tried opera, opened it and all my mail loaded up, adium contact list became filled up, and the page in safari loaded up in a second. so i closed opera, and went bak to safari. i just shrugged it off, hoping it wouldn't happen again (happened 2 more times)

so i come back yesterday night, and its really slow. so i try the opera thing again, however this time, no luck. i load a page in opera, it takes the same time as in safari.

so i open activity monitor and see its about 4 kb/s with short burst of 50 kb/s , and an occasional 115kb/s.

i decided to turn off the mac. and with that, turn off the modem (i also unplugged both devices). i waited 20 seconds for each individual device, and plugged them in as well as turned them on. so i log on, start up safari, and still no luck. I open up sys. pref. go to network, its says its connected to so-and-so IP, ok, i go to firewall, and its says only allow essential services, but in the box below, it says Printer Sharing, and ODS Agent, (i don know wat it is, but its in core services, so i don touch it.

i load up all my apps that rely on the internet, mail barely loads, adium doesn't at all, and safari...

i don know what it is... it was raining last night, and this morning its foggy..


here are my specs: imac osx 10.5.2
and outdoor wireless modem (catches signal from towers, as i live in rural area.)


somebody please leave suggestions.

srry if this is in the wrong place


thx...

05-03-2008, 09:22 AM

I had a 2 year saga with Comcast/Time Warner and getting them to fix my cable internet service.

My issue ... every time it rained, within 10 minutes I lost my internet connection.
I would have no connection until after the sun had returned for about 3-5 hours.
So, if it rained for 2 days, I was down for 2 days and the connection would start working around 9-10:00 the next day.
If it rained in the morning for half an hour and then cleared up to a nice sunny day - service went out and returned later in the day about 3-5 hours after the sun came back out.

And of course, they can't send a technician out while you're service is down - no - they schedule it for 4-5 days after you call it in. Well, by then everything is dried out and my service is fine. Had them to the house over 20 times in that 2 year period. See, they wouldn't send a tech out while my service was down, unless I had the same issue 3 times during a 30 day period.

Well, it just doesn't typically rain here 3 times within 30 days. And 20 times over 2 years was just not enough for them. And as I was the only one in the neighborhood that used their service, neither was the issue important to them. I could go on about this saga, but you get the point.

Finally had a line tech come out that realized even when working I wasn't getting a full strength signal. He was able to find a cap, back down the line that was half full of water. So when it rained, the cap would fill up and no service. The sun comes out, and some water leaks out the sides and enough evaporates to allow the service to work again.

Bottom line, if it is the rain causing the service to go out, make sure you call your ISP every time, and make them come to your house every time it goes out or slows to a crawl. The first couple of times, you'll think they don't need to, since by the time of the appointment you're back up and running again. And call them back to give you a credit for the period of time your service was down. They won't do that on the initial call. You have to call back the 2nd time to get that credit.

A couple of things to do to prep for the phone call with your ISP - reset the modem, unplug it for a minute and plug it back in and take the router out of the mix and connect your computer directly to the modem.

05-03-2008, 10:49 PM

the cap back issue is intresting, but i have wireless/tower internet, so the rain prob. affects it more...


btw its fixed now, clouds cleared up, everythings back to normal :sighofrelief: