wireless Mac slow, PC fast

Had Virgin 10MB Broadband installed today.
Connected via Ethernet to the router I get 9.7ish - perfect.
BUT
Connected wirelessly I get around 5.7.
The engineer couldn't explain this - said he'd expect a tiny drop, nowhere near this much.
NOW HERE"S THE WEIRD BIT:
I get this slow speed wirelessly to my G5 iMac, also wirelessly to my Mac Powerbook - both showing FULL wireless signal strength, even with laptop sat next to wireless base station, and yet a wireless PC laptop I borrowed shows full speed ie 9.7ish.

Can there a setting on both my Macs that is crippling the wireless speed???

I've tried using the Netgear router supplied, also my Apple Time Capsule, and get the same result. The setup is clearly PUTTING OUT nearly 10Meg wirelessly, but my Macs aren't showing it!!!

Any help greatly appreciated!

Try changing your DNS settings. It seems to work

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/148535-macbook-internet-slow.html

Best of luck

Thanks for this, but unfortunately it's made no difference.
Any other ideas?

How are you testing this and getting these numbers 9.7 and 5.7?

An online speed test or a network test?

I'm using Speedtest.net - it's what the Virgin installation engineer uses.

What has me confused then is the Windows notebook getting full speed just like it was hardwired to the router and the Macs not. Wireless G is no where near as fast as say 100Base-T which gets around your 9.7 here transferring files over my network, but switch to Wireless G and it's way slower which is normal. Are you hooked up Wireless N or Wireless G with your Macs and Windows notebook? With the speed you are getting from Virgin I would expect G wireless to be slower but the Windows system should also be slower.

I would do some tests here and show you the results but I only have 3Mbps DSL so it would be a lot slower to start with than your internet. Here I get the same speeds using Wireless G or 100Base-T on my Macs or Windows machines.

Speakeasy - Speed Test

Try that test. This is what I and others in my area who work on networks use. I am pretty sure you will get the same results but try it anyway.

Also what version of OSX are you running on your Macs and which web browser when you are running the speedtest.net test?

Aha! Mystery partially solved!

I had internet sharing switched on on the iMac G5 (sometimes I give a laptop internet access via ethernet from it). When I switch sharing off it goes up to full speed.

ALSO it seems that if my laptop is also on the wireless network the iMac drops from 9.something to 7.something. Is that normal? This is even when the laptop is idle, not downloading anything, just connected to the wireless.

Only mystery that remains is why my laptop (G4 Powerbook Titanium 1GHz - quite old I admit) runs at full speed when ethernet connected, but drops to 3 or 4 when wireless, even when it's the only computer on the wireless network? Is there a list of "default" network settings I can apply to my laptop? Could there be a conflict of settings between the 2 computers that causes the drop in speed?

jimbobgold said:

Only mystery that remains is why my laptop (G4 Powerbook Titanium 1GHz - quite old I admit) runs at full speed when ethernet connected, but drops to 3 or 4 when wireless, even when it's the only computer on the wireless network? Is there a list of "default" network settings I can apply to my laptop? Could there be a conflict of settings between the 2 computers that causes the drop in speed?

Click to expand...

If this machine has 802.11b then 4mbps could be more or less normal (~5mbps).

One other tip; disable 'Configure IPv6' in the TCP/IP section of your network settings - this sometimes slows down connections that are not compatible (i.e. almost all of them).