Slow Internet

MacMyk · Aug 11, 2004

Hello, I am on my old pc and its a athlon 2600, 512mb of ram. And its weird that the internet loads instantly but on my Powerbook connected to the same network takes longer. What could cause this?

pb specs: 1.33ghz, 256mb of ram

tariq · Aug 11, 2004

what part of "the internet" is slow? loading web pages? download/upload speeds?

MacMyk · Aug 11, 2004

The Loading of web pages is much quicker on the pc.

hype.it · Aug 12, 2004

if browsing, what browser are you using? Firefox is said to be the fastest for the mac... faster than safari but lacks many features.

MacMyk · Aug 12, 2004

I'm using Safari to browse and latley its not going to the site at all. I will type in like "www.mac-forums.com" and it says Sorry Safari Could not connect", but then if I type it again it dosnt say it and it goes to the site. I will try firefox.

-Thanks MacMyK

MoltenLava · Aug 12, 2004

Your Athlon 2600 will be always faster than 1.33GHz G4 in every aspect, including the web browsing.

As far as the browser speed goes, Safari and Firefox would be about the same. Safari might be faster actually. Firefox renders HTML and CSS more accurately, that's the reason people use Firefox.

GJH · Apr 4, 2005

Slow on loading pages

I have done most things, permission repair, clear caches, Diskwarrior, even reinstalled Panther and updated. I use DSL. I find some pages load quickly and then later on (the same session) the same page will take 6-8 seconds to load. Once loaded everything is fine. Downloads/uploads are fast. I can't figure why pages in caches would be so slow, even apple.com?? Ideas??

GJH

rmhop81 · Apr 4, 2005

i noticed the same thing when i switched over to mac. I had a dell inspiron 700m with 1.6ghz pentium m and it would be blazin fast online, but on my powerbook it's not nearly as fast, alot of the time the blue part in the url sits there for awhile then slowly goes then loads the page. It has nothing to do with the internet connection bc i have a desktop hooked up off the same router and it loads it super fast. Even noticed a big difference from wireless use on a pc notebook compared to my powerbook. not a huge deal but just noticed that pc's seem to be alot faster online. download speeds aren't the problem just pages loading all the way is the problem, just not nearly as fast as it should be. Ive also tried all the browser's and had the best luck with safari which i use all the time.

fasheezy · Apr 4, 2005

yeah, this is a problem with Macs(maybe Powerbooks in particular). two of my friends who have better or equal specs as my powerbook have noticed the same thing. my gf has a Dell that's older than my powerbook and her pages load almost instantaneously, but on the powerbook it'll take about 4-6 seconds. it's not too big of a problem, but PC's are much faster at loading web pages. and i don't know why people who post here say different, b/c it's not true. you can use safari or firefox, clear out your cache, repair disk permissions or whatever else you can think of, but it won't help. using safari or firefox will never get you even close to the speeds that a PC will load the web page. people should just live with the fact that powerbooks are not these blazing fast laptops, but they're not the slowest either. they're a good midrange speed, gotta deal with it.

D3v1L80Y · Apr 8, 2005

This isn't so much of a Windows vs. Mac issue as it is more likely to be a problem of DNS lookup times.

A technical explanation of DNS:
Every computer on the Internet has a unique Identifier. This number
is in the range 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. Now, this isn't a very
human friendly way to imagine a website, so the internet has a textual
representation of that number. answers.google.com is a computer that
is represented by the adress 216.239.35.88. Now, when you enter
answers.google.com into your web browser, the computer goes to check a
DNS computer. DNS is the 'Domain Name Server', and holds a database
of names (answers.google.com) and adresses (216.239.35.88).

In short, it could just be that your ISP hosts DNS on slow servers. Different computers and different browsers can lend to the page loading behavior differences as well.
If you wanted to speed it up on your Mac, one option is using someone elses domain server. This however, can cause problems with your ISP.

Another way is to cache the domain addresses on your Mac. The advantage of this is that when you go to the site, your computer doesn't have to go to your ISP, but instead looks at your own computer for the information. However, for a gain of a couple of seconds it would be hardly worthwhile.

One thing you might be able to do is contact your ISP, inform them of the slow servers, and inquire if this is normal. You might not get any response, and the tech may not even know what you are talking about, or they might just give you some sugar coated non-respoonse, but at least you tried.

Also, as was already stated, a faster processor will be able to interpret and display the incoming webpage faster, regardless of what browser is being used. A 233 Mhz iMac will load a page slower comared to a dual 2.0 Ghz G5 on the same speed connection loading the same page.

Several hardware and software factors can and will come into play when page loading differences occur. DNS though, is probably a good thing to look at first in your particular situation.

Personally, I see no major difference in the page loading times between my Windows PC's or my Macs and never really have.

fasheezy · Apr 8, 2005

D3v1L80Y said:
This isn't so much of a Windows vs. Mac issue as it is more likely to be a problem of DNS lookup times.

A technical explanation of DNS:
Every computer on the Internet has a unique Identifier. This number
is in the range 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. Now, this isn't a very
human friendly way to imagine a website, so the internet has a textual
representation of that number. answers.google.com is a computer that
is represented by the adress 216.239.35.88. Now, when you enter
answers.google.com into your web browser, the computer goes to check a
DNS computer. DNS is the 'Domain Name Server', and holds a database
of names (answers.google.com) and adresses (216.239.35.88).

In short, it could just be that your ISP hosts DNS on slow servers. Different computers and different browsers can lend to the page loading behavior differences as well.
If you wanted to speed it up on your Mac, one option is using someone elses domain server. This however, can cause problems with your ISP.

Another way is to cache the domain addresses on your Mac. The advantage of this is that when you go to the site, your computer doesn't have to go to your ISP, but instead looks at your own computer for the information. However, for a gain of a couple of seconds it would be hardly worthwhile.

One thing you might be able to do is contact your ISP, inform them of the slow servers, and inquire if this is normal. You might not get any response, and the tech may not even know what you are talking about, or they might just give you some sugar coated non-respoonse, but at least you tried.

Also, as was already stated, a faster processor will be able to interpret and display the incoming webpage faster, regardless of what browser is being used. A 233 Mhz iMac will load a page slower comared to a dual 2.0 Ghz G5 on the same speed connection loading the same page.

Several hardware and software factors can and will come into play when page loading differences occur. DNS though, is probably a good thing to look at first in your particular situation.

Personally, I see no major difference in the page loading times between my Windows PC's or my Macs and never really have.

I definitely have to take exception to what you said here. I don't think it is a problem with the ISP at all. I bring my Powerbook to other people's apartments and their Windows machines load instantaneously while my internet loads at the same speed as my network at home. They have all different ISP's also, some have Verizon DSL, some have Optimum Online, some have Wireless G networks, some have Wireless B networks, some have Windows machines, some have Powerbooks equal to or faster than mine, and the result has ALWAYS been the same. Windows machines load instantly, Macs load much slower.

Jefe3223 · Apr 8, 2005

fasheezy said:
I definitely have to take exception to what you said here. I don't think it is a problem with the ISP at all. I bring my Powerbook to other people's apartments and their Windows machines load instantaneously while my internet loads at the same speed as my network at home. They have all different ISP's also, some have Verizon DSL, some have Optimum Online, some have Wireless G networks, some have Wireless B networks, some have Windows machines, some have Powerbooks equal to or faster than mine, and the result has ALWAYS been the same. Windows machines load instantly, Macs load much slower.

I don't think it's fair to make such broad generalizations. My computer loads webpages much fater then the ones here at school and slightly faster then my roommates pc. I don't know the reason, but a whole "mac is this" and "windows is this" just doesn't seem quite reasonable/fair.

MacMyk · Apr 8, 2005

I didn't start this thread to compare the operating systems just the internet speed. Even my dads laptop loads quicker than my mac and it is a Pentium 3 700mhz. It doesn't make sense that a 1.33ghz would process web pages slower than a 700mhz on the same line. There must be something slowing it down. I noticed a bit of a speed increase with firefox but it still doesn't even compare to other computers on this network.

rman · Apr 8, 2005

You can try BroadbandOptimizer.

technologist · Apr 8, 2005

http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/05/0214.html
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Note that "speed" may depend on the particular web page (does it use CSS? Lots of images? Form elements? Scripts? Plugins?) and how you measure (time until a page starts to appear, or until it finishes loading)

That said, IE under Windows feels "snappier" to me, on a subjective level, than Safari on my Mac. But the difference is so slight that it doesn't annoy me.

And to MacMyk: You need more RAM. Using OS X with 256MB is painful, no matter what you're doing.

rmhop81 · Apr 8, 2005

technologist said:
http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/05/0214.html
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Note that "speed" may depend on the particular web page (does it use CSS? Lots of images? Form elements? Scripts? Plugins?) and how you measure (time until a page starts to appear, or until it finishes loading)

That said, IE under Windows feels "snappier" to me, on a subjective level, than Safari on my Mac. But the difference is so slight that it doesn't annoy me.

And to MacMyk: You need more RAM. Using OS X with 256MB is painful, no matter what you're doing.

even with my powerbook with 768mb of ram, it's just really slow compared to any pc out there. I have an old old thinkpad, 266mhz actually and that loads webpages alot faster than my powerbook does. I've tried every browser out there and it's the same story with each one, the pages load slow and it takes awhile to load the page all the way through, so it has nothing to do with ram and absolutely nothing to do with the ISP whatsoever. It's a mac thing.

MacMyk · Apr 9, 2005

technologist said:
http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/05/0214.html
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Note that "speed" may depend on the particular web page (does it use CSS? Lots of images? Form elements? Scripts? Plugins?) and how you measure (time until a page starts to appear, or until it finishes loading)

That said, IE under Windows feels "snappier" to me, on a subjective level, than Safari on my Mac. But the difference is so slight that it doesn't annoy me.

And to MacMyk: You need more RAM. Using OS X with 256MB is painful, no matter what you're doing.

I purchased a 1gb stick so I have 1.25GB of ram right now. It feels a littler quicker but still slower than my PC. It doesn't really bother me but I just want to know why it is slower.

Slow Internet

MacMyk

tariq

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MacMyk

hype.it

MacMyk

MoltenLava

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GJH

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rmhop81

fasheezy

D3v1L80Y

fasheezy

Jefe3223

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MacMyk

rman

technologist

rmhop81

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