[rambo47]

My home network all runs on a Graphite AirPort Base Station connected to a cable modem, including my PowerMac (OSX 10.2.6), Titanium PowerBook 667 MHz (OSX 10.2.6), an IBM ThinkPad (Windows XP Pro) with an Orinoco WaveLAN Silver card, and now my beloved 12" G4 PowerBook (OSX 10.2.6). All of the computers connect to the internet via the same Graphite ABS and get well over 1500 Kbps throughput according to 2wire.com's bandwith meter. Except the new 12" PowerBook. With this I'm only getting about 100 Kbps, which blows. I only noticed the drastic slowdown recently, and the only thing I've done is update to 10.2.6 via the software updater. Tonight I ran the combined updater to see it that would solve anything but alas, no joy. I ran Disk Utility to repair permissions, opened a terminal window and used fsck -y, all with no results. It's starting to sound like this is not an isolated problem as stories of similar slowdowns crop up on other forums and support sites. I'm about to reinstall the OS but before I do I'd welcome any advice fromt the MacNN faithful.

[cambro]

Hmmmmm. Very interesting.

I was just looking into a slow-down I perceived on two Tibooks (Ghz and 400) running off of a cable modem connected to a Linksys wireless router. The set-up is at my uncle's house, so I haven't had time to really flesh it out or measure the speed at a "meter site" but the symptom sounds identical to the one you describe.

I didn't really notice a huge slow-down the last time I was at my uncle's place (we were probably running 10.2.4 or .5), but this time it was terrible with 10.2.6. I attributed the slowdown to a router configuration problem but maybe it is the mac's fault!

Post back if you find the cause. I'll do the same.

[cambro]

Duhhh. Didn't think of this before....

I'm at school now and have access to superfast wireless points all over the place. I checked the speed of the same machine that seemed to dog on the cable connection served off the Linksys router and the problem does not appear to be a general 10.2.6 airport problem.

At school, I got over 4 Mb/s (bandwidthplace.com test) using airport...which was FASTER than the 1.4 Mb/s I got just moments later on the same test using my ethernet connection!

So, back to my original suspicion...maybe there is something in the configuration of the base station that is slowing things down?

EDIT: I reran the ethernet test and it was basically the same as the wireless on the second run. Main point was that the airport was NOT any slower than the ethernet.

[rambo47]

The folks at Apple have been no help. One guy said he "thinks he heard something about a patch...." but couldn't be any more specific than that, and I can't find any mention of said patch. Today I did something that goes against my grain - I bought a new AE Base Station. Problem solved, all computers zipping along nicely.

On the one hand I really hate that there is no help for a problem with supposed backward compatability. These things are supposed to work together seamlessly, right? We're seeing more and more of this crappy customer support from Apple lately and frankly, it worries me. I love the products but am constantly frustrated by the company itself. Maybe His Steveness needs a good b!tchslap.

In the end I rationalized the purchase by saying, "Well, I have had the graphite base station for several years, and definitely is yesterday's technology." How long are these old base stations supposed to last? I've gotten pretty good milage out of mine. Plus, I really have wanted the USB port on the AEBS for network printing. But in the end the deciding factor was that I just didn't want to wait for a fix to my problem, especially with nothing on the horizon. I wanted a solution today, and got it. A $264 solution, but a solution none the less.