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driven · Dec 24, 2002, 08:12 PM

Hello!

I have an iMac DV SE 500 (G3). I am running OS 9.0.4. I have installed an Airport card in it. It is connected to a Netgear 814 wireless router. It does work. However, it seems to be very slow in comparision with a PC that I have here running on the same wireless network. (It seems to take forever to browse a page, etc.)

Is this normal? Is there something else that I have to configure?

Any thoughts / advice would be most appreciated. Thank you.

ghporter · 10:43 PM

That's not at all normal. I would check the settings in both the AirPort card and the Netgear base. One could be set for 1Mbps or something odd like that. Also, is your signal strength OK? If it's kind of weak you could be getting a lot of retransmission traffic, which can slow pages down.

Another issue depends on what kind of broadband connection you have. If it's DSL, you should set your "MTU" to 1492, but if it's cable, use 1500. This affects packet fragmentation, and is really good at slowing things down.

driven · Dec 24, 2002, 10:50 PM

Originally posted by GHPorter:
That's not at all normal. I would check the settings in both the AirPort card and the Netgear base. One could be set for 1Mbps or something odd like that. Also, is your signal strength OK? If it's kind of weak you could be getting a lot of retransmission traffic, which can slow pages down.

Another issue depends on what kind of broadband connection you have. If it's DSL, you should set your "MTU" to 1492, but if it's cable, use 1500. This affects packet fragmentation, and is really good at slowing things down.

Thanks for the reply. My signal strength is like 95%.

I am connecting on a Cable Modem (1 - 1.5 MB).

Where can I set the MTU in Mac OS9.

ghporter · Dec 25, 2002, 09:34 AM

The setting I'm talking about is in the Netgear's setup. I don't have one to walk through it with you, but the browser-based configuration pages have a place (somewhere) that lets you set the MTU. (I cheated and wandered through the Netgear forum on Broadband Reports.com to find out what I could about your router.)

driven · Dec 25, 2002, 10:06 AM

Originally posted by GHPorter:
The setting I'm talking about is in the Netgear's setup. I don't have one to walk through it with you, but the browser-based configuration pages have a place (somewhere) that lets you set the MTU. (I cheated and wandered through the Netgear forum on Broadband Reports.com to find out what I could about your router.)

I'll take a look. But:

- It's quite fast from my wired computers (G4 Cube, PC).
- It's quite fast from my wireless laptop. (Dell)

It seems that the delay is on the DNS lookup. If I'm going to my internal network it FLIES. If I go directly to an IP address it is faster.

Now the big question: Why am I only having DNS delays on the one machine? (imac) ?

I'm starting to think it's less of an airport problem and more of an OS9/Airport issue.

Thoughts?

driven · Dec 25, 2002, 10:07 AM

Originally posted by GHPorter:
The setting I'm talking about is in the Netgear's setup. I don't have one to walk through it with you, but the browser-based configuration pages have a place (somewhere) that lets you set the MTU. (I cheated and wandered through the Netgear forum on Broadband Reports.com to find out what I could about your router.)

Oh ... and in case I forgot/forget to mention it .... THANK YOU for your AWESOME effort to help me. It is most appreciated.

ghporter · Dec 25, 2002, 11:03 AM

You're welcome. Glad to help.

I would tend to agree that there may be an OS9-AirPort issue here, but it may simply be the difference between how OS9 and the OS in your Cube deal with networking. Without being too technical (or over my own head) OS9 and OS X handle things differently.

My first suggestion here would be for you to see if your iMac has an entry for any DNS servers. If there's no address there, put in the address your router says it's getting from your ISP. One noted issue with Macs is that the DHCP client (in both OS 9 and X) acts slightly differently from Unix style clients, or rather servers react to it slightly differently.

In either case you should get an automatic IP from your router, and the iMac should look at the router for gateway and DNS addresses.

driven · Dec 25, 2002, 11:17 AM

Yeah ... I am getting the primary DNS from my router. (Not the secondary, but this is the same as my Cube, which is wired to the same router and goes without this issue ... in both OS9 and OSX.)

I'm going to hard code the IP address, gateway addr and DNS and see if it makes a difference.

If not, do you think the "Genius bar" at the Apple store would be helpful?

ghporter · Dec 26, 2002, 03:43 PM

It couldn't hurt to check with them, and with the KnowledgeBase, too.

driven · Dec 26, 2002, 08:09 PM

Well .... I came up with a fix.

I hard coded the IP address in order to hard code my DNS Servers. I eliminated the primary server and hard-coded the secondary as the ONLY server.

It flies now.

Why the iMac/Airport has a problem with the primary DNS while every other computer on the network works with it is beyond me. It had like a 10-30 second delay for EACH DNS hit. Obviously as you surfed and the cache built up it went faster, but still ....

Thoughts? (I have a workaround, but I hate it when I don't understand the initial problem.)