[tomfrog]

I've got an SMC Barricade wired/wireless router with 2 Macs hooked up wired (a G3 MT on 10baseT and an iMac supposedly on 100baseT. The G3 seems to have reasonable throughput, even on the slower link, but the iMac is excruciatingly slow. Can somebody point me in the direction of a Unix command and/or utility that I can use to figure out whether I'm getting errors on the link?

thanks

[John Strung]

The first thing to do is to check the end wiring of the cable you are using to connect the iMac to the router against the wiring diagram found here:

http://www.incentre.net/incentre/frame/ethernet.html

Let us know what you find.

If that doesn't solve your problem, let us know which model iMac you are using and what system software.

[tomfrog]

Thanks - great resource - but it's not the wiring on the cable. I get data through, but far more slowly than I should.

It's a Rev B iMac (233) with 196 MB of memory, running 10.2.6. Trying to run System Update is a bear, because it takes forever.

The cable _is_ long (90 ft?) so I want to check if I'm getting errors

[John Strung]

Originally posted by tomfrog:
Thanks - great resource - but it's not the wiring on the cable. I get data through, but far more slowly than I should.

The cable _is_ long (90 ft?) so I want to check if I'm getting errors

If the cable is not wired correctly, you will get slow transfers because you will get lots of collisions. This is explained at:

Twisted Pair Theory


100BaseT ethernet is very fussy about the order the wires are attached to the pins, especially in long cables. Did you check the wiring against the diagram?

[John Strung]

P.S. If the problem happens only with OS X, and not with OS 9, then the problem is not the cable, but might be a purported unresolved problem that the OS X ethernet drivers might not work properly with early iMac NICS. See:

THIS LINK

and THIS LINK

But before you conclude it is the NIC, take 30 seconds to check the end wiring of the cable. Cables are cheap to replace or re-crimp.

[tomfrog]

Problem solved! I believe it was indeed the NIC problem. I put a 10baseT hub between the router and the iMac and it improved performance considerably. Thanks for the help