[englandmademe]

Hi Everyone

This problem is driving me mad so I'm really hoping somebody can help!

I'm based in the UK and have a Virgin Media 10mb cable internet connnection feed into a wireless router.

On my macbook (black) everything is hunky dory. Speedtest.net shows a download speed of 9.75mb which is fine.

However on the same network on my white 24" iMac I'm getting 5.45 mb download speed.

Not only am I getting half the speed, it actually feels much slower. Clicking on web pages I'm regularly getting the 'waiting for...' message for an age (5-10 seconds). Ebay is virtually unusable. Sometimes I have had connection error pages (often in the middle of some online transaction...)

Clearly not an ISP issue since all is fine on the laptop.

Network settings seem identical - even the spec of the machines are comparable. (imac 2.16Ghz core 2 duo with 2gb RAM - macbook 2Ghz core 2 duo with 2gb RAM)

Can anyone give me some suggestions as two why the internet might be half as slow on one machine when they are both using the same wireless connection...

Thanks in advance.

[Simon]

Out of curiosity, do speeds on the iMac get better if you change its DNS settings?

How about you try Google Public DNS: 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4.

[englandmademe]

Thanks Simon - just tried your suggestion, but unfortunately doesn't seem to have made any difference...

[ghporter]

When was the last time you restarted your wireless router? Sometimes these boxes get "confused" and have problems with one port, or with passing data to one specific end point. Give that a shot if you haven't VERY recently done so.

[GENERAL_SMILEY]

Try running the iMac wired - ie. ethernet connection to the router. Are you still getting a lower speed / poor connections?

If not maybe it is because your iMac is near something which interferes with your wireless? Do you sit your mac on top of a mini burrito microwave, next to a cordless phone etc... All of these can make a difference.

Have you ever run any sort of broadband optimiser, maintenance application which claims to make you faster on broadband connections? These are often included in 'cleaning' programs, I do not think they are particularly good, and can permanently change your download speed.

Install OSX on to a spare firewire drive, boot from it - do you still have different speeds?

I recently got Virgin Media 50mb, and an old Powerbook I had only got 1MB/s (as opposed to 5MB/s on my MBP), after reinstall it could get 2.3MB/s (this is about 25mbs on SpeedTest) - and this is the fastest it can go - I think because of it's 1GHZ G4 processor.

Lastly you could install DD-WRT firmware on your router - virgin gave me a d-link dir 615 which works well with it. This won't really directly help you, but it does make your router much more flexible, give you proper logging, and the ability to prioritise machines and types of network traffic (QOS).