# super slow (wifi) networking



## arri (Jan 19, 2009)

hi

i have a mac mini (intel) on which wifi-networking is really flaky when booted into osx.

- it's not so much the actual transfer speed, but rather the "connection responsiveness". by this i mean that sometimes connections time-out, while a next attempt to connect succeeds in a few milliseconds.
- the issue doesn't appear to be DNS-related, because it's not there when i use a cable to connect to the same router.
- for clarity i made sure there's only 1 nic active when connecting to the router. 
- the issue is not there when i boot the mini into linux.
- in all cases the network uses DHCP
- all other machines (mac/win/linux/ppc/x86/802.11b/g/n) don't appear to suffer from this. it seems specific to the combi mini+osx.

any ideas?

arri


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## Satcomer (Jan 20, 2009)

First of all what wireless security and on what wireless frequency on what router?

Well try some of these steps:

1. Open System Preferences->Network and at the top of the pane select a New "Location" and connect to the wireless.
2. In System Preferences->Network hit the "Advanced" button and in the TCP/IP tab turn off IPv6.


Super Geek Airport card reset:
1. Navigate to /System/Library/Extensions and move the files (you will need an Admin password to move) AppleAirPort.kext to the desktop and then immediately restart. It will take a while to startup because it is re-writing the driver again. 
2. Startup airport to see if this fix works. If it doesn't rebuild the AppleAirPort.kext file then you can move it back and then restart again.


Hopefully one of these tricks might help. Good Luck


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## Satcomer (Jan 21, 2009)

Any updates? 

One trick i saw on the net was for a Mac user to Reset Your PRAM and that helped.

Plus I found the an article called Tutorial: Fixing Wireless connectivity (including AirPort) problems: Dropouts, slow speed, more might help (I am not sure if you need a iFixIt account to do so though).


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## arri (Jan 22, 2009)

thanks for your responses,

i think i tracked down the cause.
it seems the mini just doesn't like it when there's a 802.11b client on the network.
theoretically this would only bring down the entire network to a max of 11Mbit/s, 
but somehow the mini has a hard time understanding what's going on...
as long as the (only) b-client is offline, everything works like a charm.

interesting suggestion thought, removing the .kext.
does osx actually re-create the kext on the next boot from firmware or something?


gr
arri


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## Satcomer (Jan 25, 2009)

arri said:


> interesting suggestion thought, removing the .kext.
> does osx actually re-create the kext on the next boot from firmware or something?



Nope I screwed up! I will post the actual article.



> 1. Download the Mac OS X combo updater directly precedent to your current system version if you applied an incremental Mac OS X update (e.g. Mac OS X 10.4.9), or your current system version if you applied a security update from Apple's download page.
> 
> 2. Download and install the shareware application Pacifist.
> 
> ...


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## arri (Jan 29, 2009)

okwell,

i didn't try removing the .kext anyways.
in my case it's really something between the wifi-router and different connected clients. i'm not so what exactly, but i just setteled with a cat-6 cable. i'm not so fond of wifi anyways. a cable just works.


as a side note, to test something (embedding font in an .app package) i deleted HelveticaNeue.dfont from /System/Library/Fonts and discovered that osx will actually re-create it.


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