Slow internet with 9/Explorer

ElDiabloConCaca

ElDiabloConCaca

U.S.D.A. Prime
I recently acquired a PowerMac 8500/150 ($100! Cheap!) and have re-formatted/installed OS 9.1 on it. I downloaded and installed the most recent Internet Explorer as well... 5.1.7 I believe. The problem is that Explorer is slow as molasses when I download files! Even the version of Explorer that ships with 9.1 is slow!

I have a 1.5Mbit DSL connection and frequently get speeds in excess of 160-170k/sec on my other computer (G4/400) using Explorer, Safari, Fetch, Mozilla, Camino... hell, whatever! So I thought it might be an Explorer problem on the 8500... I downloaded Mozilla and Netscape and tried them both and my speed has returned to normal. All computers are being served through a DLink router. All other computers get the full 1.5Mbit bandwidth. I even tried plugging the 8500 into different ports on the router to see if that might help.

I'm testing the download speeds with the MacOSX 10.2.6 Combo Updater from Apple's servers -- just a big file served on a fast server so I can be sure it's not just an internet connection problem -- Explorer won't go over 20-30k/sec, while Mozilla and Netscape (versions 7.0.2 and Communicator 4.8) see speeds in the 160-170k/sec range. I even re-formatted/reinstalled OS 9.1 from scratch, and the problem persists.

Now, I just got a little utility called OS9Helper to be able to update the system on the 8500 to 9.2.2 (the farthest it goes natively is 9.1) and still the problem persists. This wouldn't be such a big deal, but Mozilla and Netscape are quite a bit slower than Explorer with this configuration.

Anyone else experienced this problem or have a solution?
 
My theory is just that Internet Exploiter is the worst browser on any Mac. Even Links gives faster download speeds.
 
Well, great! I agree too, but that still doesn't explain why it would do that.

The fact of the matter is that Explorer works faster (in terms of the UI and rendering) with that particular setup than the other browsers available. So, I'd like to use it on that setup. Don't get me wrong, I hate MS. I hate Explorer. But not so much that I'd sacrifice that much speed to use another browser.

I'd just like to know why Explorer is only downloading at a max of 20-30k/sec when the other browsers achieve 160-170k/sec. And it's not because it's the worst browser on the planet (although that's true) -- there's something else going on here.
 
Might be just a limitation microsoft built into the code. I seem to remember a similar problem back before I had OS X. I just suggest do your browsing with IE since its fastest for you, and then if you find something to download just copy the link into Netscape or other browser.

John
 
Well, that's what I'm doing right now -- actually, I've committed myself to using Mozilla, which is decent -- just not nearly as fast as IE in respect to rendering and percieved UI speed.

I doubt that Microsoft built this limitation into the code, since on my G4/400, i can reboot into an almost identical OS 9 environment and get speeds on par with what I should be seeing with the same version of IE. I thought, at first, that it may be the speed of the actual machine, since it *IS* old and slow, but after trying Mozilla and Netscape, I feel it is a problem with IE in that setup -- perhaps I disabled an extension that I need or something? I DID disable all the ODBC drivers, since I don't use those, but left the Microsoft OLE extensions active. I also have Action Menus and Action Files installed and active, but doubt that could be the problem since it exhibits the same behavior with those extensions disabled.

VERY baffling problem. Never seen this before. I even tried bumping up/down the maximum number of concurrent downloads in the preferences to see if that would help -- nope, it didn't.

The thing that leads me to believe that it's something with my setup and IE is that this is consistent -- it's not just a few web pages or files, it's EVERYTHING. Whole internet. FTP downloads through Explorer go just as slow.
 
I have an iMac G4 now and I used to have a 7200/dual 180 and ran IE5 on both machines. I haven't had much problem, in fact IE has been faster than Netscape on any computer I have ever used them on. I think the slow performance you are seeing could be due to the fact that any version of IE above 5 is intended for MacOSX and might even be optimized for that platform. I know MacOSX 10.1 comes with IE 5.2. Here are some things to try:

--Download and use IE 5.0 for Mac OS 9

--IE Preferences/Web Browser/Advanced
-Lower your "cache" to 0 MB
-Update pages "never"
-Max Connections "4"

--IE Preferences/Recieving Files/Download Options/Download Destination
-"Always download files to the download folder"

--Up your RAM allotment for IE to 15 or 20MB.

I hope some of this might help you. Let me know if any of it gives you a marked improvement.
 
Hmmm... well, IE 5.1.7 is specifically for OS 9... and I used the IE that came pre-installed with OS 9.1 and it still exhibited the same behavior. I'll try bumping the memory up a little more, but that's usually the first thing I do after installing a program -- I'm plenty generous with RAM allocation in OS 9.

I'll see if I can't get my hands on an older version of IE -- I don't think Microsoft offers downloads of IE preceding the most recent releases.

STRANGE! Netscape 7 is for OS X as well, but it's offered for OS 9 as well and runs just as fast as it should. By fast, I mean that the download speeds I achieve with the browser are consistent with the speed I should see on my DSL line.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top