Mac internet randomly slow...

[streetshine]

hello there dear PH, Currently having a slight problem with my mac's internet connection, and I am wondering if you can help!

Lately (call it a month or so) my internet on my mac has been acting a bit weird. The connection itself will be lightning fast one day, and slow as hell the next. For example, yesterday, 1080p youtube videos would load at a speed where I can watch as it loads. Today, i cannot watch whilst it loads with only a "standard" youtube video.

Another example of what is happening (this is probably the weirdest!) is when opening up safari and clicking "home", google (my homepage, obviously) will load instantly, as will the search I do, for example, facebook or pistonheads. But when I go to click on the website, it will not load for what feels like years, and I will have to close the window, and do it again. Once again, sometimes lightning quick, sometimes dead slow. This does not happen on my PC, only on my mac.

I am running a mac pro with OS X version 10.5.8, and 4gb of ram. The same issue happens with firefox.

I ran a test on speedtest.net, and got the following results -

download of 1.45 MB/S

upload of 0.81 MB/S

ping of 58 ms.

I cannot understand why this has all of a sudden started happening, as the connection used to be lightning quick, and load youtube HD, stagevu etc etc very quickly.

Any ideas?

[Blue Meanie]

Sounds like it is likely to be your internet connection to be honest.

Maybe take a screengrab of your activity monitor when fast, and when slow, and compare, and maybe there is a process that is slowing it down.

Edited by Blue Meanie on Thursday 22 April 23:46

[streetshine]

thanks for the help. what I cant understand is that my ISP (talk talk) has always been the same since I got the mac. No changes, no nothing.

[Leithen]

Try the usual things - watch activity monitor, try different browsers, reboot, try opendns, use clicktoflash in safari, switch Ethernet ports....

My first suspect however in this kind of scenario is a reboot of the router. It might be on the way out.