Has Leopard killed your Network speed?


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Ever since upgrading to Leopard, I’ve been having a problem with my wireless network. I’ve tried switching to an Airport Extreme – and I switched back to my Netgear Router – I’ve tried everything I can think of – but it’s still a problem.

What happens is that the wireless connection just seems to stall or die momentarily – then it fires back to life. Sometimes it feels like I’m on dial-up. It sucks.

Turns out I’m not alone as this, this, and this Apple support forum show.

I find the whole thing incredibly frustrating, and I’m getting tired of waiting for a fix. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for something as essential as networking to function properly. There appears to be no solid connection of any kind from hardware to hardware to identify the problem…which I’m sure makes things more difficult…BUT COME ON APPLE – get this thing fixed already.

Have any of you had this issue – if so, have you been able to get it resolved?


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

47 Comments

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  1. There seems to be two related issues. 1. Sometimes DNS lookups fail and Safari cannot locate any sites at all. 2. The connection to my wireless router will drop and then restart. This will interrupt any download stream that is currently in progress.

    Both issues are very frustrating and never occurred with Tiger.

    Mark
    (1st generation Intel MBP)

  2. I have the same problem and its been driving me nuts. The connection just stops (usually on DNS lookups) then springs back to life again. I have found that firing up a terminal and doing a traceroute on a site like google.com usually “wakes up the connection from its slumber”, but yeah, I hear ya.

    My wife has a powerbook G4 running Tiger and she never has any problems.

  3. @AT

    My wife is running a G4 Mac Mini. It has Leopard on it…but she never has this problem either. It’s driving me crazy.

  4. Yea, my troubles seemed to happen after the 10.5.1 update. I use a macbook with airport extreme. I have been resetting the airport, replacing and rearranging cables, etc. Come on Apple. I’m thinking of mothballing my airport.

  5. Could it be an intel mac thing? I had trouble too with Tiger, but I always blamed my router. But its gotten much worse with with Leopard.

    Now that I’m thinking more about it, I think all trouble started after an update to Tiger that claimed to have fixed Airport issues! They fixed it alright!

    Wired networking works flawlessly! So I doubt its a general networking issue in OS X.

  6. Make sure to enter the DNS servers manually in the Airport Utility. Sometimes using the automatic or optional entries don’t work correctly. Manually entering them gives the system a boost as well. Also, if you already have entered them manually, check (via the Airport Utility) that they haven’t changed. If they have, then change them to the new settings.

  7. iMac 24 aluminum, Leopard since day one, clear connection all the way. Wireless via Airport Express. I use Safari and Mail exclusively for web and email.

    As with any major OS upgrade, there are myriad combinations of previously compatible hardware and software that will cause problems if not updated. As the old adage goes: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

  8. So I’m not alone. I thought it was something to do with my proxy because we use that here in UAE. The funny thing is a times it works so well that you start to have second thoughts and at times it just dies. and since leopard my other windows pc has been acting up to. Thanks for making the connection with leopard and pls update us if you find a fix.

  9. Same problem here with a Mac Mini and a Macbook. The first was the first Intel model and the macbook was from about nine months ago.

    Just manually entered my DNS servers and the site lookup *seems* to be better…it’s too early to tell.

    Haven’t used it long enough to know if the random drops have been fixed just by setting the DNS servers. Doubtful of that.

    Using 10.5.1. I’ve never had this much trouble with an OS upgrade from Apple.

  10. Upgraded Tiger with Leopard (not a clean install, archive and install), no problems with wireless networking. Everything working as it did before. I did turn off the Unsanity APE before installing Leopard.

  11. We have two wintel laptops and two G5 Macs in the house and all of them are sharing the latest Apple 811n router without any problem. As a matter of fact, my iMac G5 used to have a rather poor reception because of its physical position under Tiger. With the update, I have a much faster and continuous wireless access, with this particular mac, whereas before my network gets broken easily when someone turns on the the microwave. I have had to change the network location on one of the MacBook pro to make it work automatically each time it comes out of sleep. Have not noticed any slow down in the network, except for a speed up in the poorly located iMac G5.

  12. I had this problem on one of three computers that I installed Leopard on. To fix the issue, I put in new DNS server numbers manually in the network system prefs. My network access speeds are now lightning fast. If you have a router, I’d make the DNS change there too. I used OpenDNS (www.opendns.com) servers and they’re working great (208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220). Visit opendns.com if you need more specific instructions

    Dan

  13. I get this problem too… when it happens I can’t even continue with my conversation in Messenger.
    I wish they fix it soon.

  14. Same here. My wife and I like to stream movies from our imac itunes library through our macbook while we’re cooking. Ever since leopard, most tv shows and movies freeze up constantly. This is very irritating and needs to be fixed soon.

  15. I’m having the same problem. I found it was strictly Safari that would “hang”. iChat would stay connected and FireFox could still connect to sites (albeit, very slowly…) Safari hangs and then fails. However, after a few minutes, things work again and continue working until things die.

    Two machines, one a PowerMac G5 and another a MacBook Pro share this problem. A Mac Mini that still has Tiger stays connected the whole time. I own a Netgear router.

    I changed my DNS from Auto to Manual and things do *seem* faster…
    I got my DNS servers (for my ISP) from: https://portforward.com/networking/dns.htm

  16. Intel Macbook Pro here, no problems. I did have serious problems when the Tiger 10.4.10 update came out in the summer. Kernel Panics whenever I tried to use my wireless on battery power.

    It appears that despite being on their own hardware Apple computers still suffer from differences in hardware revisions, user environments, gravitational pull of the moon, and the way you type on your keyboard.

  17. I just wanted to share a Mac success story. After upgrading to Leopard, I was hoping it would fix a constant petering out of my Linksys Wireless Router WRT54G WiFi signal. It did not help, so I re-read the Linksys manual fiddling with all the switches in many different combinations, all to no avail. I moved the router around the room, no luck.

    Being Christmas time I decided to get myself a present for being good all year, and got a new Viewsonic 22inch
    flat screen monitor, replacing a old Envision 19 inch CRT. Ever since I unpluged the old CRT, 3 solid days now,
    my WiFi signal is at max and has not degraded for a second. I even went back and fiddled with all the settings, and I could not get the signal to falter one bit. So add another reason to chuck that old electricity hog CRT and go LCD.

  18. I HAD exactly the same problems. Reverting AirPort Extreme firmware back to 7.1.1 cured it 100%. Another reason behind Leopard’s slowness over network is Little Snitch. It seems it monitors all connections and slows them down by – probably – checking. Deactivate it and test connection speeds.

  19. I had this problem for a while, but only when I tried to use the Cisco VPN software I need to get into work. Long story short, I ended up doing a clean install of Leopard (long story, but it was my fault) and the problem went away.

  20. so that’s what the problem is, I was wondering why my downloads would unexpectedly stop – i just bought my macbook exactly a week ago.

  21. Powerbook 12″ g4 I’ve been having horribly inconsistent and intermittently slow connections immediately after upgrading to Leopard. Zero problems before! I wish apple would just fix this already!

  22. I posted the following at another site about this issue. Hope it helps some folks here:

    Major obvious issues with this here – fixing it resolved others as well.

    This was an issue on a G4 iBook as well as an Intel Mini, though NOT on my Intel iMac on the same network. All 3 are wireless connections.

    I noticed it mostly with Safari all of a sudden not seeing a host, but I could open another browser and I get there….I likened it to “kicking” the dns to get the ip. Another issue that I hadn’t connected was constant SLOW sending of email. I tried adding OpenDNS as well as my own dns entries, but I couldn’t shake the automatic addition of my router’s ip as the first DNS, which was grayed out could not be deleted. I tried doing a named network setup as opposed to auto and it LOOKED like it worked, but would still pick up and add the router ip after I saved and closed.

    The fix (for me) was to go to a named network setup, then MANUALLY configuring the IPV4 (under tcp/ip tab). When you switch from dhcp to manual, it helpfully keeps the subnet and gateway IP’s for you. I then simply added my new fixed IP. I then set up DNS for OpenDNS and saved the setup.

    ALL my connection problems are resolved, mail is fast, and the machine in general is much snappier. I suspect that there were a number of other issues behind the scenes slowing things down that have been since resolved.

    I’m going to fixed manually assigned IP’s on my whole net.

  23. Same problem here. Netgear router, full bars showing for the wireless connection, but dial-up speeds. I have five computers running in the house and I have never had to go with static IP addresses before, so I am not changing now for Apple’s sake.

    The best fix that I have found is Boot Camp. Windows Vista Premium installed flawlessly and has run perfectly on my 24″ iMac Aluminum. The wireless works great and is quite fast.

    Microsoft has received alot of grief for Vista, but today 12/19/07, it is head and shoulders better than Leopard.

    Sad Truth 🙁

  24. Just bought a new macbook, upgraded to Leopard, had an extremely slow connection with my netgear router, disabled the WPA password and the wifi speed is back to normal.

  25. I had the same problem with the airport express on my MacBook, after Transmission (my torrent software) was updated and the WAP password was changed to WEP, i thought it was all ok sence i didn’t get any Kernel Panic, but sence the last MacBook “Security” Update it started all over again,

    Let’s hope with the 10.5.2 update everything will work 😉

  26. I am having the same problem with my Intel MacBook dropping wireless connectivity. The only solution right now seems to be to shelve the Mac and use PC:s instead. We have several XP machines and one Vista machine in the household, and they have no problems at all with the wireless connection.
    I have worked as a programmer for more than 25 years and I recognize a software bug when I see one … So dear Steven Jobs, quit making fancy TV ads for a while and focus on delivering quality software instead.

  27. iBook G4. 10.5.1 – Airport is continually losing and then re-connecting to my Belkin-based wireless network. Safari constantly locks up and refuses to load sites until I drop into the terminal to flush the dns cache. This will fix it temporarily but I have to do this ALL the time.

    I’ve just turned IPv6 OFF and I’m about to go back to opendns on my router AND my iBook.

  28. So I’m not alone! Under leopard 10.5.1 my network speed continuously fluctuates , for a while the speed will be fine, then i’ll struggle to load up google. I have vista installed on the same machine (intel macbook) using bootcamp, and i have no problems using vista 🙁 Has anyone found a solution to this problem yet? 🙁

  29. I just fixed this problem instantly by following the advice above regarding Manual DNS configuration. The instructions at https://www.opendns.com/ were simple to follow and network speed improved immediately on my Intel Macbook. I don’t know if there are any cons to using OpenDNS, but it definitely fixed this issue.

  30. I’ve had intermittent connexion to external servers due to a DNS resolver problem. I don’t use Wi-Fi so I’d say that the problem is not there. As somebody said before, this is a freaking networking bug. I’ve tested OpenDNS and the situation improved a little bit but I was using my ISP’s DNS servers before with Tiger and XP flawlessly. Now I’m thinking about downgrading to Tiger to solve this issue.
    This is my first MAC after being a Windows user for many years. I use Red Hat at my work so I’m familiar with other OS and I have to admit that it was a mistake to upgrade to Leopard too early. My conclusion is: Apple and Microsoft suck.
    Me.

  31. just installed leopard over Tiger this weekend and installed all updates
    tried opendns, etc… on my system (2GHz 15″ MacBook Pro) it seems the problem is not DNS but SSL connection, and especially (don’t know why but it seems that way) using Firefox 2.0.0.11 or 3.0 beta. No problem with Safari — except that it is not recognized by certain sites.
    Tiger worked fine… upgraded to Leopard just to use bootcamp (since it’s no longer a download).
    I’ve read many of the posts dealing with DNS or the connection stalling or falling asleep but do not see this on my own system. it’s always SSL/https
    sites for me. I have no problem accessing google but gmail (https) is out of the question. same goes for hotmail and online banking -again all SSL.
    Not sure what Apple have done here. But there also aspects of this that might relate to ldap… i wonder.

  32. forgot to mention as well… Camino (another Mozilla-based browser) has mixed success with with SSL: I was able to complete signon at hotmail. No such luck at gmail.com or clicking from the link inside Google when logged in.. Also, wonder if those certificates (mostly not correct) might at fault too.

  33. I’ve upgraded my 1st generation MacBook 1,83 Ghz with leopard and it works just fine. But my MacBook 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo suffered from the above described problem.
    I just followed the advice above with adding the https://www.opendns.com and it seem to work.
    I too was considering changing my old AirPort base in the kitchen (the grey one) with a new one because whenever I’m on the AirPort Express in the office it works (almost) perfect.
    Next thing I was considering was a clean install.

  34. hi everyone,

    Yeah…i have the same problem too and switching off my IPv4 and IPV6 didnt help…neither did using opendns…any other ideas??

    im fed up with it hanging on various pages such as ‘my ebay’ but not the rest of the site.

  35. Same problem with slow internet connection (even when wired directly to the DSL modem). After reading through all these excellent suggestions, I found that the OpenDNS fix did nothing.

    But I did get the idea to create a new Network Location, and let my Belkin Pre-N Router set everything automatically (I had previously imported settings from Tiger). Everything’s fast and peachy again!

    Thanks to all for suggestions leading me to this fix. Previously, I had interacted with my ISP (Earthlink DSL) several times by phone and chat, and their ideas were nowhere near any of the above.

  36. I never had this problem with Tiger upgraded to Leopard and wireless speed died… went back to tiger and worked perfectly.. then upgraded to leopard again and it died. EVen now I use leopard and get no internet access boot up into windows using boot camp and instantly super fast speeds using same machine and connection. If that dosnt land the blame squarely at Leopard I dont know what does

  37. Yeh, Leopard killed my imac G5. It is definitely a Leopard bug. Apple has done NOTHING to rectify the situation with their customer. APPLE HAS BLOWN IT!!! Anybody else interested in a class action suit?

  38. Bought a new Macbook today with Leopard 10.5 pre-installed, noticed immediately there was a problem with airport by comparison with my wife’s ibook with Tiger. Airport indicator in menu bar showed full connection, but downloads stopped. By clicking on the airport indicator I found that it said “airport scanning” which would then almost immediately switch to “airport: on” after which download would resume. By nursing the Macbook manually like this through the latest software updates (which contained 2 items pertaining to airport), initially there was no difference, but after a few restarts, things seemed to have improved: all of a sudden it went through 100 MB download whereas before it never got beyond 3 or 4 MB without interruption. However, after attempting to install the last updates (security update 2008 – 002, vs 1.1) the thing hung at the stage “configuring installation”, so now I’ll be sending the thing back to the shop. An appalling start.
    I always wait for at least half a year before going for a new system, knowing that Apple relies on its core fanatics to nurse them through the initial bugs but this is too much.

  39. Remind Me..why did I buy a MBP? Oh yeah, it was probably to pull my hair out in bunches trying to access the internet from the very famous Leopard installed on it!!! I just do not understand why many people I know praise Leopard when it cannot even do a basic task of accessing the internet properly! Forget other networking aspects such as ICS!! No way! Leopard is not even half as capable as Windows XP!! I am infact thinking of doing a clean install of Windows XP on my MBP erasing Leopard completely!!! Atleast that will give me some peace and save me a lot of time!!

  40. Me too-iMac G5 running leopard 10.5.4. Connection works fine on normal webpages anything over 1 mb and the connection slowly dies. Cant fix it tried full re-install with no luck.

    PLEASE GIVE ME A FIX.

  41. This is ridiculous, waited a year to upgrade because of the issues people were having with 10.5 . I felt confident that Apple would have fixed this by now. I cautiously upgraded each of my machines to 10.5.4, watching for any hiccups, and everything seemed fine, for a few days. Now my gigabit network moves around at 2mbs, my macbook pro randomly disconnects from the wifi and then can’t even find the network, my sever just disappears, and my internet connection is erratic. Of course, as you all know, our clients don’t care if we are having problems with our networks. I could only hope that Apple would, but they obviously don’t. Apparently, after 25 years of loyalty to Apple and a fairly decent understanding of how to use a computer, I’ve gone insane and this is all in my head.

  42. Try this everyone: Go to System Preferences, Network, and Click Advanced for whatever type of network connection you are using. Then Click on the TCP/IP bar and go down to where it says “Configure IPv6”. Change that setting to OFF. Then click OK, and apply.

    Then go to the Airport tab if you’re using airport, and remove by clicking the – button any networks you don’t need any more.

    Then go to your HD:Library:Preferences:System Configuration and first backup by dragging to the desktop the file called com.apple.airport.preferences.plist, then delete (You’ll have to enter your admin password)

    Then restart your computer.

    That worked for me.