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  • Re: Network mismatch causes poor performance

    From Kevin McMurtrie@mcmurtri@dslextreme.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Thursday, April 13, 2006 23:55:59
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <isw-C4D67C.22331224032006@comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
    isw <isw@witzend.com> wrote:

    I have a 10 MBit Ethernet LAN. Connected to it is a Belkin wireless AP.
    The Belkin AP and all the other hosts on the LAN connect to a 10 MB
    (only) hub. My daughter brought her Pismo (with OS X 10.4) home for the weekend, and her network speeds were terrible.

    Investigating, I discovered that if I use a wired Ethernet connection to
    the Pismo, everything was fine. Then I noticed that the Airport card had negotiated an 11 MBit link with the Belkin. I suspect that the extra 1 MBit/second is causing all the problems.

    A while back, I had some network problems that turned out to be due to Autonegotiating NICs setting up a 100 MBit/second link that the cables couldn't handle. This looks like the same thing, but without the wires.

    So the question is, how do I force the wireless connection to be
    something less than 10 MBits/second?

    thanks, Isaac

    Speed mismatches are normal in networking.

    My experience is that OS X has broken TCP handling. My suspicion so far
    is that it's related to out-of-order packets being handled incorrectly. There's definitely something that keeps it from working well on some
    routes that other computers don't have a problem with. Even minor
    packet loss causes extreme throughput loss too.
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