Internet slowdowns when Imac is connected

[Otilio]

Hello friends, I have a Macbook Pro and a Imac. The Imac is running on OSX Tiger and the Macbook is running on OSX Snow Leopard. I have an Internet connection of 8mbps. The problem i am facing is that whenever the Imac is connected to Internet, Internet slows down on my Macbook. Imac is connected to time capsule via Ethernet cable and Macbook is connected wirelessly. I dont have enough idea about networking and hence i cannot figure out what the problem is. So if any of you has a solution to my problem, please let me know. Is it because of the Internet connection I am using?

[Bon-Z]

It is possible that the problem you are facing is due to Internet connection. In India the Internet service providers are not able to satisfy the customer needs for greater bandwidth. Get your Link (which provides you with the bandwidth) checked by a ISP technician. See if you can Ping a certain website and check the no. of packets sent and received with the latency. If the no of packets lost or the latency is high then there is problem with the link providing the bandwidth and you will have to contact your ISP regarding the Issue.

[Wiro]

I think the problem is due to the Operating system mismatch as you are using two different Operating system on the two computers which you are connecting. Many user face such issue's with the degrading Internet performance due to an Operating system mismatch. To check if the problem is due to the incompatibility of Operating system, try to connects some other computer with same operating system to Internet and check the performance of the Internet on your Macbook. If there is no degradation in the performance then certainly the problem is with the operating system mismatch but if the problem continues then there is some issue with the configuration of the network.

[Regina]

When the Imac is connected to the network, is there anything that is being downloaded. When the same internet connection is used to connect several computers, care should be taken as to share the resources. If one of the system is downloading a data, then the Internet connection on other computer will suffer. Check the Imac if it is downloading some data. Also go to Activity monitor and check if any of the processes is using network resources or not. Kill the unwanted processes which are using more network resources and check if the performance improves or not.

[Simond]

I will suggest you that you restart all your networking devices once. Some time it happens that if a new device is connected to the network, the whole network detects the new device as the only device which is connected and gives full throughput it, due to which the performance of the devices which are connected earlier suffers. Hence to ensure that all the devices are detected and provided service it is better to restart the network once. If you have a Modem/Router then turn it off also turn off all the devices that are connected to it. Now Start the Modem/Router first and when the LED's on it becomes stable, start all the devices one by one. By doing this all the devices will get detected one by one and will be provided service accordingly.

[Pugsly]

You need to check the system preferences on both the Macbook and Imac. The problem faced by you can be due to improper settings which is leading to performance degradation when some other device is connected. Follow the steps and see if the system performance improves. In Imac go to System Preferences--- Ethernet---Configure IPv4 : Use BootP and then Reboot the system. If you are using a DSL connection then go to System Preference---Ethernet---Advanced---Ethernet---Configure: Manually. MTU: Custom(1450). and then Reboot the system. Hopefully the performance will improve after this settings.