Slow internet on Mac using RV082

[cerebralentropy]

I've been having trouble with the internet connection speed on my Mac. I originally noticed the problem when my mail kept timing out whenever I sent an attachment, I went to different forums trying to find the solution but nothing really worked, so I found work arounds for the email and lived with it. Recently the company I work for moved offices and I was no longer behind the RV082 and my internet ran better dispite the slower connection. Once we finished moving, I needed to use the Dual Wan Load Balance feature of th RV082 so I set it up in the new office and my internet was slow again. Unfortunatly in the new office there are several more Macs than just mine so I really need to get it working. Currently we have 2 seperate networks for PC and Mac and I really need to get them on 1. Is there a setting I may have overlooked or is it not going to work with Mac. I'm wondering if it a problem with just my router cause I can't find anythign about it online.

[Alejandro Gallego · Accepted solution]

It sounds to me that you may be running Leopard or above. One thing to take a look at is IPv6. To keep things simple, disable IPv6 on your Mac (just one) and see if that makes a difference. With 10.5 and later, the move to IPv6 is stepping up, unforntunately some devices just don't play nice. Also do a little Google search on "How to speed up Firefox on Mac" and you will find some articles with steps on how to disable IPv6 on the browser.

Let us know if you still have issues.

[cerebralentropy]

That helped a lot, especially after disabling IPv6 on Firefox. Unfortunately Safari still seems slow and disabling IPv6 for the OS is supposed to disable it for Safari, but I guess this may be a question for the Apple forums.

I'm also concerned, isn't IPv6 a good thing? Do I have to live without it from now on if I continue using the RV082 or is that something that may be fixed in a future firmware update?

Thank You for the help so far.

[Alejandro Gallego]

IPv6 is a very good thing. The problem is that not all ISPs actually route IPv6 DNS queries, which can cause slow downs in resolving names. If your ISP does support IPv6 and the RV is just being a pain, this will certainly be addressed in future FW updates. I use a MacBook Pro (2009) and OS 10.6; while running behind any of our routers (RV0XX included) I have not noticed a significant slow down. I have seen and heard of your exact problem but it has not been confined to the RVs. It is a very good thing that you posted, as these forums are monitored and they do provide assistance to our developers.

Glad to know that it resolved your problem. Let us know if you ever have more questions.

[avendio_bb]

Same problem here with RV042 and several Macs, latest firmware. Very slow internet connection sometimes with certain websites. On Windows 7 seems to work everything fine.

[netpathinc]

Same problem here on RV082 running firmware version 2.0.2.01. (Not V3 hardware).  All Macs exhibit slow browser response and traceroute timeouts on some network addresses while working fine on others.  We're running the latest Lion release, v10.7.2.

The RV082 System Log shows "Connection Refused - Policy violation" errors.

An address that responds very slowly on Safari on OSX will work fine on the same machine under IE on a WindowsXP Fusion VM.  I tried changing DNS to Google public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4); flusing OSX DNS cache (>dscacheutil -flushcache); resetting PRAM/NVRAM (Command-Option-P-R reboot); disabling RV082 firewall DoS.  No joy.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

If we can't resolve this quickly it will be time to dump the RV082 and look for an alternative.

- Sheldon

[doug_counsil]

We are using an RV220W and have no problems with Apple devices such as, iPhones, iPads, and Macbook Pro's (different generations, but all running Lion).

We had ipv6 turned off in the router up until about a week ago with no slow downs.  Even after turning ipv6 on in the router (a workaround to get upnp to work) we still are not experiencing any slowdowns.

None of the devices have been configured to turn ipv6 on (or off for that matter).  They are using the default Apple network settings.  We just plug in the ethernet cable or use wireless with no changes in the System Preferences.

Perhaps we aren't visting the same sites.  Can you give me some examples so we can determine if we experience slow downs as well?

We do reserve IPs in the router by MAC address (in the "Static DHCP" tab in the router).  Maybe that's the key to us not experiencing slowdowns???

[netpathinc]

My problems started when I updated the firmware in the RV082 to resolve some uPnP problems we were having. Before the update we were running a really old version.

> Can you give me some examples so we can determine if we experience slow downs as well?

I'm looking for a case for a new MacBook Air at the moment using a google Image search.  Here are a few links from the image search that don't work in OSX but that work fine in a Windows-VM on the same Mac:

   http://obamapacman.com/2011/05/macbook-air-twelvesouth-bookbook-leather-polio-book-case/

   http://workinprogress.calderoriginals.com/2008/03/calder-airlift-for-macbook-air-first.html

   http://www.ipad2iphone5.com/made-%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8Bof-carbon-fiber-macbook-air-case

I did have a few reserved IPs in the "Static DHCP" tab, as well, before reseting the router back to factory defaults to see if it would make a difference.  It didn't. 

Thanks! Sheldon

[doug_counsil]

All of those links load very quickly on both one of our Windows machines (Windows 7 Ultimate) and a Macbook Pro (running Lion).

Our ISP (Timewarner Road Runner) doesn't support native ipv6 yet.  We don't use a tunnel broker either.  Therefore when I visit http://test-ipv6.com/ we recieve a 7/10 for both ipv4 and ipv6.  Maybe we don't experience slowdowns because we don't have ipv6 working on the WAN side?  Do you guys?

[netpathinc]

No ipv6 on the WAN side here. On http://test-ipv6.com/ we recieve a 10/10 for ipv4 and 0/10 for ipv6.

- Sheldon

[cerebralentropy]

Since this discussion has been restarted I figure I should make an update on the ipv6 solution. It worked, or seemed to work for a bit. I don't remember when we started having issues again since it was almost 2 year ago. Since we had mostly Macs at that point in the office, I started using a Time Capsule that my boss had bought to back up computers to and just forgot about the RV082.

Now we've outgrown the Time Capsule and need to go back to something a little more professional so I'm hoping this gets figured out. I also have older hardware, not V3, so that may have something to do with it. I'll have to go dig the router out of storage and see if I still have problem now that I'm running Lion.

[troutsflyfishing]

Thanks Sheldon.  I am the only one running a Mac in the office, but I turned off IPV6 on it anyway.  I've also heard that since Snow Leopard the OS has adopted aggressive DNS caching...so I flushed cache as well.

Last night I had all machines except the db server shut down (they are all Windows 7).  Everyone booted this morning, at which point all got IPv6 disabled.

So far today we've had no issues.  Still, keeping my fingers crossed.

[netpathinc]

I tried to revert the firmware back to version 1.3.9.8 but it won't work.

I removed the RV082 from service today and replaced it temporarily with a WRT160Nv2.  Everything is working again on all PCs/Macs and I can't believe how much faster it is!  There is something seriously wrong with the verson 2.x RV082 firmware. Cisco are you listening?

- Thanks, Sheldon

[doug_counsil]

I setup a tunnel at tunnelbroker.net (Hurricane Electric) and configured our RV220W to use it.  Now when we visit http://test-ipv6.com/ we recieve a 10/10 for ipv4 and 9/10 (because our ISP doesn't natively support ipv6) for ipv6.

After setting up and configuring the ipv6 tunnel upnp stopped working after reboots again.  In order to get it working again I had to disable and re-enable upnp in the web GUI again after each reboot.  It was frustrating.  However I found that increasing the hop count (Advertisement Time To Live) to 255 (max value) fixed upnp.  I tried increasing it by a few seconds (like from the default value of 4 to 20) and upnp only sporadically worked after reboots.

I'm not sure what the downside may be for increasing this value.

At any rate, WAN, LAN, and WLAN speeds have not been adversely affected by enabling ipv6.  We achive max WAN speed (15 - 30 Mbps, 15Mbps guaranteed by Time Warner).  WLAN speeds are usually around 12 - 15 MB/s and LAN speeds are limited only by hard drive speed.  I just tested copying a file to an older Windows 7 Ultimate laptop from a quad-core Windows 7 tower.  LAN speeds were 30-35 MB/s.  The same test to a Macbook Pro from the same tower yielded 45-50 MB/s.

These are the same speeds as with turning ipv6 off in the router and machines.

[netpathinc]

Hi Curtis

I notice you're running an RV220W. The problems I've seen reported seem to be with the RV042 and RV082. We were running the older RV082 hardware at its latest firmware release, version 2.0.2.01. This router does not have a dual-stack and is ipv4 only.

One interesting note. Since switching out the RV082 and replacing it temporarily with a WRT160Nv2, the "Back to My Mac" feature is now working correctly. With the RV082 it always reported uPnP problems. Clue?

I'm looking for a replacement router now. Any suggestions would we welcome.

- Thanks, Sheldon