Computer suddenly has a cut in internet speed.

[U2Lynne]

About a month ago, I was browsing on the internet and I lost the connection. That was on my iMac. My PC was fine. I thought that was weird but unplugged the cable and plugged it back in and I was fine. That happened about five or six times in the last month until today. Today, when I went to unplug/plug it back in, it wouldn't come back.

For the last couple of days, when I've been been downloading (on the mac), I've noticed that my upload/download has suddenly reduced. I've especially noticed it when trying to just seed - there will be several people needing to download, but even though I have the computer set to upload at max, it is only uploading at about 1/10 of what I know it can. And, that is at max, it goes from 0 to max and back again.

Anyway, when it wouldn't come back today until I rebooted, I finally did a speed test and was told I was downloading at 280 kb/s and uploading at 180 kb/s. I did the same test (right after) on my PC and got a download of 2.5 Mb/s and an upload of 480 kb/s. I can also see on my hub that I am not 'connecting'.

Yes, I've tried other (manual) IPs. Yes, I've tried plugging directly into the internet (without the hub). Yes, I've repaired permissions (hardly any had to be done). Yes, I've tried Safari and IE, too (I normally use firefox). I've done everything except a clean install, which is what I will do tomorrow.

I've just never heard of something like this before and I'm baffled.

[TheMamba]

Have you tried a Virus Scan and/or Adware scan on the Mac?

That's the only other thing I can think of. Had similar problems a couple of years ago - my connection would really slow down when I was doing any online gaming. Downloaded and ran Adaware on my PC and that cleaned up a lot of crap and seemed to alleviate the problem.

[Neilyboy]

Since its a rare beast to pickup a virus on your MAC (not impossible however) but my guess is (if you have a windows based PC in the house\on the same network) your winblows pc has the virus. Which, is causing (in a sense) a DoS attack on your own network (Denial of Service). Eating up your bandwidth and at times totally dropping your connection.

just my two cents and im probably wrong but its my best guess.

Neil

[ffooky]

Next time you have the connection problem, I'd open up the Console and look for anything suspicious there. Try removing and reinserting your ethernet cable with Console open (I'm presuming you connect to your hub via that) and then see what the Console logs as your connection is restored.

Google any phrases that look evil...I've found this pretty useful in the past.

[TheMamba]

Have you considered that this might be a hardware problem? Maybe switching your ethernet card will do the trick...

[U2Lynne]

Actually, I do believe it is a hardware problem -> the hub I was plugged into! I'm now plugged directly into the router and I'm running just fine. My son had a LAN party last weekend and they borrowed the hub and when we got it back, it didn't work at first. So, lots of changing this, changing that, finally brought it back to life but it appears to not be too crazy about my Mac. It doesn't mind the PC at all, but is prejudice against my Mac. So, this weekend (perhaps today) I will be getting a new hub.

(Meanwhile, my Mac is running so nicely since I did a total clean install yesterday. I'm reinstalling the applications that I know I need and getting things back to normal. The first thing I installed was firefox, the second thing was Azureus. I've got my priorities straight!)

[TheMamba]

Cool.