I got upgraded to 10Mb on Thursday and was a bit sad to find that my download speeds were about the same as they were before the upgrade. At first I thought maybe my modem (ntl:home 120) couldn't handle it or that the network around here was just saturated.
Reading some threads here, I noticed other folks with the same modem were achieving full speed, so I did some digging and found my problem - I assumed that OS X and my modem would automatically select the optimum settings for my connection.
But after reading
this page on Robin Walker's site, it appears this doesn't always happen. To specify the optimum settings manually:
Quote:
* Pull down the Apple menu and select System Preferences.
* Click Network.
* In the drop-down Show:, select Built-in Ethernet.
* Click tab Ethernet.
* In the drop-down Configure:, select Manually (Advanced).
* In the drop-down Speed:, select the speed you require: 10baseT/UTP or 100baseTX.
* In the drop-down Duplex:, select half-duplex or full-duplex, as you require.
* Click Apply Now.
* Quit System Preferences.
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I chose 10baseT/UTP, full-duplex. And for the modem:
Quote:
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The ntl:home 100/120 (Ambit) cable modem duplex setting can be configured by the user, by using the web pages at http://192.168.100.1/, user root password root. By default, the cable modem is configured to auto-negotiate its speed and duplex setting to be the same as your ethernet card. If you manually configure an explicit speed and duplex setting in your ethernet card, you should also configure the same one in the cable modem, thus removing auto-negotiation from both ends of the link. The optimal setting is to manually force both the ethernet card and the cable modem to full-duplex, thus avoiding all ethernet collisions, and avoiding any possibility of an auto-negotiation mistake.
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Problem solved!
If there's another Mac user with limited knowledge of how networks work (like me
), hopefully this will come in useful.
-Kev