Sloooow internet - Active Internet Connections??

Question

Hi Everyone, this is my first time posting anything on here so please be gentle
My internet runs very slow. This is an intermittent problem. Right now, for example, I can browse the net without much hassle. At other times, I try to check hotmail, for example, and it simply times out after several minutes.
My internet provider did several checks and came to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong with the line and the bandwidth I'm getting.
They then asked me to go to the NETWORK UTILITY, choose NETWORK INTERFACE (en1) under INFO and then choose DISPLAY THE STATE OF ALL CURRENT SOCKET CONNECTIONS under NETSTAT. I ran this and it came up with 27 active internet connections. I have no idea what these all are. There are also many more active LOCAL (UNIX) domain sockets.
The guy on the phone told me there should only be around 10 of these active connections and that more than 10 suggest a virus or spyware. I ran some virus software and it found 0 viruses. I just spoke with Apple Support and they told me that this information was incorrect and that it only applies to a PC and that a MAC cannot get a Virus or Spyware. Their suggestion was that I TURN OFF my firewall and see if it helps with internet speed. This seems like bad advice to me.
I'm now completely stuck as to where to go from here. If anyone out there has any idea I would be extremely appreciative of some help!
thank you in advance,
Dylan31

Answer 1

Hi Dylan and welcome to the forums!
Who is your ISP? Their comment is wrong, and Apple are correct.
Try this:
(First, if yours is an Intel Mac, check that Safari is not running in Rosetta, which is enough to slow it to a crawl. If you are running Snow Leopard, run Safari in 32 bit not 64 bit.)
Do you have enough RAM? Less than 1GB can cause slowness. Is your hard drive too full? Less than 15%, or 15GB, of free space can also cause slowness.
Adding DNS codes to your Network Preferences, should give good results in terms of speed-up as well as added security:
If you are using a single computer: Open System Preferences/Network. Double click on your connection type, or select it in the drop-down menu, and in the box marked 'DNS Servers' add the following two numbers:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
(You can also enter them if you click on Advanced and then DNS)
If your computer is part of a network: please refer to this page: http://www.opendns.com/start/bestpractices/#yournetwork and follow the advice given.
(An explanation of why using Open DNS is both safe and a good idea can be read here: http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/opendsn-what-is-opendns-why-required-2/2587 /
Open DNS also provides an anti-phishing feature: http://www.opendns.com/solutions/homenetwork/anti-phishing/ )
Wikipedia also has an interesting article about Open DNS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS
Whilst in System Preferences/Network you should also turn off 'IPv6' in your preference pane, as otherwise you may not get the full speed benefit (the DNS resolver will default to making SRV queries). If you want to know what IPv6 is:
This is Apple's guidance on iPv6:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8708.html
Click on Apply Now and close the window.
Restart Safari, and repair permissions.
If that didn't do it, then try this as well:
Empty Safari's cache (from the Safari menu), then close Safari.
Go to Home/Library/Safari and delete the following files:
form values
download.plist
Then go to Home/Library/Preferences and delete
com.apple.Safari.plist
Repair permissions (in Disk Utility).
Start up Safari again, and things should have improved.
More useful information here:
http://guides.macrumors.com/SpeedupSafari