Hi,

I'm brand new here and need some help. I just got broadband from my Zianet.com server. They use Quest as the provider. The installer put an antenna on our roof and ran a wire into the house, attached it to a small box, and then put a cable in my ethernet port.

I have a brand new eMAC, G4.

My speed started out at 1200 or 1.20 but then it went down to 37 by night time. I called Zianet and the next day the installer came back out but it was running well when he was here. (of course)

I have tried disconnecting the box from the eletrical outlet and reconnecting, I've tried disconnecting my computer and reconnecting to ethernet (this is a PPPoE connection whatever that means) and it ran well for about a week. Last night the speed got down to 27, way below my dial up connection speed of 50. Today it is in the 300 to 400 range but is supposed to be up around 1100 or 1200.

Can anyone tell me what may be the problem? I do not have my firewall on from what I can tell, I don't share this with any other computer, and I have no viral protection on my eMac.

Please can anyone help?

Thanks,
Martha

Thank you for your quick reply.

First I am quite computer illiterate so I went to the page you recommended but in the tweakster part, I didn't know how to fill it out! It asked what kind of connection I had.
I don't know if it is wireless or cable since I have an antenna on the roof but that hooks up to my computer with a cable in the ethernet port. So do I have wirless or cable?

Then when I picked Mac for operating system, it didn't give me the right options. It said something similar to ethernet but it wasn't ethernet. Then it gave an option of PPoA but I have a PPoE connection.

I need to take baby steps and start at the beginning here. It seems like the Tweakster test is for pcs by the options it gives you. Anyway I picked some options anyway and here are is the url address but I know my options were not correct.

http://ttester.broadbandreports.com/tweak/block:27625db?service=wireless&speed=1500&os=Mac&via=pppoA

My operating system is Mac OS X 10.3.4, also called Panther.

Where do I go from here?

Thanks!
Martha

Oh no I got bad news too.

The website you sent to me is for Macs using the old systems, 7, 8 and 9. I have system 10 which is nothing like the older ones and which doesn't have any tranport settings on it which you need to run the test. I may end up calling Apple which makes these computers and ask them. It has been SO frustrating!!!   

I may go back to the site you gave me and see if there is a contact link so I can ask them about the lovely new system 10's. 

Thanks again. Sometimes the answers do not come easily, especially with Macs. 

Martha, generally pretty happy 

I have had very good luck with a little freeware program called Broadband Optimizer. You can download it here: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12591

By the way, updating to 10.3.8 seems to help Safari a lot. . .

Hi, thanks for this information. Let me tell you what I did.

I downloaded version 10.3.8 and Broadband Optimizer.

I can't install the Optimizer, though, because it only takes me halfway through the process. I had used my utlity disk to rewrite permissions too several times.

I tried to manually install it also but that didn't work.

When I click on the little Optimizer program it just says that I don't have an application to open it with. HUH?

Can anyone tell me how to use it or how to install it?

Thanks,
Martha

Yes, I did un-zip the file about a dozen times. I'm stumped. It was for my system, Mac 10.3.8 too!

Thanks,
Martha