Macbook Air Performance

[Flieger]

I have a Macbook Air (2nd one) specs below. One thing I have noticed recently (it is on WiFi so thought it was related to router buffer) is that if I don't shut it down/restart I start getting slow internet loading of sites. I'm assuming this is cache related which is cleared upon restart but am not a computer genius. Any other way to deal with this? I often leave computer running, seldom take away from the house, I just like the ability to do that when I want which is why laptop vs desktop.

Flieger

 

[tizod]

I am not sure what browser you use, but google how to clear all history/cache etc. from it. You will then have to re-enter some data sometimes the first time you revisit a site.
You likely have some things running that are better off cleared out. Good idea to do it every 6 months or so.

 

[tizod]

Also, test the internet speeds to the house via a speedtest (goolge internet speed test). But do this a few times, and get an average. It is also good if you can do it when things are running slow - is it your hardware connections? THis might tell you something. Is you phone slow at the same time? (when cell service is turned off).

 

[Exchme]

These are frustrating to diagnose. I don't think it's computer age.

I had a 2014 iMac and 2014 MacBook that still worked well, but the operating system and some apps wouldn't update anymore, so s couple months ago, I bought a new one MacBook Air and took the old ones to Goodwill. Never had the problem you are describing.

We've had the cable company not provide the speed they were paid to give us, we've had the router from the cable company go bad, we've had our range extender go bad, back in the day, we've had network cards in computers go bad. One time, we thought it was our network gear so we replaced everything -twice! - before realizing it was the cable company's modem that was bad.

 

[Alex The Great]

I do have a few years old MacBook Air M1 and never seen this kind of problem. I keep it on almost all time. It is connected to Internet directly (not WiFi) through adapter.

 

[Flieger]

We do not have wired internet in our neighborhood, so I have to use 5G internet (T-Mobile). Surprisingly, speeds are good. We can watch multiple streaming TV's without buffering, etc. Just as FYI, TV's are not on when this happens with the MacBook Air. What is interesting is once I restart my computer, loading of internet returns to normal.

Flieger

 

[Flieger]

Speed Test on MacBook Air. 1 TV on as well that DW is watching.

I made a central hub when I built the house, so all tv's are hardwired through the router.

Flieger

 

[Al18]

You should check your hard drive free space and keep at least 10% free.

 

[Flieger]

You should check your hard drive free space and keep at least 10% free.

I think more than 50% free? I use a separate 1TB G-Drive for backup and some storage.

Flieger

 

[Out of Steam]

Speed Test on MacBook Air. 1 TV on as well that DW is watching.

I made a central hub when I built the house, so all tv's are hardwired through the router.

View attachment 56917

Flieger

By today's standards that is not fast, especially the upload, and everything on the internet is getting more stuffed with images and video.

Our internet speed with Verizon Fios runs 550-600 MB/second, even with WiFi. I use an M1 MacBook Air all the time and have no such problems with speed, and don't restart more than a couple of times a month.

It's a little slower this morning.

 

[Flieger]

By today's standards that is not fast, especially the upload, and everything on the internet is getting more stuffed with images and video.

Our internet speed with Verizon Fios runs 550-600 MB/second, even with WiFi. I use an M1 MacBook Air all the time and have no such problems with speed, and don't restart more than a couple of times a month.

It's a little slower this morning.

Is FIOS a wired/Fiber system? I assume I am limited by the 5G system. We don't have access to that, just 5G which will hopefully improve over time.

Internet search says 25Mbps is required for 4k streaming, but 50Mbps preferred. We haven't had problems with buffering or anything on multiple 4k streamings.

EDIT: I'm assuming my location may drive speed lower, and maybe Sunday AM is higher usage. I'll run speed test again late one night for fun.

Flieger

 

[tizod]

5G throttles alot during peak loads. You might be getting hit with that. It is NOT the computer unless you have a virus or some very rare issue (after cleaning the hstory/cache). I recommend safari, fastest on Mac and less overhead.

 

[tizod]

But I run very heavy loads on my M1, have fast cable modem (needed work and new cable due to dropouts), newer router (asus Zen mesh) and never slow down due to 3 Mac's 3 iphones, 3 tv etc. all on all day long.

 

[Golden Mean]

A couple more "might not be the computer" are:
High packet loss (not shocking with a wireless WAN connection). You can typically test this with 'ping'.

DNS server issues. I've had to switch to google's dns servers 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8 on a few occasions (and places) as DNS lookups were hanging page loading. Typically your browser is doing tons of name look ups for a web page.

 

[MTB4me]

I would suspect that it’s actually the amount of memory in your computer. 8GB isn’t much. The longer you use your computer since its last reboot, the higher the likelihood that your RAM gets fragmented and/or consumed. Apps and operating systems are getting more and more bloated, so 8GB doesn’t go as far as it used to. And some apps will use memory as cache for frequently used code or data. When RAM starts filling up, the OS will push some of that memory out to the hard drive. Even if your hard drive is flash memory, that is still at least an order of magnitude slower than RAM. Rebooting your laptop flushes the memory and starts everything fresh.

This can happen over time and may not be all that noticeable initially. But the slow performance will creep up on you. Not likely that you can add memory to your old Mac laptop, but you might be able to limit how many other apps you run concurrently and also check if you have a bunch of add-ons running in the background.

Best of luck with the diagnosis.

(Retired enterprise IT guy)

 

[Al18]

You can check the Activity Monitor, to see if any of your apps are using the Network in the background. My guess is T-Mobile is slowing things down.

 

[sparky08]

I have a 2020 Macbook Pro (16GB) and the Chrome browser performance has gotten really bad over the last six months or so.

I've loaded the same sites on Safari and they do load faster.

(I'm the type who keeps about a dozen tabs open on the browser.)

 

[Piper20]

If you are using ICloud Private Relay turn off and see if that helps. I’ve had some issues for the past month off and on with sites hanging etc on both my Air M2 and 16 Pro.

 

[Out of Steam]

Is FIOS a wired/Fiber system? I

Fios is a fiber system, though I am using wireless within the house.

 

[tulak]

I would look at the ping times too. 57ms is ok, but 389ms down and 548ms up?

That’s a lot of latency and it will make your internet feel slower. Are those numbers always that high?

For reference, I’m in Japan right now, going through a VPN back in the US and get 128ms latency, for bi-directional, down, and up.

ETA: Streaming devices aren’t an equal comparison, since they will buffer and you won’t notice any delay, as long as throughput is consistent.

 

[Flieger]

I would look at the ping times too. 57ms is ok, but 389ms down and 548ms up?

That’s a lot of latency and it will make your internet feel slower. Are those numbers always that high?

For reference, I’m in Japan right now, going through a VPN back in the US and get 128ms latency, for bi-directional, down, and up.

ETA: Streaming devices aren’t an equal comparison, since they will buffer and you won’t notice any delay, as long as throughput is consistent.

Just re-ran:

What can be done to improve ping times?

Flieger

 

[Flieger]

Fios is a fiber system, though I am using wireless within the house.

Yes, but having Fiber TO your house vs 5G would be much different/better I would think.

Flieger

 

[MTB4me]

A couple of things to check if you are seeing high ping times (latency) via SpeedTest.

• Have you enabled Apple’s built-in VPN or some other 3rd party VPN? If so, try temporarily disabling it and rerunning SpeedTest.
• When running SpeedTest, make sure it is selecting a test server that is geographically close to you. And also try a couple of others nearby. Sometimes the test servers are on different carrier networks than your home internet provider and the routing between your ISP and the test site’s is less than optimal. Not uncommon for carrier exchange points to be 500-1000 miles away from you and/or the test server site.

 

[Flieger]

Turned of ExpressVPN:

Turned back on with Miami connection.

Changed to Atlanta.

Flieger

 

[Route246]

I know a little about this so I'm dangerous. I experience similar slowdowns and have done a lot of packet sniffing and I'm guessing two things. First is browser bit rot. Try an alternate browser that you never use and see if the slowdowns are the same or similar. If so you can skip further browser troubleshooting but don't discard that thought totally.

The other likely culprit is DNS hijacking which can be done even if you use 8.8.8.8 or other public DNS services. As a test try secure DNS if you have access in a browser. 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 and others should support secure DNS. If you happen to get that working and it is still slow then it is probably not related to your machine or your local network stack.

T-Mobile is known to be sniffing your DNS in order to figure out where you are going and will use this to better target ads.

Lastly, have a chat with your LLM of choice (I currently use Perplexity) and talk to it about what the possible causes are. You might just get lucky and stumble on to something simple but significant.