katsongs

I'm on a MacBook Pro using Mac OS X, v. 10.6.8. My "high speed" internet service is through Bell.

When I'm sending emails from home, they take an inordinately long time to send after I hit the "send" button. Often, I send an email, do a few other things, shut my laptop, and much later when I reopen the laptop discover that the email had never sent.

I took it to the Apple store, and the emails sent instantaneously using their wireless service, despite the fact that their store was packed with people using the system. They also looked at my computer and said there was nothing wrong with it, and that I should call the ISP.

When I called Bell and explained the problem to them, they insisted that it had to be a problem with the computer and not with their service.

Has anyone had this problem and -- even better -- learned how to fix it?

Thanks!

polywog

You sure it's only email? Try doing a speed test : I find this gives pretty accurate results.

I suspect it's your router causing problems, sounds like the wireless might be flaky, but it's impossible to tell without more info.

krs

I'm not really keen to hand out my phone number.

I use this site to run a speed test
Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

I'm with Bell here as well, upload is rater slow at about 350K but emails go pretty much instantaneously even at that upload speed unless one is sending a huge attachment.

polywog

Point taken, as I recall though, I bookmarked that site directly from Bell - they used your phone number to select an appropriate location to test from.

I found it more consistent than speedtest back in the day.

katsongs

I did the speed test -- the one polywog posted didn't work for me (said it couldn't connect) but the one from krs worked. It said that my download speed was 24.84 mbps and my upload speed was 1.51 mbps How can I tell whether the router is the problem -- and, if it is, does that mean I need a new one, or that I need to adjust this one somehow? (Sorry for the lack of knowledge on my part!)

krs

Holy cow!

I'm getting a bit over 6 Mb/s download with Bell and I thought I was doing great.

The problem is obviously not the Mac since you get good speeds at the Apple store.

I would just try to reset the modem and the router.

If that doesn't do anything, power them both down, wait for a minute, then power up the modem first, wait till it finishes connecting and is stable, the power up ythe router.

I assume your email sent times were OK when you first started with Bell or has this been a problem since day 1?

polywog

Speaking of - I popped on bell.ca for the fun of it yesterday, and they have new offerings. I will be getting 15Mbps down and 10Mbps up(!!!!) for $8 less than I've been paying per month. Can't wait!