Why does PPP suck in OS X?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Why is PPP so ****ing bad in OS X? iChat doesn't work, many web sites wont load. It's about as slow as it can be. All is fine under OS 9. Everything works in OS X with a cable modem.



But dial in with OS X and it's pure shit.



Why?
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 25
    I have no idea, but as far as I can tell it's always been this bad. ò_ó
  • Reply 2 of 25
    Hmm...



    Who do you use for dial-up? It may be an issue on their end. I started using OS X at 10.1.2 and dial-up has always been great for me.



    I often use EarthLink dial-up at my folks' house, and it works like a champ. I often connect at 49 Kbps. From my apt in Boston my best connection was 45.3 Kbps (before I got DSL). But the connection was always solid.
  • Reply 3 of 25
    mmmpiemmmpie Posts: 628member
    PPP is ok, not great. My iBook works well, and gets good speeds, and Ive used it with several different ISP's around the world ( currently with AOL ).



    The big suck about it is that if the modem disconnects, it can take up to 20 minutes for OS X to find out, and there seems to be no way to force it to reset the modem. Ive had the 'disconnecting' scrolling across the menubar for even longer sometimes.



    On the flip side, my mothers PC often has really bad PPP connections, because of a noisy phone line. But different drivers cause different things to happen. In general the symptoms are similar to yours. If the modem gets plugged into a different wall socket it is fine.



    Modems suck. At this point in time I think that the best way to go is with a gateway machine ( or an airport box ) that handles your modem for your. Then when you sort out things like noisy lines and cruddy software you only have to do it once.
  • Reply 4 of 25
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    PPP has always worked fine for me in X. I've only have the never-ending disconnect thing once, under 10.1.x. Otherwise, it has been okay. X likes to stay connected to the internet a whole lot more than 9 does though...
  • Reply 5 of 25
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    It's gotta be OS X. OS 9 works fine on the same web sites. Internet Explorer within OS X sucks.
  • Reply 6 of 25
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    Internet Explorer is not equal to Mac OS X.



    The default Mac browser is Safari now, too



    Barto
  • Reply 7 of 25
    jimzipjimzip Posts: 446member
    Yeah. Don't use Explorer.

    Safari is so much more practical also, tabbed browsing is soo cool!

    Sorry, not much help I guess. I don't have dialup anymore.



    Jimzip
  • Reply 8 of 25
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Safari sucks under PPP. On line banking doesn't work. Novel web based mail doesn't work. Pages time out when they shouldn't. Everything loads very slow.



    This isn't a Explorer vs Safari thing.



    It's a PPP under OS X is shit thing.
  • Reply 9 of 25
    sounds like it's a PEBKAC error....
  • Reply 10 of 25
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tokenfirstyear

    sounds like it's a PEBKAC error....



    Yea thanks asshole. Maybe you can engage your brain for half a second and figure out why under cable everything works and under PPP only the most basic HTML works. Must be my fault right?
  • Reply 11 of 25
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    Yea thanks asshole. Maybe you can engage your brain for half a second and figure out why under cable everything works and under PPP only the most basic HTML works. Must be my fault right?



    Just a light-hearted jibe dude - anyhoo, it _does_ sound like everyone else isn't experiencing the dramas you are. Have you tried repairing permissions/system reinstall/all sys updates/different browsers etc etc? If safari is slow and shit (which it shouldn't be), then i'd say your problems are running to the core of the system.



    I (and many others) have used PPP on X with little problems, yes it's slower than cable (obviously) but everything still loads..
  • Reply 12 of 25
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Gosh PPP is slower than cable? Whoda thunk it? PPP hasn't worked well out of the box. Unfortunately I only have one dial up to test it out on. But considering when in OS 9 ( you did bother to read didn't you?) everything works I can only assume that a fresh installation of OS X from Apple has shitty PPP.
  • Reply 13 of 25
    I have been using dial-up on my iMac for over a year. No problems at all. Safari works with all my bank accounts and credit card companies.



    I recently went and got Broadband using BT ADSL. I noticed that the USB ADSL modem also suffers from the "Disconnecting" bug, so it is not just the internal modem. I bought myself a router in the end as the USB ADSL modem takes about 45 seconds to wake up each time I wakeup the iMac.
  • Reply 14 of 25
    gardnerjgardnerj Posts: 167member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    Gosh PPP is slower than cable? Whoda thunk it? PPP hasn't worked well out of the box. Unfortunately I only have one dial up to test it out on. But considering when in OS 9 ( you did bother to read didn't you?) everything works I can only assume that a fresh installation of OS X from Apple has shitty PPP.



    If you wanna ask questions you could try being gracious when people try to offer their experiences. Incidentlly i use ppp on 10.2.6 for both surfing and dial in to remote servers and have found it very stable.



    My settings are as follows

    Control panel> Internal Modem> TCP/IP tab - no settings

    Control panel> Internal Modem> PPP - just the usual stuff

    Control panel> Internal Modem> PPP> PPP Options

    prompt every 30 mins

    disconnect if idle 10

    disconnect when user logs out

    advanced

    send ppp echo packets

    use tcp header compression

    Control panel> Internal Modem> Proxies - no settings

    Control panel> Internal Modem> Modem

    enable error correction and compression

    wait for dial tone ...

    dialing tone

    sound on

    country settings US

    show modem status
  • Reply 15 of 25
    naplesxnaplesx Posts: 3,743member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    Why is PPP so ****ing bad in OS X? iChat doesn't work, many web sites wont load. It's about as slow as it can be. All is fine under OS 9. Everything works in OS X with a cable modem.



    But dial in with OS X and it's pure shit.



    Why?




    I solved a problem at a clients business by enabling the "terminal logging". It adds one more small step but it seams to make the connection more solid and it connects first time every tim. It used to take 4 tries or more.



    Hope this helps
  • Reply 16 of 25
    tigerwoods99tigerwoods99 Posts: 2,633member
    Probably the connection I bet, my connection is complete shit, so it wont even work well in OS 9 or on Windows....it actually works better for some reason on OS X. It says Im connect at 45333 bps but web pages take a few minutes to fully load, and I am constantly finding myself connecting fine (going through the dialing, then putting in account name and password and it connects) and I am not even connected to the internet. Then there are times when it just suddenly disconnects...when I was using my G3 w/OS 9 it would literally disconnect me every 2 minutes. I dont know why its so bad....I just wish I had cable or something...
  • Reply 17 of 25
    gizzmonicgizzmonic Posts: 511member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    Safari sucks under PPP. On line banking doesn't work. Novel web based mail doesn't work. Pages time out when they shouldn't. Everything loads very slow.



    This isn't a Explorer vs Safari thing.



    It's a PPP under OS X is shit thing.




    Sounds like your connection is the problem, not PPP in general. You might try dialing up with several different ISP's and see if you have better results.
  • Reply 18 of 25
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    If it's the connection why does OS 9 work just fine?
  • Reply 19 of 25
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by gardnerj

    If you wanna ask questions you could try being gracious when people try to offer their experiences....



    You must have missed his insult the first time around.
  • Reply 20 of 25
    I have no trouble whatsoever with my connection under OSX and it seems the majority of posters here don't either. Therefore I would assume it is a problem with your computer. Just because OS9 works fine does not mean much. PPP has a number of different settings that you may not have set the same for each OS. Have you tried checking this? Also the modem has different scripts for each operating system. In the past there was an update to OSX that gave people a lot of trouble with their connection and changing scripts helped. Try changing the script to see if this makes a difference. When I take my iBook to my relatives house I can't stay connected worth a damn unless I change the script to the v.34 one. The reason this is so is because they have a noisey phone line. The modem may be more sensitive to noise under OSX than OS9.
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