Macbook is a network hog?

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pashbe1

Member
May 5, 2009
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My small home network consists of a MOTOROLA SB6141 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem and a BUFFALO AirStation Extreme AC 1200 Gigabit Dual Band Wireless Router - WZR-1166DHP. My pc and my wifes pc are wired to the router and we have several laptops and phones on the wifi fairly infrequently.

My wife also has a macbook from work. As soon as she opens it sucks up all of the bandwidth. I can't stream video from Amazon or game if that laptop is open. Gaming my ping will jump into the several hundreds. If my wife is watching video on any of our other laptops no problem, but if the (Cr)apple is running the network is unuseable for any other device.

Any ideas what is causing this and how to fix it (short of banning that thing and calling her IT person and asking what kind of sleazy spyware he is running :p)?
 
dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
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It's sounds like it's sending a bunch of data upstream - probably just backing itself up.

We always configured ours to only run CrashPlan when they were on known networks, so they wouldn't do that.

Also try enabling any QoS features on your router.
 
Ichinisan

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
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Perhaps a massive iCloud photo / drive sync that has never been able to finish completely...?

Leave it on overnight (maybe a couple nights) and see if the problem goes away.
 
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pashbe1

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May 5, 2009
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Okay guys, thanks for your "advise". Its a configuration problem on the apple or in the network? I wouldn't know how to configure the apple and the QoS doesn't seem to change anything.
 
dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
16,985
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pashbe1 said:
Okay guys, thanks for your "advise". Its a configuration problem on the apple or in the network? I wouldn't know how to configure the apple and the QoS doesn't seem to change anything.
Click to expand...

Could be both, but I'd be leaning towards the Mac, since when you turn it off, everything else is fine. :awe:

Sorry I didn't think of this earlier, but you can use Activity Monitor on the Mac to monitor how much network bandwidth it's using. It will even tell you which applications are sending how many packets, so if there's a single process that's killing you, it should be pretty easy to spot.

pashbe1 said:
I wouldn't know how to configure the apple...
Click to expand...

If you're not sure what you're doing in OS X and are okay admitting it, then there's no pride issue - it's a work computer, her job has IT people, they should be fixing it so your wife can use it at home effectively. Pawn it off on them and rest easy.
 
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pashbe1

Member
May 5, 2009
93
2
71
yeah, I'm a complete apple nub. Back in the 80's I was a fanboy, then I got a C64. But to the problem at hand, I've tried to get my wife to deal with her IT people, so far she hasn't bothered. After all the problem doesn't affect her. I've tried the passive/aggressive route and simply shut off the wifi, lol, with predictable results. Maybe instead of Anandtech forums I need a marriage counselor.

I'll try to find the "Activity Monitor". One thing that was odd, I was monitoring traffic last night through the router itself and it showed virtually no traffic from the macbook?!?!
 
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Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
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disable ipv6 on the macbook and your local pc's. It is broken in many implementations!
 
RadiclDreamer

RadiclDreamer

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2004
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pashbe1 said:
yeah, I'm a complete apple nub. Back in the 80's I was a fanboy, then I got a C64. But to the problem at hand, I've tried to get my wife to deal with her IT people, so far she hasn't bothered. After all the problem doesn't affect her. I've tried the passive/aggressive route and simply shut off the wifi, lol, with predictable results. Maybe instead of Anandtech forums I need a marriage counselor.

I'll try to find the "Activity Monitor". One thing that was odd, I was monitoring traffic last night through the router itself and it showed virtually no traffic from the macbook?!?!
Click to expand...

Just click the magnifying glass in the top right and type activity, it will pop up
 
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drebo

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2006
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I suspect it's the Apple trying to do a backup of some kind. If you have a crappy Internet connection, where your upstream bandwidth is less than 1mbps, and you're using wireless AC, then full saturation of your upstream bandwidth is less than 1% capacity on that wireless AC connection.

So, yeah, your router would show extremely little traffic relative to capacity on the wireless side.
 
ControlD

ControlD

Diamond Member
Apr 25, 2005
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Interesting that this thread came up as I was going to post something similar a few weeks ago but didn't quite know how to frame it. I have nearly the same issue at home. I can be sitting and watching a movie on my tablet, but as soon as my wife fires up her Macbook Air it pretty much kills the network. I was thinking the Air's wireless adapter was more to blame than it actually consuming all network resources because my desktop (wired connection) still works fine. Wireless clients however struggle whenever the Air is on. It doesn't back anything up to the cloud.

Some good suggestions here for me to look into!
 
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pashbe1

Member
May 5, 2009
93
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Okay, so I'm back. The IT "professional" responsible for the macbook swears its my networks problem. If I had this issue with any of the other five devices that connect to the network I would agree, but since it only happens with the macbook connected that is simply a ridiculous claim.

So I've been having my wife hardwire to the router, but even this has not fixed the issue. I left the macbook on for 24 hours to let any sync complete that the system might try and the network was down the whole time.

Next I upgraded to a TP-Link Archer C5 AC1200 dual band router. Even hardwired the macbook is bogging the network down to the point that nothing works.
 
Ichinisan

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
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I'd probably have to read the whole thread again to know if this is a valid question, but does the Macbook's nerwork interface (wired and wifi) have a manual/static IP configuration?
 
Ichinisan

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
1,235
136
...also,try limiting the WiFi channel width on your router from "auto" to the minimum width. I think you might want to try that for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Even when the MacBook is wired, it's probably connected over WiFi at the same time. It might try to use a "wide" channel mode that your other devices don't support. Just a theory...
 
Gryz

Gryz

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2010
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As I've said a few dozen times on this forum already: you can never figure out what's going on, unless you actually *look* at stuff. Or measure it. Only JackMDS has the right answer here.

10 Seconds of googling gave me this:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202013
Tcpdump on a Mac.
It's a standard utility.

Do that. Look at the packets that fly by. See if you see the same ip-address all the time. That tells you which computer the Mac is communicating with (on the Internet, or maybe your spouse's office). If you look at the port-number, you can even figure out what protocol or what application is using all that bandwidth.

If it is indeed the Mac phoning home, you can actually capture a bunch of packets in a file. And give that to the admin guy. That's hard proof that the problem lies on his end.
 
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pashbe1

Member
May 5, 2009
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Nice, thanks guys, I will try that tonight. I have actually googled this and found lots of people complaining and no answers. I didn't just wire the MacBook, I also disable the wifi on it.

I appreciate your input and agree, looking and measuring are indeed the key to definitive answers. I just didn't know where to look and what to measure. This at least gives me something to start with.
 
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