Saturday, May 27, 2017

IPv4 is Apparently Ludditeville - And Also Faster

I got an email from Adam Albrec, creator extraordinaire of PPC Media Center, with a fix to a performance lag he noticed when moving to a new house. PPCMC wasn't nearly as fast in the new digs and after conversing with the youtube-dl developers, they suggested he disable IPv6 in the app. He reports it helped "IMMENSELY." He promised a new version of PPCMC which will do this automatically, but you can disable IPv6 system-wide right now in Tiger by going into Network Preferences, and under the TCP/IP tab, click the "Configure IPv6..." button and switch from "Automatically" to "Off".

In Leopard it appears you have to click on the Advanced button first to get to the TCP/IP tab, as illustrated on this University of North Carolina help page.

I also noticed on G5 Center's Internet page this tidbit:

Pro-Tip: Tobias, key developer of Leopard-Webkit, recommends disabling IPv6 in the Network system preferences for your internet connection/port on your Mac if you experience hangs when loading webpages. I can confirm that this leads to a night and day performance change for my G5. WebKit is smooth as silk now.

So disabling system-wide sounds like a good option to experiment with. Just be aware, things like Bonjour or other system services could break, but re-enabling IPv6 is quick and easy.

Que the network IT people saying, "Don't disable IPv6. Fix your @#%^&$ing network!"