Odds and Ends: Slow Internet with Firewall Enabled

Slow Internet with Firewall Enabled Peter Zieseniss offers additional insight on the previously reported problem where enabling the Firewall when using an AirPort connection causes dramatically lower speeds:

"It seems that if you run an ipfw utility like BrickHouse to configure your firewall, it may get corrupted if you use it in combination with 10.2.x. The symptom (which, again has occurred at some point on at least 70% of my clients' Macs) is the following: under 10.2.x the internet connection of a given machine will suddenly become unbearably slow, but it still works--ie: if you wait 10 to 15 minutes, the apple.com page will load.

"I have found, almost by chance, that, in 100% of the cases, the fix was to delete the 'Firewall' folder from /Library/StartupItems/ and run BrickHouse to install a fresh firewall config. In short, I would recommend the person having the slow internet connection to look at their G4's firewall config.

"Finally, it seems that the ipfw (BrickHouse) firewall gets corrupted nearly every time someone turns file sharing on/off, then go to the firewall tab of the Sharing prefpane and get a warning that other firewall software is running."

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