Problem connecting to wireless router.

Ozzbot

I have had my Intel iMac for a couple of days, and I am running into a problem keeping it connected to the wireless network. I have an old D-Link router, which has been working fine for a few years.

When I first powered on the iMac it found my neighbour's unprotected wireless network, and let me get on the net without a problem. I entered my network's name and WEP password and it seemed to work fine. However, when I powered on the iMac later on there was no network connection. I had to enter the name and password again, and while the Airport was connected I had no Internet connection. I ran the Network Diagnostics, and afte rebooting the router, it worked again.

Same problem happend tonight. The iMac shut down and when I powered it on again, I had no network connection. This time I had no luck in getting it working again. I tried using the Airport menulet (?) in the top right corner, as well as the Network section under System Preferences. No luck.

Do I have to create a "location" in order for the iMac to remember the connection info? Any other ideas on why it won't reconnect?

__________________
17" Intel iMac

mguertin

Hmm it sounds like it might be a permissions problem on one count, and like the router might be having some problems too (not uncommon). I'd try repairing permissions on your end to make sure it's able to keep the passwords in your keychain. The router reboot sounded like it was just the router and not your end of things...

Locations are just an easy way to remember various settings (static IP, vs DHCP) that sort of thing ... not really a problem for what you're doing here. Also the menu bar icon and the network control panel all access the same info pretty much so you should be fine adjusting in either.

Just curious, do you ever get prompted for a keychain pasword (like at startup) and skip or cancel it?

HTH

Ozzbot

I don't think I skipped a keychain prompt. I know one of the dialogue boxes has a checkbox that says something like Add to Keychain which I have not checked.

Of course, I am not sure what a keychain is, I assume it is something to store passwords in, which I normally avoid, on principle. But then, I am using a Mac now, so perhaps I should not be so paranoid!

I will be getting back to the Mac later tonight to see if I can get it going.

__________________
17" Intel iMac

Ozzbot

Didn't get to the network problems yesterday, as I had to complete my census.

After an hour of playing around with settings tonight, still no Internet, although the Network settings now indicate that the iMac is connected to my network. However, the Airport setting say that the iMac has a self-generated IP address which does not match those of my other PCs.

I manually set the IP, subnet mask, and router IP and I was able to open the router settings, but still no Internet.

__________________
17" Intel iMac

sinjin

I had similar problems when I added an Airport Extreme card to my iMac and entered onto my Netgear MR814 (802.11b) network. Sometimes it worked (rarely), most of the time it was connected to the router (and my Airport "b" equipped laptop) but no internet. It even caused problems for my laptop, occasionally its connection would go south as well, which never happened before.

Trawling through forums turned up that the MR814, and Netgear routers in general, was notorious for flakey behaviour with AE cards. I also saw some complaints about d-link, but not as many. Anyhow, this led me to buying and Airport Express base station to replace the Netgear and all was well for a while, then similar weirdness started happening again...but not exactly the same. More trouble shooting led me to turn on "Use Interference Robustness" in the Airport drop-down menu (I'm certain I tried this with the Netgear... or almost certain...). All the problems went away, and my signal strength seems to be stronger.

Nutshell: it may be your router and AE don't get along well, but try the interference robustness trick before you run out and buy a new router!

FWIW, I've no regrets with the Airport Express router. It is less than half the size of the Netgear's power brick alone yet seems to provide as good, if not better, coverage across my 3 bdrm apt and gets better connection speeds than the Netgear. Bizarre. I wish I bought it for travelling years ago. It's the swiss army knife of routers.

__________________
How could you not be happy with balloons full of hamsters hanging off of your belt?

Ozzbot

Weirdest thing. After ignoring the iMac for a couple of hours I opened Firefox and boom, there's Google! Somehow it starting working!

I haven't shut down the iMac since, but it is working fine now. When I check the IP address, it is a normal address for my router. My guess is that there was a time lag for the router to assign an IP address to the iMac. I have never run into this problem before, but then I have only used the wireless connection with my Windows laptop.

Anyway, I have my fingers crossed that the connection does not disappear when I shut down the computer!

Now I can start to learn how ti use this thing!

__________________
17" Intel iMac

Ozzbot

I am starting to get frustrated!

I had to reboot my iMac, after downloading some Updates, and the wireless network connection has disappeared again! When the iMac restarted, it connected to my neighbour's unprotected network instead of my network, and once again the password had to input again.

I have been bouncing around the network settings for the better part of an hour with no luck. Perhaps it will correct itself overnight.

__________________
17" Intel iMac