Technical question:
Had WIFI problems so my provider sent me a new, improved modem. I installed it. The connection via ethernet cable works fine, using it right now on the PC. The WIFI says it’s fine, but I can’t get online with my macbook. Sometimes it claims to have a connection, one time I even got a page to load, but lost the connection soon thereafter. Usually, I get a connection timeout while it’s trying to log in.
Checking various forums, I noticed many mac owners have problems where macbooks which had worked fine suddenly can’t get online although they think they can.
So I don’t know if this is a problem with my new modem or with my old macbook.
Neither did the service line guy I just talked to. He suggested resetting the modem and reinstalling it, or having a technician come out (€€€) or calling the non-free helpline.
One of which I will do, but before I do, I wanted to ask you guys for any input or suggestions you may have here so I sound like less of a dork the next time I call one of these people. Is there anything I can do, for example, with my macbook to improve my chances of getting a connection or finding out what the problem is?
Anything else I ought to be looking into?
Thanks in advance.
One thing that pops up a lot in the tech forums I look at is that sometimes you have to make sure the router is only using one wireless mode instead of multiple modes, and that the mode it uses is 802.11g, not the faster 802.11n. This isn’t as much of an issue as it was a couple of years ago, since most people using the even-slower B-mode have moved up to at least G, but if you’ve got several computers all trying to connect, and some of them have older wirelss cards, it can be a pain, because the older ones will have to be upgraded to G.
I get around this problem by plugging an Apple Airport Extreme into my cable modem and using THAT as the wireless node instead of the company-provided device. My MacBook and all the various PCs all connect to the Airport without any problems.
thank you.
with our previous modem and router, we had to do a reboot after teh connection died, sometimes every few minutes, which kind of defeated the purpose of wifi. jsut now i tried to log on, and it timed out over and over. so i rebooted and it worked.
sigh.
i was wondering if using an apple product for the wifi would help. i get my internet out of the phone jack, unfortunately, not cable, which is faster right?
maybe i should go talk to the kid at the apple store about this… so far my mac is the only thing i’ve tried the wifi with. will get my wife to fire her non-mac thing up this weekend and see how that does.
We’ve had trouble with our wifi and a bunch of macs (up to 5) for months now. Connect, disconnect, connect, disconnect, forget to nameserve, reboot… It seems to come and go so sometimes it’s ok for a while then other nights it’s woeful. I don’t think it’s always the mac’s fault, but can’t be sure about that.
It seems better if I set up a ping to, say google, but that might just be wishful thinking. Turning my mac’s airport off and on seems to help sometimes too, but only sometimes.
Sorry I don’t have much advice, but it’s not just you. Our router is a Netcomm. I’ll try your advice about G, Brian, but I think we might already be doing that!
Good luck mig.
This morning, to get my current connection going, i had to go up and turn the modem off and on. It worked like a charm. Unfortunately, that was the problem this new modem was supposed to solve in the first place.
Hmmm. I have no problems (PC, iPhone) but Scott (Mac, Macbook, iPad) has constant problems getting online. I’m going to refer this thread to him.
We have a cable modem from our Telco/ISP and an Apple Airport Extreme plugged into it for the Wireless stuff. Works like a charm.
I’m not sure if I can just plug an apple Airport Extreme into this, because it is a modem that also does WIFI already. We have the same problem with this as with the device it replaced – the internet connection dies after about 5 minutes (sometimes more, sometimes less) requiring someone to run upstairs and turn it off and on.
Maybe http://www.dvhardware.net/article15009.html (found through http://mashable.com/2010/12/20/wifi-router-quick-start/)