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Drodrey

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 9, 2010
19
1
I've read a few threads here on this topic already, but none of the situations are quite the same as mine, and I have yet to find a solution.

So this afternoon I was on the internet, no problem. Closed my mac, went to work, came home, opened my mac, and I can no longer connect to the internet. Absolutely nothing, as far as I am aware, has changed. My sister can connect on her macbook, I can connect on my iPhone, my dad can connect on his PC.

In System Preferences it says "airport has the self-assigned IP address xxx and will not be able to connect to the internet".

I then attempted to tether my iPhone to my mac, and use its internet. As soon as I turned personal hotspot on, my normal internet connect reconnected. So I turned hotspot off... and it disconnected. As far as I can *tell* I'm using my normal internet, but using my phones IP address...

I'm not particularly computer savy and have no idea where even to look. I've done all the normal things, reset my router, turned my computer on and off, reset airport... nothing.

I'll keep trawling the internet, but if anyone has any suggestions?...
 

r0k

macrumors 68040
Mar 3, 2008
3,611
75
Detroit
I've read a few threads here on this topic already, but none of the situations are quite the same as mine, and I have yet to find a solution.

So this afternoon I was on the internet, no problem. Closed my mac, went to work, came home, opened my mac, and I can no longer connect to the internet. Absolutely nothing, as far as I am aware, has changed. My sister can connect on her macbook, I can connect on my iPhone, my dad can connect on his PC.

In System Preferences it says "airport has the self-assigned IP address xxx and will not be able to connect to the internet".

I then attempted to tether my iPhone to my mac, and use its internet. As soon as I turned personal hotspot on, my normal internet connect reconnected. So I turned hotspot off... and it disconnected. As far as I can *tell* I'm using my normal internet, but using my phones IP address...

I'm not particularly computer savy and have no idea where even to look. I've done all the normal things, reset my router, turned my computer on and off, reset airport... nothing.

I'll keep trawling the internet, but if anyone has any suggestions?...

Can you connect to your router wired? If so, perhaps there is a setting in your airport (macbook end) preferences that needs taking a look at. After unplugging from ethernet, turn airport back on and option click the airport icon (I'm a little fuzzy on the details here and I'm not in front of my Macbook)... From there you should be able to get to network preferences and if you have a self assigned ip address, you can remove it and pick "DHCP" for your ip address.
Here is a screenshot of wireless preferences with an "automatic" ip address...
wireless_osx_network_preferences.png


Here is a screenshot of wired network preferences with a "manual" ip address...
network.jpg
 

Drodrey

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 9, 2010
19
1
My mac cannot connect with ethernet either, it's doing the exact same thing, connecting, but not assigning an IP address that's valid.

I'm attempting to manually give it an IP, but, this is going to sound like a ridiculous question... how do I pick an IP address? How do I even know what my computers IP was previously?

EDIT:
I manually assigned it the IP directly after my iphone's IP... System Preferences recognised this and said it was working, but i was still unable to connect to the internet... So I changed it back to DHCP
 
Last edited:

Drodrey

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 9, 2010
19
1
sorry, double post, but now, out of nowhere, it's working again.

I decided to restart my computer (for the 6th time), just because I've been doing lots of fiddling... And I turned it on, wasn't working, plugged in my phone to start using its internet. Then i noticed Airport was green in system preferences (as opposed to the yellow its been all night)... And now it's working. From what I've read however, it appears to be a reoccurring problem. So yes, if anyone has a proper fix, let me know.

Thank you so much, r0k for your help. Undoubtably something you suggested did something somewhere.
 

Mr. Retrofire

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2010
5,064
518
www.emiliana.cl/en
So yes, if anyone has a proper fix, let me know.

No fix, because it is a hardware problem (buggy broadcom chip). Apples drivers contain already a lot of workarounds for buggy chips, but the self assigned IP problem exists now for years.

The following helped (after several days):
1. I deleted the AirPort interface from the network list (Ethernet, Airport, Bluetooth, FireWire and so on in System Preferences).
2. Restarted my Mac.
3. Created a new AirPort interface, so that it appears in the network list (no additional configuration).

I repeated this at least 10 times before i had success. It seems some custom configurations, like a custom MTU size, are incompatible with either Apples drivers or the broadcom-WLAN-chip.

Do not delete network configuration (.plist) files! This does not solve the problem (at least not for me & many others)!

My MBPs: Mid-2009 17" and Early-2011 17"
 

Hunnenkoenig

macrumors newbie
Apr 30, 2010
21
0
If you have a problem with the WiFi conenction telling about the self assigned IP, then go to your router's setting and turn off the 802.11 n-mode.

That helped me after several hours of trying around with all possible static IPs and such.

I don't know if it is relevant in your situation, but maybe somebody else will read it ;)
 

iandi

macrumors newbie
Sep 3, 2012
4
0
I just started having this exact problem on my 6 week on MBP retina a couple of days ago. Able to connect on my iphone hotspot, but not through my home Wifi router or its ethernet. I did get it working for a few hours after I reset my router and worked through the network settings diagnostics...but the problem is back and the diagnostics didn't work this time.

Is there a fix for this or do I have a hardware issue that I should have fixed/replaced?
 
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