Airport connectivity problem...

[Mummyscurse]

Hello to the Group...

I am writing on behalf of my girlfriend, whose iMac, running OS X, had to be relocated in the house. Of necessity, I switched it from a wired, high speed internet connection, to a wireless 802.11 connection... or an "attempt" to do so. As a Windows XP user, I was forced to do some research, to even know where to begin, but found that Airport had to be turned on. I managed to navigate my way to the Airport settings window, and clicked it "On". All seemed well, as Firefox loaded all her tabbed pages, without a hitch.

Hours later, when she came home, we found that when she tried to retrieve her email, NOTHING LOADED... the connectivity had been lost. How, or why, this happened, when it had been working fine when I left it, is a mystery that a Windows user fails to discern. Worse yet, nothing we both tried can get the wireless connection restored.

Can anyone offer any insight as to why a connection that was fine one minute, decided... on it's own (nice job, Mac!!!)... not to cooperate? Do we have to run 50' of RJ45 cable to the iMac's new location, to get online again? We switched Airport "On" again, as something internal had apparently switched it off, but still have no internet access. It worked before, but not now...

 

[misswormwood]

Has it ever occurred to you that your girlfriend's iMac might be sensing that you're a Micro$oft fanboy and therefore refuses to obey you?

No offense. What you're experiencing is a known bug of Leopard which exists since the release of MacOS 10.5 and hasn't been fully resolved yet.

There seems to be no universal solution to this problem. It also appears that the severity of the problem as well as its possible solution depends on which router hardware you're using. The more up-to-date your hardware/firmware is the more likely you're not going to have any problems with airport. Check out the various threads on this topic in this and other forums. If nothing else works try installing Tiger as there seem to be no airport connectivity issues with MacOS 10.4.

I also occasionally have problems with slow WiFi response, intermittently dropping connection, airport refusing to connect etc. I've observed that everything works smoothly whenever the signal strength of my router (as measured e.g. by iStumbler) is way above the signal strength of neighboring networks.

 

[shinji]

Try this http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8678422 (it's the last reply, from rsmarg)

So far I've been having success with a solution provided by a phone rep at Apple Care. I've been having this problem on my iMac 10.5.6 since I purchased it 12/26/08. I know its not the DSL or router b/c I'm always able to access internet with three other devices: MacBook 10.5.6, PowerBook G4 10.4, and iPhone. Super annoying problem, esp. during chats and streams.

So I called Apple and they had me set a new Location in Network to give the iMac a new IP. Here are the steps to do this:
1) Open System Preferences -> Network
2) On left, select AirPort
3) From the Location drop-down menu, select "Edit Locations"
4) Click the + sign and give it a new name (I called mine "Home)
5) Click "Done"
6) On left, AirPort will be dropped to bottom of list. At bottom, click the cog wheel, then select "Set Service Order"
7) Drag AirPort to top of list
8) Select "Apply" in lower right corner

At this point the AirPort should be at the top of the list in the left bar and, below it, read "Connected". Its Location should show the name you gave it, and under Status it should read "Connected" and below that it should read "AirPort is connected to (name of your wireless network) and has the IP address (192.168.0.###).

Like I said, so far this has been working for me. Hope it helps others.

It's annoying for sure.

 

[misswormwood]

Try this http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8678422 (it's the last reply, from rsmarg)

Tried that, too. Didn't make a difference. Only thing that works for me is making sure that the router signal is sufficiently strong.