Dropping wifi conections...

[Nick012]

My macbook recently started dropping its wifi connection randomly. Sometimes I stay on the network for a few hours, sometimes a few seconds... What could have made it suddenly start doing it?
My landlord got a new router for my building (student accommodation), its a Belkin and is secured with WEP encryption (lol) whereas we used to have a netgear router where he had to register your mac address to get on. Could the new router/wep encryption be the cause?
The thing thats confusing me is that often I need to restart my computer to connect to the network and often selecting the airport menu makes the computer beachball... Could it be a hardware/software problem on my end?

 

[kfordham281]

Did anyone tell him WEP is a joke?

 

[jeff3221]

What do you mean WEP is a joke? Does it drop connections or is it hackable. Your comment doesn't help anybody.

 

[kizz]

from my experience of my mbp and wep, they dont seem to get on well. i could get on the internet fine one day and then i couldnt for a few days until it came back on is own.

i soon switched my router to wpa and its worked flawlessly since, have a google, i think theres a few tips about to try and improve but it sounds like your not in a postion to change the router settings

 

[Charliekid21]

My macbook recently started dropping its wifi connection randomly. Sometimes I stay on the network for a few hours, sometimes a few seconds... What could have made it suddenly start doing it?
My landlord got a new router for my building (student accommodation), its a Belkin and is secured with WEP encryption (lol) whereas we used to have a netgear router where he had to register your mac address to get on. Could the new router/wep encryption be the cause?
The thing thats confusing me is that often I need to restart my computer to connect to the network and often selecting the airport menu makes the computer beachball... Could it be a hardware/software problem on my end?

same problem but dont have wep and i have a netgear and a lynksys but it is wpa

 

[DocSmitty]

The (lol) and referring to wep as a joke are a reference to the hackability - 2-4 minutes

But then, that's not the purpose - it's to keep freeloading neighbors from using your connection, and most people don't have neighbors who would hack an encrypted wireless net.

 

[kfordham281]

The (lol) and referring to wep as a joke are a reference to the hackability - 2-4 minutes

Yes, it's not very secure. Very true about most having neighbors that would not hack a network connection. But being a student based housing facility, that's a different story.

Have you updated your Macbook with all the latest patches? I seem to recall in the last six months there was at least one patch related to network connections.

 

[Crow47]

Do you have another computer around? Perhaps you could share the internet connection from that over to your macbook.

 

[P.Roy]

i'm having the same problem with my mbp. just got it last saturday and bought the same Belkin N wireless with wep encription. my wife has a new black macbook and she has not had any problem as far as picking up the network. called apple about it and they couldnt help me, called belkin and they couldnt help either... so i guess i'll try a new router or something..

 

[kfordham281]

If you're running Leopard you might want to download 10.5.2 (released today). Among the fixes are several relating to Airport.