Have had internet connection troubles for two years now:(

[luffytubby]

I just got an Airport a few weeks ago, but it has not helped with my 4 MB internet.


We have 3 computers. An Imac, a PC laptop and G3 Powerbook connected via Ethernet cables through LAN to the airport. The Powerbook is connected wirelessly.


Here is the problem - Sometimes the internet just does not work. What makes it work? When I restart the network. I pull out the powerplug on the Airport, and suddenly all our computers can get onlne with no problem.


Everytime I start my Imac up, it gives me an Imac where it says "Could not find any of you prefered networks, please select another"! On the bottom of the messege, is a list of networks it seems to have found - Wifi signals from other apartments in our areas or something. But mine is not on. If I restart the Airport(pull out the powerplug and put it back in) it will "see" our airport.


If I configure anything in the airport settings, or even change the settings manually, and update it, the airport will stop to work with my imac and our computers cant get online again before i restart the airport.


For the past two years I have had similiar problems with our netgear router. It was similiar how it got to work. Suddenly the internet would die, or become very slow. Restarting the network cured it.



I got no idea what the problem is. i am sick of it. We got a 4 MB Cable connection. can anyone help or know what the problem is?

our internet service providers are *******s with crappy customer support. we dont even want to change because the changing process with them is long, hard and a pain... thats how they make sure not to loose customers. bastards. also we cant afford to be without internet for potential weeks. we depend on it. for work!


please help,
thanks.

 

[bigapplegeek]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

If you get too far away from it it will slow things down.

 

[luffytubby]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

If you get too far away from it it will slow things down.

huh? What does that mean?


I have wireless disabled. I am connected to the airport through LAN! So what does distance matter? I think my ethernet cable is 10 meters!

 

[alphaod]

Turn off your microwave, cordless phones, cell phones, satellite service, and all wireless computers except ONE; this you use to test if the connection is good for not; if it is, you have interference, so you turn on each other device one after another (starting with essentials) and see what causes the performance drop.

If your preliminary tests fail, then you will either need a better router with more range or a signal booster. I had a Hawking G-Signal 251mW booster with a 20dBi antenna that increased my range and performance 25 times literally. Now I have a N-router and a N-repeater and it works flawlessly; the main is an Airport Extreme and the repeater is an Airport Express.

Finally since you did mention that wired connections are slow, test by connecting directly to the modem; how are those speeds? If they are good then your router is aging; reason I replaced my old router was I had slowdowns due to the router.

 

[luffytubby]

the net is not slow. sometimes it just drops dead. like it looses signal and wont get new signal unless i restart router.


the airport has great speed, it never slows down or gets slow. its just.. either i got internet or else i dont got it at all!

 

[mkrishnan]

I have wireless disabled. I am connected to the airport through LAN! So what does distance matter? I think my ethernet cable is 10 meters!

I'm sorry, I'm not really following you completely either. When your internet connection stops working, do the wired devices also stop working or only the wireless ones? If the wired devices also stop working, ignore any of the advice to date about wireless interference, etc. At least for now, that is -- first, solve the issue that causes the wired connections to fail and then think about wireless.

Now then, you said you have Cable internet, right? What kind of cable modem do you have? Does your route (the Airport or whatever) store a password to log into the modem? Here are my guesses:

- Either the cable company's server keeps letting the modem's lease lapse, and the modem is not successfully getting a new lease -- you should be able to configure this from the modem.

- Or the modem is letting the router's lease lapse, and the router is not getting a new lease -- you should be able to correct this from the router settings, particularly bumping up the lease duration.

- The third possibility, that's out there, but you have older hardware so I wouldn't completely write it off -- is that you are somehow getting tangled up with IPv6 addressing, and you have a device on your network that does not support IPv6, and so it is mucking everything up. The solution for that would be to turn IPv6 support off in the operating system preferences of each of the computers.