Problem with Macbook airport connection

[taigua]

I'm not sure if I'm posting in the right subforum, if I'm not, please let me know.
Hey everyone, I´m having problems with my brand new macbook(MAC OS X 10.6.1).

First thing is: I have a wireless router(linksys wrt54g), and it works well with my windows based notebook. But when I try to access the Internet with the Macbook, I'm able to connect with the router, but with no internet connection (in the airport icon there's a "!" sign). What should I do? The Macbook also doesn't connect when I plug it to directly to the ethernet cable.

Second thing is: I use another wireless signal I found near my home, but sometimes I'm connected to the network, with total signal strenght, nothing says I don't have an internet connection, but the safari or firefox simply doesn't access any websites, nor does any other softwares. What could be happening?

Hope someone can help me out with this one, thanks.

 

[satcomer]

First of all download and install the 10.6.3v Combo Update because it has a lot of wireless fixes along with some security fixes.

Then tell us what version of security on the wireless router are you using? What frequency is the wireless router transmitting at (a, b, g, n)? Plus on a Linksys router change the frequency transmit channel number off from the default number (make it something like 8, 9 or 10) because they program their wireless router to default at the same channel number of microwave ovens and older portable home phones.

Lastly if the Linksys is running WEP security try putting a $ symbol in front of the WEP password. The is an old OS X trick that has worked for years on Linksys routers running WEP.

Also if you can connect and it doesn't let you get on the internet open System Preferences->Network pane and see if you are getting an IP and router IP from the wireless connection (in the Network pane hit the "Advanced" button so set the DNS IP to the IPs 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220 (if you are in the States or Canada) because these are OpenDNS.com DNS servers. Using these third party DNS servers might help.