Uverse and MAC MINI = home network instability

[ElliotR]

I'm no networking expert, so I will try to explain the issue I am having as simply as possible, forgive me if this is missing important technical info!

Downstairs in the living room I have a Uverse router with a Western Digital LIVE TV media player (with attached Passport 500GB hard drive) connected to it to play videos on my TV

Upstairs I have a MAC MINI (OS X 10.5.8) using AIRPORT
and a PC (WIN XP SP2) using Ethernet cable

The PC and THE MAC are both set up with SHARED FOLDERS so I can transfer files back and forth between them and transfer media files to the WD TV LIVE's attached hard drive.

Here's the thing....

THe PC ALWAYS connects with the MAC, the network and the Passport HD.
But while the MAC MINI always connects to Uverse's WIFI signal
it randomly loses its connection to both the PC and to the Passport. (Even when the PC can connect to the MAC, the MAC cannot seem to connect to the PC!) Strangely enough, the PC AND the PASSPORT HD BOTH show up in the left hand side of my FINDER bar under the "SHARED" arrow
..but when i click on them - i just get a spinning wheel in the right hand corner of the folder

Sometimes my MAC will stay connected for days - sometimes it loses the connection several times a day. The only way to fix this is to reboot the MAC.....which is a pain. Resetting the Uverse router seems to have no effect.
When I hook Ethernet cable up to mac min and swtich off airport
I still have the same problems


ANY IDEAS? It's driving me nuts.

 

[Corruptitudes]

Ive had similar issues. I was able to resolve it by changing the ip address on the machine having the problem. Have you tried manually resetting the ip address?

 

[ElliotR]

I don't know how to do that. Do i need to get a new ip address from Att?

 

[skorpien]

No, what Corruptitudes means is that you need to change the IP address of the machine on your network. Your router takes a public IP (from AT&T) and shares it between the machines on your network using DHCP (assigning each machine it's own separate IP address that the router dictates).

To manually set your IP address on your Mac, go into your Network Preferences, select your AirPort, click Advanced and select TCP/IP from the tabs. For the Configure iPv4 dropdown, select "Using DHCP with manual address." Give your machine a static IP address using the router's IP address as a guide. For example, if the router's IP is 192.168.1.1, give your machine a 192.168.1.XXX (XXX = 0 - 255). The best practice is to give your machine a unique IP outside of the range of IP addresses that your router assigns. If you do not know this range, it can probably be found in your router's setup pages.

 

[ElliotR]

Thanks so much, I think i got it.

UPDATE:
Mac Mini has stayed connected to the network for 5 days straight
Thanks Skorpien and Corruptitudes for taking the time to answer my post!

 

[tim.rand]

Home Network Instability

On my Macbook Pro, if I go to Console, I see errors every minute related to krb5kdc[33](info): network reconfiguration needed

I /think/ what is happening is that I'm getting route change messages over the Uverse network. This prevents my Airtunes streaming, for example.

As above, sometimes its OK for days and sometimes only minutes.

 

[tim.rand]

On U-Verse?

Are you, by chance, on U-Verse by ATT? I'm seeing the same thing. I can't keep Airport streaming (Airtunes) working to my Airport Express, for example. Other things seem too slow.

I'm thinking about figuring out the particular protocol (I'm thinking ARP) that is triggering this problem and putting a firewall block in place.

 

[debo]

Are you, by chance, on U-Verse by ATT? I'm seeing the same thing. I can't keep Airport streaming (Airtunes) working to my Airport Express, for example. Other things seem too slow.

I'm thinking about figuring out the particular protocol (I'm thinking ARP) that is triggering this problem and putting a firewall block in place.

Did you ever get this resolved? I'm having the same issue.