advanced wireless ibook troubleshooting

[trixierobin]

I had a nice thing going, but ever since i changed my ISP, no wireless. And many hours of frustration with various tech support lines.

using: ibook G4, OSX 10.4.9
speedtouch modem
linksys WRT54G v5 router
ISP: Primus Canada DSL

(currently I'm connected to the router by cable so I can use the forum, but before I reconnected the cable): The mac says I'm connected to my wireless network in the Airport status, the signal level rates as very strong, yet I can't connect to any sites thru Firefox or IE.

I've lost track of all of the calls and steps of the last 8 weeks, but the most recent support chat with Linksys had me upgrade the firmware on the router, reconfigured the router, set the internet connection settings and restarted everything a few times. Everything seemed to work, until I tried to use the wireless only. (see paragraph above)

Can anybody suggest what to try? I've been to this point several times before and don't know what to do.
Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Robin

[symphonix]

It may not be your wireless that is at fault at all, if you are showing good signal levels and so on. Have you tried plugging the iBook straight into the speedtouch modem, thus eliminating wireless as a possible cause of the problem?

[arri]

maybe both the speedtouch and the linksys are server dhcp and doing nat? that's never going to improve anything ...
or maybe you're airport card is het to static ip? (from last provider..)

make sure only 1 of the 2 routers is connecting your lan to the internet, and doing dhcp and nat. most likely candidate is the speedtouc.. have the other just be a stupid (wireless) switch

so:
- turn-on, or leave-on the dhcp-server in the speedtouch (10.0.0.138 in browser?)

- disable any encryption in the linksys (just for now.. to be sure...)

- turn-off dhcp-server and anything related to dhcp or nat (or napt) in the linksys. just make sure it's not doing anything intelligent, and only is sending/receiving radio (wifi)

- plug etherner cable from speedtouch in a 'regular' ethernet port of the linksys (if it has more than one). just try to avoid any special 'wan' port, if possible. this way you will get an ip from the speedtouch through the wifi of the linksys. should always work. at least, for me it always did so far.

- turn-off all nics in the ibook, except the airport and drag the airport to the top of the list if not already there (System Prefs > Network > Show: Network Port Configurations) also pict/link at bottom

- to remove faulty (fixed?) ip / router / dns settings from ibook-network setings:
just configure it to use dhcp (and maybe drag to top of list?): in ibook System Prefs > Network > Show: Airport -> dhcp + click apply/save.
also remove any DNS entries. you get that automatically from speedtouch with dhcp

- maybe reset everything, just for the fun, listen to chimes and hd crunches, wait till they're all up again. keep an eye on status-led's on several aparata to get an idea what machine is talking to who..

- maybe it helps to do in the terminal (the first '$ ' indicates promt: don't type those)

$ lookupd -flushcache



----> does it work now? i'll mail you my bankaccountnr. could use some refill..

if not, test everything one by one..
- ibook works with just cable and speedtouch?
- ibook uses cable-linksys-cable-speedtouch and it works?
etc..


if finally it still fails, then perhaps you're under attack by a martian microwave-bomber that jams the 2.4Ghz frequencies. consider contacting intelligence..








dragging network interface:
http://78.47.95.84/dump/nics.png