OSX 10.5.8 and Belkin F5D7230-4. No wireless connection.

[tjweis]

I recently upgraded my Intel Mac Book from Mac OSX 10.4 to 10.5.8.
Before this, my computer communicated with our wireless router perfectly.
Now, I cannot get online at home using the Airport Extreme card in my Macbook.

My computer picks up a completely incorrect IP address, and I get the classic "Airport has a self-assigned IP address and may not be able to connect to the network." Well duh. It'd be nice if the OS could also tell me how to fix this.
We have a Belkin model F5D7230-4.


1. My computer continues to successfully connect to the university wireless network where I work.
2. The wireless connection works fine even if I poach SOMEONE ELSE'S signal that is not password protected - Airport picks up a working IP address automatically just fine.
3. My wife's Mac Book Pro works perfectly with our wireless router. Her Airport picks up the IP address automatically just fine. She is using 10.4.
4. I am able to get online if I use an ethernet cable.

I just cannot connect wirelessly to MY router!
This is driving me crazy, and it's ludicrous that it's this difficult to figure out.

So far I think:
1. It is not a MAC filtering problem.
2. It is not a router hardware problem.
3. It is not an Airport hardware problem.
4. It is not a WEP password problem.
5. It is not a signal interference problem.
6. Deleting com.apple.airport.preferences.plist did not help.
7. Cloning the MAC address in the router control panel did not help.
8. Upgrading the router's firmware did not help.
9. Rebooting the modem, router, and computer did not help.
10. The wireless router even knows what IP is assigned to my Airport card (and we all know it's 192.168.2.x), but manually entering the IP address, router address, subnet mask, DNS server, and search domain did not work. I cannot fathom why this wouldn't help... what's the point of being able to enter this information manually if it doesn't work?

The really maddening part is that I think I had this problem before but I can't remember what I did to fix it.

I know many others have had this problem but I cannot seem to find a CONCLUSIVE answer to this issue in any forums, etc.

Anybody got any voodoo for this?? And no, I don't want to go back to 10.4.

[Satcomer]

First go into the folder /Applications/Utilities/ and launch Keychain Access. Find the entry for your wireless router (if there is one).

Then open System Preferences->Network and highlight your Airport card. Then at the top of the pane with be "Location". Use the "Location" pull-down to select make another custom named Location and then hit the word apply near the bottom of the page and try to join the wireless again to see if that works.

[tjweis]

Thanks for your reply, Satcomer. However, it didn't rectify the problem.

Since my computer will hook up with many other wireless networks/routers, and since my wife's machine works with our Belkin router just fine, I am concluding that OSX 10.5 is simply not compatible with a Belkin model F5D7230-4.
That seems crazy to me, but I can't think of any other explanation at this time.

[Satcomer]

Also follow the advice at the the article MacFixIt.com's: Tutorial: Fixing Wireless connectivity (including AirPort) problems: Dropouts, slow speed, more. It seemed to help a lot of people having Tiger to Leopard upgrade problems.

[tjweis]

UPDATE:
I took the advice of someone who responded to a copy of this post on another message board and turned off WEP at the router end.
This seems to work - the computer picked up on the correct DHCP issued IP address immediately.
Of course now my wireless connection is naked.
Should I use WPA, WPA2, or just use MAC filtering for security now?
I'll probably try WPA.
At any rate, I guess this was a WEP issue after all, but I don't know why.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

WPA2 is the "best" (read: most secure) thus far, but WPA is acceptable as well.

WEP is easily cracked by any script kiddie who can do a cohesive Google search, unfortunately.

[djackmac]

Originally Posted by tjweis

Should I use WPA, WPA2, or just use MAC filtering for security now?
I'll probably try WPA.

I use WPA with MAC filtering. Works great! The only thing is remember that you have MAC filtering turned on when adding other machines to your network. Sounds trivial, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to forget when your are going nuts trying to get a different machine to connect to your network.

[Satcomer]

Originally Posted by tjweis

At any rate, I guess this was a WEP issue after all, but I don't know why.

I know as Mac user one can break into WEP in less then one minute (this is youTube link showing the OLD dirty deed).

One should drop WEP as fast as possible and come up to at least WPA or WPA2.