# MacBook not connecting to Belkin wireless router



## noelb (Aug 7, 2007)

My mother-in-law's just this week got herself a new MacBook. 

The network she and her husband have at home is with a Belkin ADSL modem/wirelss router. It's not an encrypted network.

Her iMac G3 can connect, as can my wife's iBook G4. Although the network shows up on the MacBook, the airport status icon is grayed out and when she selects the network to connect to it she gets an 'error connecting to network' message.

Going into the network preferences panels we observe that the MacBook has not been given an IP address, - 'Using DHCP' is  enabled, whereas the other Macs get one without a problem.

She brought the MacBook to our house yesterday and it connected to our Airport network without any problem.

Even if there's a problem with the Belkin router, why on earth does this not affect the PowerPC Macs?

Any ideas? 

Her husband and step-son are PC using Mac-sceptics and this experience is causing her to think about taking her Mac back to the shop and getting her money back - she's not had it a week yet.


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## Satcomer (Aug 7, 2007)

Is the router using MAC Address (not a Mac but a MAC Address) filtering?

Note: If she goes to /TheHardDrive/Applications/Internet Connect/ and launches that program and follow the application's direction it should help.


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## noelb (Aug 12, 2007)

Thanks.

Mother-in-law's step-son did something to the Belkin - didn't say what, it adds mystique to the way these PC guys work - and it worked - for a while...

Same problem recurred, so they've now got themselves an Airport Express and an ADSLnation modem. 

Hey Presto! Everything works - as you would expect.


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## cesarcesar (Sep 21, 2008)

I FOUND A SOLUTION THAT WORKS!!!! First a little back story. 

Got my Mac Blackbook and the wi-fi worked great from my Linksys wrt54g2 router. Moved to Germany and into an apartment and my connection issues started happening. My MB would connect once then loose connection quickly and would only recover connection if i either closed and re-opened my screen, or re-connected to my network... then it would drop again before my next page turn.

After multiple days of research I read about SOOOO many others having this issue and the fact the Apple pretty much refused to acknowledge the issue. It seemed that sometime near the OX 10.4.2 update the airport driver got fubar'd leaving all those with Intel based macs wi-fi connects messed up.

Some of the solutions i read about and tried had to do with changing my WEP connection to WPA. This did not work, but i left it as WPA as my research finds it a more secure connection. I also read about and tried setting my Wireless RTA Threshold in my router to 256 from the *2432 default. This as well did not work, though I have left it at this setting as it seems to be the best value for MAC's connecting over wi-fi. This is not true for PC's though so be careful. 

More research, more research, o' my brain hurts and my patience is wearing..... then BINGO!!! I found a thread about connection issues that pertained to MB's not connecting to local-network printers. The poster mentioned that MAC's seem to have a hard time connecting to networks that had more than one wi-fi network present. This is my issue i thought. I have 8 in my available connections now. In my old home I had just mine. So i followed the directions suggested and it has now been 2 weeks of 100% perfect wi-fi connections. 

Below is the excerpt from this page, http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macbookpro/topic2005.html (Do a find for Little Snitch). The program the writer talks about is called Little Snitch found here, http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html. It's a $29 dollar program, but in my mind its well worth it to make my $1500 Blackbook work!

This may not be the Apple Fix we have been waiting for them, but its completely working for me. 



> I have used Little Snitch software for several years, and it occurred to me that I might be able to use it to block any connections with the other network. Using the latest version (v.2), go to Preferences, or Little Snitch Configuration, choose Rules under the Window menu, and click the New button.
> 
> In the pop-up window that shows up, click on the gear icon and choose "Choose System Process." A file open box opens, and under the folder "libexec," choose "airportd." "airportd" is the system daemon that controls the Airport card in the MacBook Pro. In the box that comes up, set the main menu to "Allow Connections" and the Server menu to "Local Network."


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## rspringsgal (Sep 30, 2009)

I have had the same frustrating problem with my Belkin router, which works flawlessly with the other computers in the house.  This is one of a two-step fix that has worked for me.

1) Little Snitch (you can download a demo that runs for 3 hours at a time, if you want to try it out)
2) Disabling the Belkin's firewall, which didn't seem to be contributing much anyway.  Go to the router interface to do that.  192.168.2.1, click on "Firewall," then click "Disable."

The internet still drops out once in awhile, but it's rare compared to what was going on before.  Definitely a fix to try!


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## gtoft (May 26, 2010)

I've had this same problem and am trying the Snitch solution but I hit a snag. I was not able to find "airportd" under libexec (which I did find). Maybe they changed it on my 2006 macbook?

Thanks in advance


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## peterd1965 (Apr 21, 2011)

Same issue, MacBooks (10.5.x and 10.6.x) lose connection with Belkin router on regular basis. Win XP and Win 7 have no issues staying connected. Also iPhone seems to have no issue staying connected.  My friends office has similar problem. His HP laptop stays connected to router (not a Mac router) but his MacBook drops connection frequently. Neither routers have any superfluous security like MAC filtering etc. What is going here? Why are our MacBooks dropping or losing connection?


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