chronic AirPort connectivity problems

J

J Baustian

Registered
This may have been answered many times, but just assume for the purposes of argument that I'm not very bright and need to have things explained slowly using small words.

I have an Airport Extreme base station hardwired to a Mac Mini, and Airport Utility seems to show everything is okay. Here are some of my settings:
Airport
Status = Normal
Version 7.4.2
Wireless Mode = Creat a wireless network

Wireless Clients = 2
Connect using Ethernet

Internet Connection -- using Ethernet
Configure IPv4 -- using DHCP
IP, Subnet Mask, Router Address, DNS Servers, etc.
Ethernet WAN Port -- Automatic
Connection Sharing -- Share a public IP address (IS THIS RIGHT?)

Radio Mode = 802.11n (802.11b/g compatible)
Channel = Automatic

MAC Address Access Control -- Not Enabled

In System Preferences, Network, Airport and Ethernet are both "Connected" with Airport listed first (is this the way it's supposed to be?)
Under "Advanced", Preferred Networks, the same network is shown twice. And Ethernet is configured automatically.

under TCP/IP, IPv4 is configured using DHCP, the router is 10.0.1.1 and the IPv4 address is 10.0.1.3.
IPv6 is configured Automatically, but no router or address is given. I have no idea what these things mean.

The signal strength meter at the top of the screen usually shows one or two bars. The base station is only about 18" from the Mini, shouldn't the signal strength be at the maximum?

My wireless client is a Mac G5 running the most up-to-date version of OS 10.4. It is located on a different floor but only about 15 feet from the base station. The signal strength on the client is usually one bar but sometimes drops to zero. When this happens, what I've been doing is going back to the base station, unplugging and resetting it, sometimes hitting the reset button in the back, unplugging and resetting the cable modem.

No matter what I do, it seems as though my Airport Extreme base station just does not put out a signal strong enough to travel the 15 feet to the client computer. This is very frustrating. Any suggestions?
 
I am still not having any luck. I moved the Airport Extreme base station, closer to the client and with one less obstruction in between. But I still think my software setup is wrong. Right now Network preferences is reporting that "Airport has the self-assigned IP address 169.254.135.164 and will not be able to connect to the Internet." The base station is hard-connected by Ethernet to the Mac Mini, so I have an Ethernet connection to the Internet on the Mini, but no Airport connection from the G5.


I downloaded iStumbler and it may prove useful in the future but isn't helping now.
 
Here's what it says in System Profile:

Software Versions:
Menu Extra: 6.2 (620.24)
configd plug-in: 6.2 (620.15.1)
System Profiler: 6.0 (600.9)
Network Preference: 6.2 (620.24)
AirPort Utility: 5.4.2 (542.23)
IO80211 Family: 3.1 (310.6)
Interfaces:

en1:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x86)
Firmware Version: Atheros 5424: 2.0.19.8
Locale: FCC
Country Code: US
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165
Status: Connected
Current Network Information:

RAB Net:
PHY Mode: 802.11g
BSSID: a2:fe:ce:3f:38:72
Channel: 11
Network Type: Computer to Computer Network
Security: None
Signal / Noise: -96 dBm / -96 dBm
Transmit Rate: 1

Does anything here raise a red flag?
 
The red flag of course is the Transmit rate of 1 and a Signal and Noise ratio that are the same (a less negative number is better). One thing to try is change the channel being used, a conflicting router nearby (neighbor?) could be affecting you. This is a common first thing to try. There is a utility WNC at http://www.jaalak.com and Wifi Scanner at http://WLANBook.com that look at your network to show you what other signals might be around and their strength. Not sure if they run on your OS verisons (I am on 10.6). There might be others that do work on your OS versions. They are useful to see what else might be around.
 
I do not know what I did, but right now I have an extremely strong signal and good Internet connectivity. I'm sorry I can't help others with a similar problem, but it could be one of a dozen different things I tried, including some that I tried unsuccessfully before.

Of course, what this means is that if something goes wrong with Airport at any time in the future, I will still not know what to do to correct the problem.
 
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