WiFi woes on Macbook

T

theMusicMan

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Hi All

I am experiencing regular (every 15 mins) drop outs from my Linksys wireless broadband router (WRT54G) which has become very, very frustrating. I cannot establish why this is occurring at all. It does sometimes seem to happen when other PC's in my house 'join' the network (we have 5 PC's wifi and 1 Ethernet), but this also happens regularly at other times too when nothing else is happening. My wife and I will be on our laptops and find ourselves both asking each other... "do you have a connection" at the same time
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Sometimes it comes back, but most often I have to reset the router by switching it off and then on again.

I am considering purchasing an alternative router and am wondering which one experts here could perhaps recommend I purchase as a replacement.

I am happy to go for a wireless 'g' router, and I'd also like it to be able to take ethernet cabling (the WRT54G has WiFi as well as 4 wired ports).

So can anyone suggest what model I should go for?

Also - I would love to know if anyone has ideas as to why my wifi network keeps dropping out? (apologies if I ought to have put that in another thread) This has only started happening over the last 2 to 3 months, the router is approx 1 year old though I don't have the receipt. I really want a stable internet connection for my home network as it does get used a lot. I have also noticed a slowing down of our apparent 10MB Broadband internet connection (NTL now Virgin Media). My wife tried to watch a TV show online last night - and gave up as the stream was so slow.

When I run iStumbler, I get a constant 9% figure in the noise column, regardless which wifi network I see in there. Is this right? The signal strength in my Linksys router when reading it from iStumbler from my Mac only 6 feet away is 75%. Is that right too?

Any advice or ideas? thanks.
 
Well, in my experiance with wireless routers I would say that if you're looking for stable internet then use wired. It shouldn't be as bad as your suggesting though.

I have had a lot of success with Linsys routers and I like the interface that is included with it. D-link also works pretty well, however it has a very ugly interface.
 
For example: this page on my Dell PC took less tan a second to load, whereas on the Macbook it took 10-12 seconds to load. Surely this isn't correct and there's something wrong yeah?

Both machines are cited only 6 feet away from the LinkSys router and are connected via WiFi.

Is there not a Mac service I can use to see if my Macbook is ill!!??
 
I'm not aware of one off hand. Does it also happen to your wifes computer? And if you go to a friends house, does it drop there as well?
 
How old is the wrt54g router. There has been a bad serie some year ago, usual giving problems after a couple of days of working fine. The solution was to replace them. All with that problem have bee replaced by LINKSYS without any problem.

If signal strenght is high, the network should work stable.

Try contacting your supplier or LINKSYS itself, as far as I know LINKSYS is very gentle in replacement of suspected routers.


Good luck, Kees
 
@supanatural: yes, my wifes PC loses connection also - but when connected isn't anywhere near as slow as my Macbook. I have only tried my mac on a hotel wifi and though the signal didn't drop out, the speeds were again very slow.

@kees: the Linksys router is approx 1yr old - which may explain things. Unfortunately I don't have the receipt for it though as I had already looked for this. Signal strength is hovering around the 75% mark all the time, and the noise is always at 9% for every wifi network I see - is that right?

Thanks both.

John
 
theMusicMan said:
@supanatural: yes, my wifes PC loses connection also - but when connected isn't anywhere near as slow as my Macbook. I have only tried my mac on a hotel wifi and though the signal didn't drop out, the speeds were again very slow.

@kees: the Linksys router is approx 1yr old - which may explain things. Unfortunately I don't have the receipt for it though as I had already looked for this. Signal strength is hovering around the 75% mark all the time, and the noise is always at 9% for every wifi network I see - is that right?

Thanks both.

John
Click to expand...

I never look at the noise settings, but the signal strenght is good enough. Contact - if you can - linksys directly, at least in the netherlands you do not need to contact your dealer, but can you go to linksys directly. It is always worth the try. The age is about right i guess as far as i can recall.


Good luck, kees
 
Sorry to bring this thread up again, but I have exactly the same problem. It existed with my old Airport base station and so I swapped it for a D Link DIR-635. I have 2 Intel MacBook Pros on a wireless network. One is always dropping the internet connection but not the other. The problem is worse when both Macbooks are switched on. If it is a router fault then both routers have exactly the same fault. Both MacBooks have exactly the same network settings, unless there are some hidden ones I do not know about.

The ISP tells me it is not their signal, which is borne out by the fact one computer is still connected to the internet.

Any suggestions here would be greatly appreciated as at times the internet is unusable and a Macbook may well leave the building via an upper window.

Thanks

Frank
 
I have an issue in my home with the Wifi signal fading resulting in loss of communication with the router.

I will be connected with full signal strength (no walls separating my unibody macbook [not pro]) browsing. Without an apparent change in usage, the signal strength will drop (meter on the top of the screen) and a quick ping to the wireless router via Terminal demonstrates loss of comm. I will turn Airport off and back on and the result is the secured network showing up but prompting me for the password. The password is the same as in the keychain, the hidden characters are there, but does not work. A powercycle of the wireless router resolves the problem for a period but it eventually comes back in DIFFERENT intervals, sometimes it is days, sometimes it is hours. VERY annoying.

Also, everyone in my home has a macbook. Oldest is a black macbook, newer is a macbook pro (the one right before unibody) and mine is a unibody. All of us experience the problem with the signal fading resulting in the loss of comm. Sometimes though, strangely enough, one of the macbooks will work while the others have faded signal and no comm. Do you guys think it is an IP address issue??

PS it is a brand new wireless n router, I bought it because we thought it was the old wireless G router that was the problem. But same behavior makes me think I have to good routers and the issue is something else.

HELP.

:J
 
Got any cordless phones in the house?

A lot of them use the 5GHz band that 802.11n routers use (the ones that support 5GHz, anyway), and I found, at least in my home, that my 5GHz cordless phones interfere like crazy with my AirPort Extreme -- but in my case, the AirPort Extreme always wins the fight (the phones are inoperable and cannot connect to the base station when in broadcast distance from the Extreme).
 
I had been battling intermittent wifi woes on my MacBook for quite some time. I've been reading all the forums and still found nothing...until now. Here is what I found that has cleared up all my wifi woes and am now running at full speed via my wireless "Airport" connection. I TURNED OFF THE WIFI ON MY IPHONE. Go figure. Apparently when my Iphone and my macbook are in close proximity to eachother and the wifi is turned on...grief grief grief! turn off the wifi on your Iphone, and voila! Hope this helps someone like it has me. Happy again and Woe free.
 
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