Wireless Router

simamoyan

Registered
Hi,
I've been having problems with my internet connection since I installed an Airport card and wireless router, but the problem doesn't seem to be the wireless part.

Whether with or without the wire, the iBook seems to find the router and make some kind of connection, eg msn messenger might go online and will generally stay connected. At the same time, iChat might tell me that I'm not connected.

Mail sometimes goes online, sometimes doesn't, and sometimes will receive but not send email.

Safari gives any number of different messages; sometimes offering to open Network Diagnostics, sometimes saying it's unable to find the server, sometimes suggesting that I report a bug to Apple. Occasionally Safari just opens the page I want, but usually only after several attempts; once it opens a particular page, I can then quickly open links to other pages on the same site, but trying to go to a different site brings the same problems again.

For a while I suspected that the router could not cope with too many applications connecting at the same time, but now I find that if I close everything but Safari, it still behaves as above.

I have the following,
iBook 933Mhz Power PC G4
OS X v10.4.2
feeble PC running XP
1MB ADSL connection (though tested speed seems to be nearer 110 kbps down, 50kbps up)

I previously connected through a 10mbps hub and seemed to be slightly slower opening web pages from the mac than the pc, though there were no great problems. I have also connected the iBook directly to the ADSL modem, and it behaves reasonably well.

About six weeks ago I installed an Airport Extreme card and bought a TP-Link 802.11g 54mbps wireless router:

http://www.tp-link.com/product/show.asp?ProductNO=385

I have input the username and password provided by my ISP.

The product is Chinese (im in the PRC) and, after weeks of tinkering, it seems they've just added an English user guide to the website. I have also found a firmware update, but have been unable to install it.

The router is set up to issue IP addresses and both the pc and the iBook are set to receive these. I have not set any security features yet. I've tried with and without the iBook's firewall in operation.

The pc seems to make a reliable connection straight away and Internet Explorer will go directly to almost any page I try to open.

I'm also able to establish a pretty reliable connection between the two machines, though it often takes some time for the iBook to find the pc.

Apologies if much of the above is irrelevant, or if I've missed something crucial. I'm beginning to lose the plot! I had understood that any 802.11b/g wireless set up would be compatible with Airport, though, as I've said, it doesn't seem to be a wireless issue.

Any guidance would be very much appreciated. I'm no techie; the above should give you a fair idea about what I might, or might not, understand.
 
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