Imac frequently disconnects from network.

October 13, 2006 12:23 PM

I have an Intel Imac that I bought roughly a year ago. I connect to the internet using comcast and an Airport Express. Recently, I added WEP security to my airport, for obvious reasons. I also changed the airport channel to 7 (and then 4) from 11 because I was getting lag while playing Xbox Live using a wireless adapter (I live in an apartment with many wireless networks around me). Every since, my computer just decides to leave the network about every 5 minutes. It's SO ANNOYING. I only have to click on the network again to rejoin, but does anyone have any ideas? I made both changes at the same time.
posted by drewcopeland to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Same thing (or at least similar thing) happened with my MacBook Pro when I upgraded to 10.4.8, and it seems to be a problem for a lot of folks-- dropped airport signals, and (at least for me) having to re-enter the password of the network manually to reconnect. Some possible solutions are here, but unfortunately the only thing that worked for me was buying another Airport Extreme to extend my network's range. Which is, of course, really annoying, but I need it for work, so what can you do?
posted by hwickline at 1:26 PM on October 13, 2006

Really the only choices for the channel are 1, 6, & 11. You'll still get interference from 6 on 4.

Any chance you can hard line this? CAT-5 is super cheap. Otherwise you can try setting your router up as if you weren't in the US and regulated by the FCC... meaning ch 11+, I don't know if your xbox adaptor will support that though. You'll get less interference though. Oh and cordless phones and anything else in the 2.4ghz range will cause more signal loss.

http://www.pcfastlane.com/joomla/content/view/85/37/ there are tons of wireless guides online, this was linked off wikipedia and provides 20 don'ts.

As for why the change in signal... I don't know, as mentioned above, OS upgrades have been shaky at best for wifi in tiger. I had the same problem with my mini when I first upgraded it to tiger.
posted by eleongonzales at 1:47 PM on October 13, 2006

Do change the security to WPA or WPA2. WEP can be broken in 10 minutes:
Kismac WEP cracking
posted by KimG at 2:51 PM on October 13, 2006

See, to start with, this knowledge base article in case it addresses your problem.

There have been some discussions on the Apple discussion boards about AirPort problems in the wake of the 10.4.8 update -- for example, this one. In those discussions, many people believe the culprit to be the 10.4.8 upgrade or the recent AirPort security upgrade. If that's the case, then we're looking at a software/firmware problem rather than a hardware problem. Which is better, I guess.

I myself have been having some AirPort connection issues with my Intel iMac, viz., it periodically gets very unstable, with the signal dropping to next to nothing, unable to locate the router, etc. (while a G4 iMac in the next room suffers no problems at all). I've tried everything in the thread I linked above -- i.e., nuking the preferences and restarting -- and it hasn't much helped. But then my particular brand of WiFi problems isn't as serious as some: I get one, maybe two outages of < 20 minutes a day. (last night i had problems for about two hours: not an outage per se, but seriously degraded performance.)br>
I have an open network, FWIW.

If nothing else, be advised that a lot of us are in the same boat, and are crossing our fingers for a speedy fix.
posted by mcwetboy at 4:10 PM on October 13, 2006