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Imac has lost its once strong wireless signal

ranunculus — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:25:41 -0800

My girlfriend's imac keeps losing its wireless signal, despite having functioned perfectly for over a year at its present location. How can I remedy this? The wireless router - a linksys wrt 54g - is located at my desk about 50 feet and one wall away, where it is hardwired to my pc. For the past year, her imac received the signal perfectly. And now it's extremely weak. Rebooting her computer, my computer, the router, or the cable modem does nothing to improve her signal. Yet my other computer - a pc laptop - receives a perfectly good signal next to her imac.

She is running osx 10.4.11
I'm on vista

Why-Fi?

Rhaomi — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:17:19 -0800

What's killing my wi-fi connection? The last few days I've been having some odd problems with my wireless network. I'll be browsing on my laptop when all of a sudden things get really slow, as if I lost the connection. But instead of being sent to "This page is not available" or "server not found" pages like when there really is no connection, I just get stuck loading forever. So if I open a tab and go to Google, it will sit and load saying "Waiting for www.google.com" in the status bar for a minute or two, then eventually say "Done" -- even though the only thing that has loaded is a completely blank tab (even the source code of the page is empty) with the raw URL in the title bar.

But throughout all this, there's no indication that I've lost my connection. The wifi icon in the system tray doesn't change, and says I'm connected if I hover over it. When I open up the Command Prompt and enter ipconfig /all, it says all my internet connection stats are normal. The subnet mask, DHCP server, DNS, etc. are all there. The IP address doesn't start with 169. It's all okay.

Weirdest of all, despite the fact that I can see that all the connection info is normal, if I enter my router's IP address into the address bar (which usually takes me to the router's settings page), it just does the same thing. Load... load... load... blank tab. I understand not being able to connect to the internet, but if I can see all my connection and router info in Command Prompt, why can't I connect to the same router with my browser?

The only way to fix it, I've found, is to disconnect from the wireless network and reconnect. It'll then work fine for anywhere from one minute to fifteen, at which point the connection drops again. This is only affecting my laptop, by the way -- iPods and other laptops connect fine.

I've tried restarting my computer, restarting the router, and repairing the connection -- nothing works. It seems that getting closer to the router improves things, but I'm not sure since the problem comes and goes randomly. And besides, the router is in the same place as it's always been, so unless it's suddenly lost broadcasting power I don't see what would cause the problem. And in the "View Wireless Networks" window, it says the network has an Excellent signal when I'm not connected (though that decreases a bar or two once I do).

The only incident I can think of is that a power surge recently burnt out the power supply, and I had to buy a universal one with an adapter to get the router up and running again. But this was a week or two before the trouble started, so that's probably not the source.

Is there anything that would cause a wireless router to lose signal strength like that? Is there something I can do to fix it, or should I just spring for a new one?

Details: I have a Dell laptop running Windows XP SP3. I have a Bellsouth Fast Access DSL internet connection. The router is a 2Wire HomePortal 1700HW. The loading problem happens on Firefox, Chrome, and IE7.

One more detail I remembered: For awhile when the problem first started, ipconfig /all was giving me some weird info. For instance, it said that the "lease" for the connection expired one second after it was obtained. But it's not doing that anymore.

Help me find a rangy router!

jckll — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:51:38 -0800

Help me buy a Wireless (WiFi) router with exceptional signal/range for not a boatload of cash. I am, right now, using a cheapie Netgear b/g refurbished router I bought about 6 months ago. It has no external antenna. It disconnects randomly, seems to have terrible range, and needs to be recycled all the time. I only get about 2Mbits download when connected to it from about 2 feet away (20Mbits cable connection). It sucks.

I live in a dense apartment building with about 20 wireless connections, lots of walls, etc. Help me find a wireless router that will break through all that without breaking the bank (ha!)

I have been looking at this one, and it seems OK. Pretty good reviews, but it's hard to know with those things.

Am I under the right impression that an 802.11n router is going to give me better signal? Especially if most (if not all) of the "competing" routers around me are a/b/g?

If anyone has personal experience with a router with great range, that's bonus points! Or if there is a website/page with comparisons of a bunch of available consumer routers, that would be great too.

PS, I don't have any plans to use enhanced (Linux) firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato as I don't have much use for it. Don't want to run a server or a PBX or anything like that. If that would help me with range/power, I definitely would, but it's far from a requirement.

Thanks!

only connect

grumblebee — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:37:58 -0800

Two Macbook Pros, same model, same room, one gets a lot of bars and a strong connection via airport; the other gets just a couple of bars and a low connection. I recently acquired a slightly-used (as in used for one day) Macbook Pro (15" -- not one of the models Apple just released).

I tried it in my apartment next to my old Macbook Pro (also 15", about a year older than my new-used one).

My older one got a good wireless signal. My newer one got a crappy wireless signal. They were both equidistant from my
Linksys router.

I thought maybe the older one was somehow interfering with the newer one, but I tried the newer one by itself, in a different location. In this new location, everyone else (some on similar macs) got a good signal. I still got a crappy one.

The previous owner told me that he had the same problem with it, and he took it into the Apple Store. They ran some kind of diagnostic program on it and insisted that nothing was wrong. The previous owner concluded that the signal was just weak where he was trying to use it. But unlike me, he didn't test it next to another computer.

I can sometimes get a good signal by turning airport off and on or by going into Network Preferences and hitting Renew DHCP Lease. But the boost in connectivity only lasts a few minutes. (This also might be my imagination. The signal waxes and wanes, so maybe I'm seeing a cause/effect where there isn't one.)

I have also been able to get a strong signal by placing my Macbook right next to the router. If I move even a few feet away, the signal degrades.

Vitals:
- Mac OS X Version 10.5.4
- Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- Memory 4GB 667 NHz DDR2 SDRAM

only connect: adding a password to my router screws up my signal

grumblebee — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 16:08:22 -0800

I can't figure out how to password-protect my wireless internet connection. I'm pretty ignorant about networking, so please talk down to me. I have a Linksys Router (Wireless-B, model: BEFW1154) connected to a cable modem via an Ethernet cable. A second Ethernet cable runs from the router into my PC (Windows XP, SP2).

I typed 192.168.1.1 into my browser, set WEP to Mandatory, clicked the WEP Key Setting button and created a password.

This seemed to work: started my 2nd PC (Dell Laptop) and browsed for wireless connections. Instantly, I saw my main PC, and it had that little lock symbol by it, meaning I'd need to enter a password in order to connect with it. I did so, the machines connected, and... a message said "limited to no connectivity." Strange, because I usually get a strong signal and the two machines were just a few feet from each other (and from the router).

I turned WEP off and was instantly got an "EXCELLECT" signal. Turned it on again and got "limited or no connectivity." (And it really is "limited" since I can't use the Internet when I get that message.)

I don't get it. How is turning that security feature on affecting the signal (or making the laptop think the signal is affected)? What should I be doing? Have I totally misunderstood WEP? I just want a password on my connection.