Another Macbook wifi that sometime stops working.

This post is similar to the one just before, but doesn't pertain to security.

I have a new MacBook pro that I use just mostly for surfing and reading. Nothing has been installed besides the usual stuff that comes with the machine. The machines is absolutely up to date, patch wise. But a problem has arisen with the wifi connectivity.

In a particular Internet coffee shop, I can connect fine as usual. But in a matter of time - maybe one minute, maybe ten - I will suddenly get timeouts on all sessions. I always have the Activity Monitor running in the dock and set to network, so I can visually see what is happening. When the timeouts occur, the green activity line drops to zero, with just a few blips on occasion, probably coming from the cafe's router. The red line is continuously up and down as my machine tries to ask what is going on. I click on the Airport icon and turn airport of and back on, and suddenly I am back on line till it happens again.

Now, at home I have an Airport extreme that is between me and the Internet and this problem never happens. At another Internet cafe that I frequent, it also works just fine. Or any other hotspot I hit occasionally. So it sounds like the first cafe has a router problem or something. But, everybody else in the place is working just fine. PC's or Macs.

So it has to be me. But I work just fine everywhere else that I can access wifi, so it has to be the cafe, right? But I am the only one having the problem so it has to be me… and so on.

Another bit of data. I took my Linux laptop into the place and surfed for two hours just fine. So, it is some interaction between my Mac and their router apparently. There is not a whole lot of changes that I can find to make on my end, and of course the cafe isn't going to make any since everybody else works - not that they have a clue how wifi routers work, anyway.

This isn't a world shaking problem for me, but anybody got any insights or suggestions?

Thanks.

cptkrf said:

In a particular Internet coffee shop, I can connect fine as usual. But in a matter of time - maybe one minute, maybe ten - I will suddenly get timeouts on all sessions. I always have the Activity Monitor running in the dock and set to network, so I can visually see what is happening. When the timeouts occur, the green activity line drops to zero, with just a few blips on occasion, probably coming from the cafe's router. The red line is continuously up and down as my machine tries to ask what is going on. I click on the Airport icon and turn airport of and back on, and suddenly I am back on line till it happens again.

Now, at home I have an Airport extreme that is between me and the Internet and this problem never happens. At another Internet cafe that I frequent, it also works just fine. Or any other hotspot I hit occasionally. So it sounds like the first cafe has a router problem or something. But, everybody else in the place is working just fine. PC's or Macs.

So it has to be me.

Click to expand...

The good thing is your laptops airport works fine at home (no hardware problems)...since that is where you may use it the most...and is sort of your basis for all of your settings. Whenever you go venturing out into the world...and you're connecting to various hot spots & free WiFi at coffee shops & restaurants...the settings & procedures they have for logging in & staying connected to their networks may be (or probably are) a little bit different.

Maybe the other folks with Windows computers & Mac's that you see that are not having any problems with the free hot spot WiFi...either know exactly how to adjust or modify their settings to stay connected...or maybe you have some sort of different settings on your home network that seems to be incompatible with the free hot spots.

- Nick