Airport connected (full bars) but no internet connection. Driving me crazy!

This problem has been going on for a couple of months now. I use my macbook at 2 places: school and home.
At school, when I click the school network under airport, it connects and shows the full bars. But when I open safari/firefox, the page won't load and I get the error message when you're not connected. However, sometimes after like an hour of persisting and retrying, it will be able to access the internet for a little bit for like an hour or so maybe, and then it'll stop working.

At home, it's the same thing. It will connect to my home network (got wireless at home set up through my desktop PC), and show the full connection on airport, but it won't access the internet for the life of me. The difference is I can never gt it to connect unlike at school where it sometimes works, except that it worked for like one day out of the last 2 months (and I didn't change any settings then so it's not like I can attribute it to that).

Also, I am absolutely positive that the networks of my home/school computer and the router settings etc. aren't to blame. Reason is that my friends with macbooks can access the internet both using my home network and the school network (the school one is obvious).

What could possibly be going wrong? Any settings on my macbook that I can change / completely reset? Is the network card or something messed up? I'm contemplating just completely formatting my laptop to see if it fixes the issue. I have leopard installed btw.

bump - still looking for a solution to this!

You can go into Network in System Preferences and create a new location. This will give you all the default network settings.

Another thing to try is to compare the network settings (including firewall) that your friends macbook has.

Does it work ok if you connect via ethernet cable rather than wirelessly?

Does your AirPort have the same problem on other networks?

try connectig ur mac to the powersource...
i have the same problem...and it works only when i'm connected to a powersource

I'm having the exact same problem, and I thought I'd see if you'd had any luck with a solution. I went as far as a complete erase and reinstall of my operating system, which worked for about half an hour. Any suggestions?

If you are connected to the network, but have no Internet, it may be that your computer is set up with a static IP address.

In order to access the internet your router has to know your IP address, normally this is done automatically by a protocol called DHCP. Basically when you connect to your router, the router will issue an IP address to your laptop and from there it will have access to the internet. If you have a static IP address set up this may cause the problems.

To make sure this is not the problem, goto System Preferences > Network > Advanced, click on the TCP/IP tab and where is says "Configure IPv4", select DHCP.

Where it says, "Configure IPv6", set it to automatically. Select OK at the bottom then APPLY at the first window and then try re-connecting to your home network again... If this doesnt work I cant think off hand whats causing the problem. Try going to a genius bar in your local mac store? They're generally free unless you need to give the mac to the tech guys...

Hope this helps!

I have a similar problem. Just had to change my wireless router - old one died- but it is the same BT Voyager 2110. Previously airport worked no problem. Now I get full bars but 'you are not connected to the internet'. Airport recognises the BT Voyager, as does my i-Pod touch, but neither connects. Ethernet is OK and works. When I try to use System preferences a message 'your network settings have been changed by another application' appears and I can't get past it into system preferences.
My name and password have not changed from the earlier connection but when I put password in I am told it is invalid.
Any suggestions most gratefully received

Try this:

Go into your router's setup menu (check your manual to learn how) and copy down the settings it's using. Broadcast channel, DNS addresses, SSID, and so forth. Next...

Reset the router to factory default. Usually this is done by pushing in a small reset button either on the back or bottom of the unit. Use a straightened out paper clip. Resetting will clear the old password and information. (Make sure you have an ethernet cable attached when doing this.)

Go back into the router and enter your settings but leave security open for the time being. (no security) Now try to open System Preferences and see if you can enter information and also connect wirelessly. If everything is OK, go back into the router and setup security. Be sure to go back to System Preferences and do likewise.

If System Preferences still won't let you in, you may have to delete the connection entirely and start over.

Regards.

My experience has been that with a Laptop and multiple locations it is better to have Locations set as mrplow suggests above.
With early Leopard these DNS numbers were added for my home Location manually per this;

Click for full size

With the advent of 10.5.8 they seem to be added automatically and are ghosted - the 192.168.x.x are router addresses.


Click for full size

so if i have the wrong location selected for where i am - see here;


Click for full size

some pages will not load - change to correct location and it all works.
Having the DNS numbers for the different ISPs just makes it work better.

I'm having similar problems - it says I am connected to the internet (full bars on airport, both airport and ethernet show up with green dots in network connections) but any time I try to get online to update mac software it tells me I'm not connected. Weird thing is, on my windows xp partition, the internet works fine. So I'm 99% sure the problem isn't the hardware or the internet set
up.

Any suggestions?

bump. anyone?

I have a similar problem but I didn't want to start a new thread for it. I pay my neighbors to use their wireless internet. Small apartments, their router is not more than 50ft away from me. Their IP is a company called Qwest, it might me a small company.
Anyway, here is the problem. I can connect to their internet and it shows full bars in Airport status. However in Network Settings it reads, "Airport is connected to the network qwest1664. Airport has a self assigned IP and may not be able to connect to the internet."
In the TCP/IP I am using DHCP my IP Address is 169.254.123.245, my Subnet Mask is 255.255.0.0, and my Router does not show anything. Now I am not that Mac savvy, but I know this is not what I want.
I went in and configured IPv4 manually using an IP Address of 192.168.1.7, the same Subnet Mask, and put the Router at 192.168.1.1.
When I do that the Network Status reads, "You are connected to the network qwest1664. You are connected to the internet via Airport." But I still cannot load webpages and I get this message from Safari, "Safari can’t open the page “http://www.facebook.com/” because your computer isn’t connected to the Internet."
Network Diagnostics shows Airport, Airport Settings, and Network Settings as all Green. The ISP is different every time. Sometimes green, yellow, or red. The Internet and Server are always red. *This is all under the manual setting.
I have never had problems connecting to other people's internet before. Is this an ISP problem? I called the provider myself and they obviously wouldn't give me many details as I was not technically a customer. They did say their service was compatible with Mac though. I just don't want to bother my neighbors and have them make a phone call because I only pay $10 a month.
Real quick my computer specs:
Mac OS X
Version 10.4.11
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x87)
Wireless Card Locale: USA
Wireless Card Firmware Version: 1.4.4
Wireless Channel: 11
So that is about all the information I can gather. If there is anything else you might need to help me figure this out just let me know. Thanks in advance guys.

ApolloMac - the info that will be needed is how the neighbors have set up their wireless. Is it access restricted? In other words will it only connect to preset MAC addresses. Full bars in your Airport icon on Menubar is a signal strength indicator and what is set in your Sys Prefs/Network/Airport is what will need to match to what they have set up on their wireless device. If your airport has 'Self assigned IP' means the DHCP is not being set by your neighbour, did they set up their system or did someone come in and do it?

I am pretty sure somebody came and set it up for them. How will I find what their settings are on their wireless device? I don't think they know how to figure it out either. How do I find if it is access restricted? How can I add my MAC address?

drpangloss said:

I'm having similar problems - it says I am connected to the internet (full bars on airport, both airport and ethernet show up with green dots in network connections) but any time I try to get online to update mac software it tells me I'm not connected. Weird thing is, on my windows xp partition, the internet works fine. So I'm 99% sure the problem isn't the hardware or the internet set
up.

Click to expand...

So what u are saying is if u connect your Mac with ethernet lead to router/modem you can get on line with XP but not the Mac partition?

I'm having this same problem with my network at home. Every other wireless device in the house can get online just fine, these include

-PC with Windows XP SP2 using wireless connection

-Second PC with Windows XP SP2 using ethernet connection

-PS3 game console using wireless connection

-PSP game console using wireless connection

-XBOX 360 using ethernet connection

And no I do not have these all connected, or turned at once. The router also no longer has any security enabled in an attempt to get my Macbook online. The MacBook connects to the network with absolutely no problem at all, but it will not connect to the internet through the network. This started out as just frustrating me because it would go online, and slowly lose it's internet connection over time until I disconnected from the network, then reconnected. Because of this I said screw it and wiped everything, reinstalled OS X in hopes that it would solve my problem. The MacBook went online, for a whopping ten minutes, and hasn't been able to do anything online since. No idea what to do from here, clearly default settings no longer work if I just reinstalled the OS, and the thought of my mac turning into a **** like Windows....Ahhhhhhhh!!!!

I started messing with the router, and I changed the channel that it was using. By default, if I remember right, it was on channel 6-2.437GHz. I Switched it to auto, and now the MacBook goes online. I have no idea why the MacBook would suddenly start having problems with one particular channel, but whatever, for some reason it works now so I'm not complaining.

@ collin B
Both wireless and wired work on windows side, neither works on os x side.
reports connection to airport, but cannot ping google etc. same result on multiple wireless networks

@ AppolloMac - Here is where you can find your Airports MAC, just run System Profiler [ hold option key click on Apple menu in menubar] and look in locations;


Click for full size

but that MAC would have to be put in your neighbours wireless device if it is access controlled. Seems you will have to talk to them if you want to use their network.