Problem connecting to the internet

I have a D-Link DI-624 router on my PC and have an AirPort card in my G4. According to the menu bar, I almost have full strength and according to the AirPort Set-Up Assistant, the Mac is "connected". Now I only use the router for internet connections and do not have these 2 computers "networked together".

Some software on my PC disabled my router but I got it fixed and reset the router. The Mac still sees it fine and I get a reading on the strength meter, but it will still not access the internet. It says the server can not be found on every site I try.

CAN YOU PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!

Try inputting the DNS server addresses manually on the Mac setup.

ed724

Where do I enter this information?

system prefs>network>make sure the "location" drop down menu reads automatic, and the "show" drop down reads built in ethernet> click the TCP/IP tab, then you can input your DNS servers.

According to my D-Link, ther DNS is 0.0.0.0 and the secondary is the same. Is this right?

The WAN DNS address is 68.87.64.196 etc

Where is the DNS address. I go to http://192.168.0.1 to access my D-Link info.

hmm...i don't know too much about networking; i only knew where to put the DNS info because i've recently had to do it. i get my info by entering my IP as well, so 0.0.0 blah blah isnt right, i dont think. but i dont know about the WAN DNS. i think you'll have to wait for one of the more experienced guys to help you out here. sorry i couldnt help dvdguy!

Thanks for the try. What is confusing is the Mac is connected and I have signal strength bars...but no internet. I checked the encription and they are set to the same level. I am confused......

In general with networking you want to try these basic steps:

1) Make sure your interface is up (ping the address of your Airport)
1.1) See if you are getting a valid address. Go to System Prefernces => Network => Airport => configure => TCP/IP and make sure it is set to DHCP and an address and router are listed.
2) See if you can reach your gateway (ping the gateway)
3) See if you can ping the outside world (ping an address)

How do you perform all of these different pings?

Open the Network Utility => ping tab. (It can also be done from command line using the command "ping <address>" but you might as well use the tool.)

So, as an example, if your airport card has an address of 192.168.0.100 and your gateway has an address of 192.168.0.1. first ping 192.168.0.100, followed by 192.168.0.1, followed by 205.18.238.181 (time.com). NOTE: I am behind a firewall right now that blocks ping so I do not know if you would get a response from time.com. It is just an example.

EDIT: Tracerouting to 205.18.238.181 would answer the las question as well. If it gets past the gateway chances are it is a DNS resolution problem.

What???? The address are different on the mac than the pc. If I choose DHCP manually configure I can enter a IP but not a subnet. Do these address have to be the same on both computers?

You computers addresses should be different. Do not use DHCP manual. Use Straight DHCP.

Each computer should have its own address (though they should vary only by the last number) the "router" on the Mac should match the default gateway on the PC. DNS should also match but worry about that last since I do not believe OS X lists the DNS entries it retireves from DHCP.

OK...on the mac I pinged 192.168.0.1 and received this...ping:sendto:hostisdown 100% loss

I then pinged the address in the mac from the automatic DHCP and got 0% loss.

So what do I need to do? Keep in minf the pc is hardwired and the mac is wireless.

Does your airport card have an address like 192.168.0.XXX? If so your problem is most likely WEP configuration. You might check the key if you are using WEP, or make sure WEP is off on your airport if the router is not using it.

The card did not have that address. It was more like a 169.254.164.11 or something. I checked that the WEP was the same on both units.

Got it...eventhough the WEP settings were the same, I changed it from 128 HEX to 128 ASCII on both units and it worked. Is there any problem using ASCII or does it affect speed.

A 169 address means the Mac is not getting an address form the Access Point. It still points to WEP being wrong. I would suggest turning WEP off on both your Airport card and your Access point and trying again. If you can connect afterwards then you know your problem revolves around your WEP config. 90% of connection problems where someone is using WEP for wireless are due to WEP in my experience. It does not mean you should not use it, just that it is a common thing to get wrong.

Non-Sequitor: A 169 address is assigned to a card if it can not retrieve an address from a DHCP server. This allows computers hooked into the same network to communicate even though there is no formal adress range in force. This is predominantly of use for rendezvous services. This does not matter for your problem but I figured you might want to know.

EDIT: Cool, I did not think about getting you to check that. No ASCII versus HEX are just how your WEP is encoded. It makes no difference what so ever on performance. Either way it will get encoded to a hex key (well technically the value in hex is the key.)

I woke up this morning and now it is not working....hmmm. After I got it working last night I "locked" the settings but it still not working. I wonder what is going on?