Macs having issues connecting to our home wi-fi?

Hi everyone,

This has been going on for about a year, we've had a tech round to check the router and it appears to be fine and now this issue just had us stumped.

The PCs in the house are fine, it's just the macs, iphones/ipads that were used before about a year ago are also fine, but new ones have the same issue that the macs do.

When trying to connect to the network with the correct password you get "invalid password" over and over, interspersed with "connection timeout". The closer you are to the router, the better it seems to be. Once connected though, it stays connected and I have full reception wherever I go in the house.

What can I do to get it working properly???

What level of encryption are you using? WEP/WPA/etc

Thanks for your reply mrplow - using WPA personal.

Make and model of router? Which versions of OSX?

If you, temporarily turn off security, do you have the same issues.

I'm using a brand new macbook pro running 10.8 and the router is a Netcomm NB6Plus4WN (NB6+4WN) how do I go about turning off the security?

You need to log into you're router, wireless settings

I'd connect your Mac by ethernet cable to the router and enter 192.168.1.1 in the safari address bar

Unless you've reset them the requested username and password will both be admin

Ok - I've taken the security off and it seems to be running fine...

haha I'm assuming there's another step? my housemates won't be as impressed as I'd hoped if not!

OK that's good news.

Macs do tend to be quite strict regarding wifi security standards so it's just going to be a little bit of experimenting from here on in.

Get hold of iStumbler, install on your Mac and have it scan the area. Look for a channel that's unused or least used in your area. ***

Log into your router.
Set the transmission mode to 802.11g only (unless you know you have wireless b devices you have to accommodate).
Set the transmission rate to 54Mbps.
Disable 'turbo' mode
Set the channel to the one you identified from above
Choose a new SSID (network name) so that we're sure the connection is treated as brand new.
Choose WPA2-PSK as the security type and set a new password.

Save the settings and reboot the router.

Disconnect any ethernet cables from the Mac and try connecting and test the connection etc.


edit:
*** just noticed you have Mountain Lion. There's a WiFi scanner that does the same as iStumbler built into the ML Network Utilities app now.

Ok, so now it's doing something different.
I go to connect and it whizzes around, network settings in the background says "connected to blah blah with ip address blah blah" but then it drop out again everytime?

The message that comes up now is "connection timeout" though rather than "invalid password"

and now I can't join at all even if I hover the mac right on top of the router!!

OK, so change to the next level of security down and so on. until it stabilises.

It's a fairly old router (originally issued in 2007). It may be worth checking for firmware upgrades to. I'm assuming software updates on the Mac are all up-to-date.

Have tried updating the firmware but am getting an error message "Image uploading failed. The selected file contains an illegal image." any chance it's connected?

Was the router ISP supplied? They often use custom firmware you can't update except supplied by them.

I suspect the crux of the issue is the router and it's implementation of WPA