Airport Works Sometimes...Macbook Pro OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Hi everybody,

I am having some trouble with my airport (which I guess is just Apple lingo for wireless adapter). I'm normally a windows user but there are many things that I love about my Mac as well, especially for school.

Anyway, I can get my airport to work, however recently it's usually been involving me in turning my airport off and on until it eventually works (I'm trying to solve this problem). When it doesn't work, it shows that I am connected to the router with great signal strength, however I have no "internet access". It also says in the network settings that I am connected to the router with an IP of 192.168.0.102. However, by some magical force of luck, every time I switch airport off and on SOMETIMES I will get a new IP address, in my case 192.168.1.140. Whenever I get this IP address, everything works great. Even when I close the lid and open it, if it reconnects to that 192.168.1.140 address, then it works great. Most of the time it starts off at 192.168.0.102, though and it doesn't work until i switch on and off again.

My thoughts are, if I can get this fixed, great. If not, I was contemplating reinstalling Mac OSX at the cost of all my windows files that I have on bootcamp, Mac files, and apparently $30 for a new disk, as I have lost mine . But the problem with that is, I don't know if that will fix my problem.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you

It sounds like you're connecting to two different wireless networks.

A router has a range of IP addresses it selects from, and it does this sequentially. So if the range is 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.1.255 it will allocate from 0.2, then 0.3, 0.4 etc.

That you're getting two such varied IP addresses which are hundreds apart I'd suggest you're picking up two differing networks. One that's performing well and one that has issues.

Where are you connecting and do you have admin rights to the router?

Hi and thanks for replying,

That makes a lot of sense. I am connecting to a Tilgin HG1311 provided by my apartment complex. I do not have the administrator rights to it, however I can log in as a "guest" and view some statistics about its current operation.

By the way, I have a Windows desktop that also connects to the router (through LAN), and also my roomates' Macbooks (2 with both Mac and bootcamped Windows) and another windows desktop through LAN. They all work flawlessly.

But if they haven't connected to the poor network before they won't try again.

I'd go into System Preferences - Network - Airport - Advanced and remove all wireless networks you have listed. Now connect to the correct, 'good' network. As this will be you're only one you shouldn't jump to any other.

See that's the funny thing. It's still saying that I'm connected to the Tilgin router, but the IP address is now the "bad IP". I have removed all of the remembered connections and also all of the passwords in the keychain.

It's impossible to second guess the router config, but I can't see a situation where the IP ranges would differ on a single network and single router. Is it perhaps dual-band and your jumoing between the two bands?

If you grab iStumbler and scan for wireless networks are there others around you'll be able to see which networks, which band and channels are in use. That should give a clear picture.

Hi again,

Sorry, it took me a while to find a stable version of iStumbler. Anyway here is a screenshot of what it found. Keep in mind that the Tilgin CXC8FRRruY7B is the router for my apartment.

Also the Smokedankbud420xx is a router that my roommate used last year, I'm not sure why it is connected. It is most likely connected to the Tilgin main router for the apartment. I don't know if this has any relevance, though.

View image: Screen shot 2013 04 18 at 1 18 04 AM

What you have there is a huge pile of wi-fi spaghetti !

It looks as though you have a per-apartment wireless access point, likely connected to one of more routers, maybe even load balancing kit to keep everything moving. That would explain the varied IP ranges you're seeing and the mix of g and n based networks.

So you presumably only have a password for your CXC...... network? If that's the case and you're definitely only ever connecting to Tilgin-CXC8FRRruY7B you'll need to have a word with the admin. Explain you're having connection issues when you're connected to a particular IP range. I'd suggest there are a number of routers running various ranges. If they know the range that's giving you issues they should be able to determine why you're having issues.

A reboot of the kit or a config change to push you onto another range would likely be all that needs doing. That you can connect and work fine under some circumstances suggest it's not your Mac.

Thanks for all of your help, mrplow! I just emailed the admin for all of the networking at my apartment complex to see if I can get somewhere with them.

I'll reply back to hopefully solve this thread when I figure out what the deal is with my provider/hardware.

Thanks again for your help! I'd also like to say that this was my first-ever forum post, and it has been a great first impression

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