Wireless network help please

sajewi · Feb 9, 2007

Hi, I have just jumped ship from Windows to Mac ( I have an iMac 20) and am in need of help setting up my wireless network connection.I am using a Netgear DG834G but can't seem to get AirPort setup up to allow me to connect to it wirelessly. With my PC I used WPA encrtyption but on my Mac it keeps asking for a password for which I have tried everyone that I can think of but no joy.

Any help would be much appreciated to allow me to fully appreciate my Mac.

mikeyman · Feb 9, 2007

Oh, i too have a netgear router

what you need to do is changed the security type under the list that is showed on your mac book when trying to enter your password
It should then connect

Let me know if this works

cwa107 · Feb 9, 2007

sajewi said:
Hi, I have just jumped ship from Windows to Mac ( I have an iMac 20) and am in need of help setting up my wireless network connection.I am using a Netgear DG834G but can't seem to get AirPort setup up to allow me to connect to it wirelessly. With my PC I used WPA encrtyption but on my Mac it keeps asking for a password for which I have tried everyone that I can think of but no joy.

Any help would be much appreciated to allow me to fully appreciate my Mac.

If your router is capable of it, I recommend switching from WPA to WPA2. You'll see better performance and less difficulty in maintaining a connection. This has been an issue with WPA recently since Apple released an update to the wireless driver.

sajewi · Feb 9, 2007

Thanks for the replies guys but I am still a bit confused, the security options that I have on my router are Disable, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy),
WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key) and WPA-802.1x. Which should I choose and when prompted in Airport what password should I enter, I have tried the encryption key, the admin password for the router and also the user password for my MAc.

Thanks again

gtalum · Feb 9, 2007

Look in yoru Airport instruction manual. they have instructions for how to convert your WEP or WPA pass keys to the "password" that Airport asks for. For WEP, for instance, you simply add a "$" to the front of the key.

cwa107 · Feb 9, 2007

sajewi said:
Thanks for the replies guys but I am still a bit confused, the security options that I have on my router are Disable, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy),
WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key) and WPA-802.1x. Which should I choose and when prompted in Airport what password should I enter, I have tried the encryption key, the admin password for the router and also the user password for my MAc.

Thanks again

When you set your router up to use WPA, you should have setup a password to use with it. That's the password you need to enter on the Mac.

It doesn't appear that your router currently supports anything other than WEP and WPA. I strongly suggest that you check for an update your router's firmware.

dtravis7 · Feb 9, 2007

OSX will automatically detect if it's WPA. I had an issue with one Dlink router once with WPA, It was set for WPA with TKIP so I tried WPA with AES and it worked. Check your router settings for WPA and see if there is an option to change from AES to TKIP or the other way around.

The password it wants is the WPA Key in the router.

Below is a pic from that dlink. My linksys has the same options for TKIP and AES. On the Linksys it made no difference and both worked but on the dlink only AES would allow my ibook to connect with WPA.

sajewi · Feb 9, 2007

I have set the router to use WPA-PSK and with that have entered as security encryption password (example password123), I then use this same password when trying to setup airport to connect (entered exactly as I did in the router) but no joy.

I have checked for the latest firmware for the router but can't find anything.

How do you find the MAC address of the Network Card so that I can enter this into the Wireless Station Access List on the router?

cwa107 · Feb 9, 2007

sajewi said:
I have set the router to use WPA-PSK and with that have entered as security encryption password (example password123), I then use this same password when trying to setup airport to connect (entered exactly as I did in the router) but no joy.

I have checked for the latest firmware for the router but can't find anything.

How do you find the MAC address of the Network Card so that I can enter this into the Wireless Station Access List on the router?

Open up Network in System Preferences and select AirPort. It will show the Mac at the top of the list of settings.

Alternatively, you can open up the Terminal and type:

Code:

ifconfig | grep inet

....which should yield everything you need.

cwa107 · Feb 9, 2007

By the way, what version of the DG834G do you have? It should be on the label at the bottom of the device.

sajewi · Feb 9, 2007

Success. Thanks for all your help guys. The problem was that I had not entered the MAC address of the AirPort card in thw Wireless Access Control List (I had only entered the MAC of the Ethernet card).

I can now get on with getting to grips with my iMac and OS X.

Thanks for all your help.