Connection problems...

Hi guys - first post from me here. Have had my 20" iMac for a wonderful troublefree 2 months, but have recently been having a few problems connecting to various sources and wonder if anyone has any ideas. My internet connection (with Tiscali I hasten to add) works fine morning noon and night, I get good download speeds for mac updates etc., however, Messenger for Mac becomes very temperamental in the evenings. I can see 'such and such' is typing a message, but then nothing and maybe only one in 5 messages gets through from the other end or out from me. Limewire for mac just says trying to connect to network most of the time. I've also been unable to get iChat to work even though my mate had a full strength wireless signal in his hotel and me here too, and we both appeared to be set up properly. I'm using a Netgear DG834GT non-wirelessly...
I'm searching through the forums at the moment, but if anyone has any advice then that would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Steve.

Hey Steve, welcome to the forums!

I'm not 100% certain but I think your problems might be down to either or both of the following:

MSN Messenger:Mac - This may not be anything to do with your set-up or your connection, it might simply be the service acting up. I know from past experience that sometimes messenger will just kick off and throw me an error message saying I have been disconnected due to the service being temporarily unavailable etc. I'm not positive but I would be willing to factor this in as a possible cause to your problem.

As for Limewire and iChat (and this could be another possibility for Messenger) Have you checked to see if all the necessary ports are open on the router?

Sometimes programs can act up if certain ports they like to sue are closed or restricted in some way.

Hope this helps

Regards,

Chris :mac:

Cheers for that. Well everything is running like a bag of sh*** tonight!!
MSN is a complete no-go - can't even sign on as it times out, emails are taking 5 minutes to download a one-liner from the tiscali pop server and internet pages are taking up to a minute to load. Thing is, everything is sort of fine during the day. These problems have only started since I've had my MAC - either that or it's just a coincidenc and Tiscali have been up to their normal tricks since I bought it !! I've made no changes to my router - nor do I know how to really, so I'm at a bit of a loss. I'll call Tiscali tomorrow unless anyone else has any suggestions!
Steve.

Hey Steve,

I was experiencing similar problems as yourself as I have a Netgear DG834Gv2 router. First I thought it was Airport playing up as it dropped connection every few minutes but that issue seems to have resolved itself with the latest update. I hooked up the wireless router with a wire to my iMac and everything seemed to work well until I experienced connection issues with Messenger - not connecting, slow file sending speeds. So I checked around various forums to no avail.
Then I checked the Netgear website and found an update for the router which I applied. I also opened up the messenger port in the router and everything is working with regards to messenger. I have had no problems connecting to the service.

Check your router's firmware for an upgrade here at Netgear's site