Airport.........Unreliable???

Hello,

I have been a iMac user for just over 3 months now, and the whole experience of using the Mac has been great apart from one thing. The built in airport has been a somewhat headache for me at times as it often slows my connection, or like now looses my wireless connection altogether meaning that I have to rely on my good old ethernet cable just to get me back online to be able to post on here to see if any of your guys can help at all.

I was happily surfing away, when my connection suddenly timed out and then wouldn't let me access any sites at all. The situation is now airport won't find my router at all(even though it's set to be discovered in the setting on the Belkin setup site)

I have tried various configurations in the internet setup feature in OS X, but nothing seems to work, nor will it still find my router at all. I didn't change anything previously, nor did I fiddle with any settings before this happened, so what's happened??? I've seen countless posts from other people on here complaining about the airport hardware that's built in the iMac etc in some form or another....makes me wonder if it's worth using it at all and just sticking to using a seperate USB router dongle instead.....for peace of mind if anything.

Other than that(believe it or not) I'm very happy with my new iMac 20"

Michael.

Hello,

UPDATE: Well it now appears that my airport is working fine. I think my router may be the cause of the problems as it's not being found by my iMac at all, however it's finding other networks just fine. What would cause a router to suddenly stop working via wireless but not ethernet?

Michael.

What router do you own? Brand and Model. Maybe the router went nuts. Did you try unplugging it and then plugging it back in? Some routers tend to mess up from time to time. My friends Dlink did that and just on the WiFi.

Hello,

It's a Belkin F5D7632 ADSL router if that helps at all. I've tried everything from resetting it via the login page(192.168.2.1) to the reset button on the back of the router itself, along with resetting it back to factory defaults.

I think I might save myself the hassle and get a new router, I've been reading on here about all the different one's that are Mac compatible....what router to go for is confusing as I've read so many conflicting reviews. I'm looking for something that's reliable and fast(108MPS) D-Link, Belkin, Netgear seem to be popular.

Michael.

Drpepper99uk said:

Hello,

It's a Belkin F5D7632 ADSL router if that helps at all. I've tried everything from resetting it via the login page(192.168.2.1) to the reset button on the back of the router itself, along with resetting it back to factory defaults.

I think I might save myself the hassle and get a new router, I've been reading on here about all the different one's that are Mac compatible....what router to go for is confusing as I've read so many conflicting reviews. I'm looking for something that's reliable and fast(108MPS) D-Link, Belkin, Netgear seem to be popular.

Michael.

Click to expand...

Try three things. One, change the channel setting, there is a chance something is interferring. Secondly, on most Belkin routers, there is a setting called Protect Mode, which stops interferrence, although it does slightly slow down your connection speed (you'll hardly notice if you have broadband - I have mine on and play Xbox Live with latency as low as 15 msec). Finally, under LAN settings, you'll see something saying Lease Time. Everytime this times out, your IP address is renewed and although many people will argue this point, Macs seem to be sensitive to this. Change it from whatever it is, to 'Forever'. This basically means your Mac can keep its IP address static and retains the same connection. You lose nothing by doing this.

Oh, I recommend WPA-PSK / TKIP encryption on a Belkin - for me just seems to work best.