An Interesting WiFi Problem

[Russic]

I'm trying to help a friend and I've hit a wall. Hopefully the braintrust of CP can help me crack this problem.

My friend recently bought a MacBook pro and an apple tv. All should be good but her wifi kicks in and out and often has a lengthy process to get back (so I suppose it's more out than in). Regardless, we've been troubleshooting this together and what I was 90% sure the problem was turned out to not be the issue.

As her problems branched to all her devices, I figured the problem was her dlink wireless router (broadcasting 802.11n and secured with WEP). Sorry I don't have a model number but it's just a standard consumer router in the $100 range. I had issues with my dlink on my ps3, so I told her that could very well be the problem. She came over today and brought her laptop and router.

First we ruled out that the computer was at fault by connecting it to my wifi with no problem. Then we hooked in her router and unfortunately everything worked fine there too. It seems to me (via process of elimination) that there is something screwy with her house or Internet connection. Am I missing something obvious here? Did I test everything properly?

She had said that she can plug things into the modem directly and things work fine, although tonight they seem to have stopped working as well. Could it be the signal coming into the house is flawed from the start? Could there be some form of interference at work? She's tried the usual suspects (microwaves, cordless phones etc) but nothing seems to be causing the interuptions.

What am I missing here? Has anybody seen a house that just sucks with signals? Could shaw perhaps come in and run a diagnostic? I'm at the end of my rope and I hope somebody can help us out.

Cheers!

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Russic

I'm trying to help a friend and I've hit a wall. Hopefully the braintrust of CP can help me crack this problem.

My friend recently bought a MacBook pro and an apple tv. All should be good but her wifi kicks in and out and often has a lengthy process to get back (so I suppose it's more out than in). Regardless, we've been troubleshooting this together and what I was 90% sure the problem was turned out to not be the issue.

As her problems branched to all her devices, I figured the problem was her dlink wireless router (broadcasting 802.11n and secured with WEP). Sorry I don't have a model number but it's just a standard consumer router in the $100 range. I had issues with my dlink on my ps3, so I told her that could very well be the problem. She came over today and brought her laptop and router.

First we ruled out that the computer was at fault by connecting it to my wifi with no problem. Then we hooked in her router and unfortunately everything worked fine there too. It seems to me (via process of elimination) that there is something screwy with her house or Internet connection. Am I missing something obvious here? Did I test everything properly?

She had said that she can plug things into the modem directly and things work fine, although tonight they seem to have stopped working as well. Could it be the signal coming into the house is flawed from the start? Could there be some form of interference at work? She's tried the usual suspects (microwaves, cordless phones etc) but nothing seems to be causing the interruptions.

What am I missing here? Has anybody seen a house that just sucks with signals? Could shaw perhaps come in and run a diagnostic? I'm at the end of my rope and I hope somebody can help us out.

Cheers!

Tell her to just buy a Mac. They just work.

Is she losing connection to her network or is her network losing connection to the internet? They are very similar in symptoms but very different in cause.

Either way, I would do a full power cycle on all her equipment.
Unplug and disconnect all cables from her modem, router. Ground the center wire on the coax on the external coax threads on the modem. Reconnect the modem power first, then coax and then once the modem has established its connection,power on the router and connect the cat5 cables.

I had a router that would randomly drop any machine on it from the network and this would solve the problem for quite a while until something was changed, like a cable being disconnected or one of the devices being unplugged. If this doesn't work, or you can verify with another machine that it is the network being disconnected from the internet, and not the machine from the network, then call her ISP and have them deal with it.

Edit: Also, if it is the machine being dropped from the network, look for driver updates for her network card, or firmware updates for her router.

[cal_guy]

First don't use WEP, use WPA or WPA2. Second try disabling Wireless N mode in the router configuration.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by cal_guy

First don't use WEP, use WPA or WPA2. Second try disabling Wireless N mode in the router configuration.

Not that I am thinking it won't work, but I am curious what the logic behind these moves is.

[sclitheroe]

Open a terminal window on the mac and ping the router (eg. "ping 192.68.1.1" or whatever IP address the router is). Leave the terminal window open and the ping running.

Continue surfing until your get kicked off, then flip back over to your terminal window, and let us know if the ping's are now timing out, or if they are still good.

This will help narrow down the source of the issue for further investigation.

[Russic]

Thanks so much guys, I'll report back.

[onetwo_threefour]

I had a similar problem with my WiFi printer when I was setting it up. It would connect and I could surf to its page but it kept dropping off my network and I could only actually print to it if I plugged in the USB. I ended up having to get a techie buddy to come by and help me out and after screwing around with settings and stuff, he decided that my firewall had to have a special rule set up for the printer. We ended up setting up reserved addresses for all the equipment on my network that was hooked up wirelessly, (printer, wii, DSi) and then setting those IP's as trusted in the Firewall settings. It has worked like a charm for about a month now.

[mykalberta]

Mac thread, no comment.

[Bill Bumface]

Most likely one of her neighbours is broadcasting on the same channel. I went through the exact same fiasco with my MacBook Pro and D-Link Wireless N router. Since switching channels I've had 100% connectivity on all my devices for 5 months now.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Mac thread, no comment.

Actually it has nothing to do with Mac, but great try!

Originally Posted by hulkrogan

Most likely one of her neighbours is broadcasting on the same channel. I went through the exact same fiasco with my MacBook Pro and D-Link Wireless N router. Since switching channels I've had 100% connectivity on all my devices for 5 months now.

And it looks like we have a winner! Unfortunately customer service at Dlink beat you to the prize, but you get the warm knowledge that you nailed it. The channel switch was one part of the fix in addition to a port change (at least I think that's it ... I was told of the fix via text).

Special thanks to all who helped out. CP never seems to let me down.