Comments on: Macbook Wireless Problem

By: Pepperjack

Pepperjack — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:29:16 +0000

Hey Mike – sorry to butt in on the conversation, I've had ongoing problems with my MB wireless since buying it new in mid 2008. Signal fluctuates wildly all day – can only ever get about 5 secs of 60kb/s connection, then drops down to 0kb/s for 30secs, then up again for a few more seconds… Tried all suggestions I can find on web, even bought apple airport. MB is triple boot with Ubuntu and WinXP on other partitions – wireless works fine under these OS, just Mac OS won't run it's own hardware! Having read your post I'm wondering now if it's an ISP problem – could you give more details?
Thanks heaps!

By: Neil Williams

Neil Williams — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:26:59 +0000

@Mike that’s good to hear. I am feeling really good about my re-entry into the Macosphere. It’s been about 6 years since I touched one. In the meantime, I’ve probably reinstalled XP about 50 times to clear inexplicable problems, and yes… lost a few days waiting for the bloody thing to boot and connect.

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:37:40 +0000

Looks like the fire’s out before I got here. Two small notes:-

Wireless hardware can be under the same brand, but use two different (and not necessarily compatible) chipsets: I’ve been burnt by this.

Rule out neighbour interference and weak signals before powering up more wireless computers to debug.

Now, I’ll go back to my own *wired* networking problems

By: Ed Moore

Ed Moore — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:41:47 +0000

Oooh choccy chip, my favourite…

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:38:18 +0000

And you deserve it, Ed! Here you are:

By: Ed Moore

Ed Moore — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:35:53 +0000

I claim a bonus cookie for suggesting a DHCP issue

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:34:30 +0000

Ubuntu works on wifi. It’s def. a mac problem.

@marxculture on twitter suggested:

“You’ve tried renewing the DHCP lease? System Prefs, Network, Advanced, TCP/IP, Renew DHCP lease?”

Which seems to have done the trick for now!

By: Ed Moore

Ed Moore — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:20:08 +0000

Is the Ubuntu machine connecting via Wifi or ethernet?

By: Mike Amos-Simpson

Mike Amos-Simpson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:08:11 +0000

don’t buy the apple airport – not worth it if you already have a router and are sure thats not the problem.

Am on to my 5th mac now and the only problem I’ve ever had with wireless has been caused by the ISP. Earlier in the year I had a really annoying problem where the signal would go up & down throughout the day – I spent literally hours on the phone, bought 2 routers, tried 3 different computers, changed wireless channels, got a BT engineer round – it wasn’t the fault of BT, and it wasn’t the fault of the ISP………. strange then that literally the minute I changed ISP I got a full & consistent signal.

I’d definitely delete all the current settings you’ve got in your networks & see if its something in the current configurations. The fact that you can be specific about the times its on & off is weird – if it wasn’t that you say your Acer works fine during this time I’d have said it was definitely your ISP.

(am assuming you’ve already reset the router to default settings too?)

@Neil those claims are right – my wife uses Windows Vista & while she’s waiting for that to wake up & then connect I’ve already been online for about 2 minutes – when you get used to it it gets really frustrating waiting for PC’s to connect!

By: Neil Williams

Neil Williams — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:36:15 +0000

This is not what you want to read when you’ve just spent £1,150 on a spanking new aluminium MB (arriving end Oct – this is going to feel like a long few weeks).

Apple’s site makes bold claims about how easily it finds WiFi.

Hmm.