12" powermac wireless signal problem?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi. At the firehouse where I work there is a store next door that has a wireless network without firewalls, etc. The rest of the guys at work bring in their laptops and get a good signal, and are able to "web surf" any time they want. We have permission from the store to "surf"



When I bring in my 12" powerbook, it finds the "linksys" signal, and I get about 4 dots of strength on the signal level, but it seems to take forever to load a page or get my e-mail, and many times it says "not connected to internet". It also drops to no signal strength a lot.



At home on my wireless network all is well.

Basically, it hardly seems to work at the firehouse. The other guys are laughing because their lousy pc laptops get better signal and work way better then my powerbook.



The other option I may have is some guys hook up their verizon cellphone to their pc's and connect that way. I too have a verizon cellphone, but verizon says the software does not work with a mac.



Any suggestions as to how I can connect to the internet at work? I thought 4 dots of signal strength should be more then enough to stay well connected.



thank you in advance for your help.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    drazztikkadrazztikka Posts: 240member
    Maybe something wrong with your network settings.

    Check system preferences>network

    Try switching "use passive ftp mode" on & off

    In TCP/IP, select "use DHCP"

    Try pushing "renew DHCP lease"



    Check IP-adresses on your mates computers and be sure U don't have the same IP as someone else, u can do this by selecting "use DHCP with manual adress" and manually typing the IP-adresses.







    Well that's what i would do...
  • Reply 2 of 8
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by faithfulFrank

    At home on my wireless network all is well.

    Basically, it hardly seems to work at the firehouse. The other guys are laughing because their lousy pc laptops get better signal and work way better then my powerbook.




    Well, you can blame Apple for that. The antenna for your Airport/Airport Extreme card is inside of the laptop. While it is also inside of their laptops, their laptops are more than likely encased in plastic. Your PowerBook is encased in Titanium or Aluminum. That cuts down on the reception of your antenna. This is a case where Apple chose design (using an metal case) versus functionality (better reception). That's why the iBook gets better reception than the Powerbooks do.



    Quote:



    The other option I may have is some guys hook up their verizon cellphone to their pc's and connect that way. I too have a verizon cellphone, but verizon says the software does not work with a mac.





    Depending on the way that it connects, you might not need their software. My friend connects his cellphone internet to his laptop all the time, and he's using Linux, and open-source drivers. I'm sure there is some of that functionality in OSX if you can figure out how to get at it. I know there are some phones that will natively connect with OSX built-in drivers.



    Quote:

    Any suggestions as to how I can connect to the internet at work? I thought 4 dots of signal strength should be more then enough to stay well connected.



    When I've used Linux on my PowerBook the drivers for the Airport card rated the link quality out of 92. Even in my house in places where OS X reports 4/4 bars for signal strength, in Linux the drivers report only 24/92 link quality. That could have something to do with it. I haven't been able to figure out with the difference is between the two.



    Another option for you is to get a USB wireless adapter. It may have better reception to it's internal antenna, due to the antenna only being encased in plastic.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by drazztikka

    Maybe something wrong with your network settings.

    Check system preferences>network

    Try switching "use passive ftp mode" on & off

    In TCP/IP, select "use DHCP"

    Try pushing "renew DHCP lease"



    Check IP-adresses on your mates computers and be sure U don't have the same IP as someone else, u can do this by selecting "use DHCP with manual adress" and manually typing the IP-adresses.







    Well that's what i would do...




    I doubt that he is getting the same IP as someone else. I've been on a school network where it kept trying to give me an IP that was assigned to someone else, and whenever OS X tried to get a DHCP lease a system error popped up telling me that the IP was already assigned to someone else, and wasn't able to get an IP for up to 20 minutes some times.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    Thanks Guys,

    I have not been able to try your suggestions yet, because I had to give my son back the powerbook for awhile while his brand new 20" G5 imac got returned to the apple store for almost the same reason......at home where the powerbook got good reception, his new imac G5 was losing connection every two seconds or so......

    I think they are replacing the airport card board and the two antennas in hopes of getting his new imac to receive signal from the airport express 30 feet away.



    When I get the powerbook back I will indeed try your suggestions....

    Thank you very much.

    Respectfully, Frank D.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    When I've used Linux on my PowerBook the drivers for the Airport card rated the link quality out of 92. Even in my house in places where OS X reports 4/4 bars for signal strength, in Linux the drivers report only 24/92 link quality. That could have something to do with it. I haven't been able to figure out with the difference is between the two.



    The Airport is closed to others, meaning, Linux programmers need to 'reverse engineer' the drivers for Airport as Apple doesn't provide any documentation for it whatsoever. That's why they're so weak.



    I think Yellow Dog Linux is the only Linux distro that ships Airport drivers that are 100% compatible with Airport. They also support Sleep, something others Linux distro's don't, or have a lot of problems with.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gene Clean

    The Airport is closed to others, meaning, Linux programmers need to 'reverse engineer' the drivers for Airport as Apple doesn't provide any documentation for it whatsoever. That's why they're so weak.



    I think Yellow Dog Linux is the only Linux distro that ships Airport drivers that are 100% compatible with Airport. They also support Sleep, something others Linux distro's don't, or have a lot of problems with.




    But the GNOME signal gApplet has a four bar system and it says 4/4 in those places. It has nothing to do with the driver so much as it probably is calculating different things. In any case, Airport uses the widely the Orinoco chipset which is a known chipset. http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_...ml#WavelanIEEE I never had any problems with reception in those areas that gave me 13/92 or so... which would probably be 1 bar by your estimations. But I've never been able to use the network connection with anything less than 2 bars.. And only sometimes do two bars work. I'm thinking that it is just some different calculation.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pyr3

    But the GNOME signal gApplet has a four bar system and it says 4/4 in those places. It has nothing to do with the driver so much as it probably is calculating different things.



    Yes, but as I said, there is currently no support for Airport in Linux as the ndiswrapper used in Linux to connect machines wirelessly does not apply to Apple machines. Not official support, anyway. And the GNOME Applet may just be calculating it all wrong, as you said.



    You can read more about it here
  • Reply 8 of 8
    sebazsebaz Posts: 12member
    I assume you are running Tiger. If this is the case, try the following:



    For your Airport TCP/IP Settings, click where it says Configure IPV6.



    On the IPV6 window change it from Automatically to OFF. Restart Airport.



    Lots of ppl have been complaining, about the airport connection been unreliable under Tiger, and this fix seems to help some ppl. Hope it helps you.
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