Problem with wifi network and my Macs

Pixual

Pixual

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I am useless with networking, so please forgive me if the things I am about to say are completely brain dead:

I have a Telkom Mega 100WR router which I use to broadcast a wifi signal in my house. I use this signal to connect to the internet as well as share files between the bits of hardware I have on the network. I am using a Mac Mini, MacBook, iPad, iPhone, Apple TV and a PC on the network.

This has been working fine for ages, but recently I have been having some problems with the network. The Macs just keep losing contact with it. This has happened twice today and I have had to re-boot the modem to get it working.

Now when I click on the airport icon on the taskbar I see that the network is there and the light on the modem is on, but it just won't connect any of the devices. When I look at the TCP/IP settings on the Macs it shows that there is no IPv4 Address when this happens. Trying to renew the DHCP lease doesn't help.

When I eventually do reconnect the network after rebooting I am told on the Macs that another device is using my IP address 10.0.0.1 and that this is going to cause issues. My problem is that I really just don't know what to do to fix this.

Any help out there?
 
You can fix the ip issue by assigning every device on the network a unique ip address. Still keeps me wondering why it suddenly happened to not work flawlessly anymore though, but many strange things have happened with wireless routers before.

So you said you did reboot your router, did you reset it as well? You can make a backup, reset the thing and make a recovery. Is the latest firmware installed on the router?
 
No idea on the firmware. Where do I get any updates from?

I set the address for the Mac Mini like this:

Configure IPv4 Using DHCP with manual address
IPv4 Address: 10.0.0.6
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Router 10.0.0.2

The MacBook is like this:
Configure IPv4 using DHCP
IPv4 address: 10.0.0.7
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Router: 10.0.0.2

The address that the message said was already assigned was 10.0.0.1, so I can only assume it must be one of the iPad or iPhone using that? I don't know how one would set the IP on an iPhone and iPad manually.

Do you think it would be better if I set the Mac Mini up to the router with a cable and then let it share its internet connection with the other devices by creating a computer-to-computer network?
 
Check on the router, it will show you which device that was given the 10.0.0.1 ip.

For setting a static ip on the iPhone go to http://iphone.namitkarlekar.com/2009/05/fixing-your-iphones-ip-on-wifi-network.html

Same for the iPad.

You don't want a computer to computer adhoc network when you have a router.

You can find the firmware on http://www.telkomphones.co.za/mega100wr_dwnld.htm but I actually doubt that's the issue.

Before you do anything you can also try to make your iPhone and iPad forget/delete the wireless network and then reconnect both devices. Just go to settings/wi-fi/ then click on the blue arrow on the right hand side of the connected wireless network and click on forget this network. Then you connect again as usual, this way it may get assigned a new ip from the router.
 
Does it time out everytime you need to reconnect?
 
Sounds to me like a factory reset and reconfigure may sort things out.
 
I have a similar problem. I'm using cell c d105 router and what tends to happen is that the mac is connected to the network, but everything times out or unavailable. I've seen it in MacBook pros running os x 10.6.x with the 2010 And 2011 model.

My suspicion is that it has something to do with the wireless N as I've used other b/g networks without this issue. Don't know if it is software fix or just the wireless N standard being implemented incorrectly
 
It happens very intermittently. At first it only affected the mini, but today it began affecting all the devices and the MacBook too. Its been ok since the last reboot (touch wood).

I was reading on the Apple support forums that it might have something to do with the DHCP lease.
 
Well, I have a Linksys WRTG54L (connected to PTAWUG) and Edimax 6200n (3G Router) and have had ZERO disconnects the past 2 weeks since I got my Macbook Pro (2011). But that is not to say that it might be a Mac Hardware issue.

Wifi is sometimes "iffy" and so are routers. I have seen many times that a router will work fine and then SOMEHOW it does not work for a few hours. Usually I remove the network from Windows 7 / OSX, and search for it again and add it again. That usually solves the problem.

ALSO: VERY good idea to put ALL your machines on STATIC IP's on your home network. Especially if you want to FTP, AIRPORT, etc between machines. Easier to remember 0.3 = Mini, 0.4 = Macbook, 0.5 = WugBOX, etc. when you need to access other computers ;)
 
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