[megasad]

Normally, when AirPort is turned on, its menu extra looks like four bars bent over each other, the more that are dark the better.

However, earlier this evening it looked like a solid grey slice of pie, with a white square in the middle of it, a black square in the middle of that.

What does it mean?

When it did this, there were also some options in said menu extra that were not there before; something about computer to computer networks? See, I should have taken a screenshot, but I didn't.

Anyway, the reason that all this was a problem was that I could not get on the Internet whilst all this was going on. Whatever I did, changing settings in Network and Sharing, it would not let me reconnect. Then, after restarting both the iBook and the wireless router, all was well.

Could anyone tell me what the hell was going on? Someone else in my house has had this on her iMac and has been unable to get on the network for the last few months.

All of this is using original AirPort, none of that Extreme tomfoolery.

[Art Vandelay]

Your Airport was set to a computer-to-computer network. All you had to do was simply choose your normal AirPort network from the menu to get back to your normal setup. Does someone else have access to your Mac? It takes a couple of steps to setup a computer-to-computer network. It's hard to do by accident.

[megasad]

Originally posted by Art Vandelay:
Your Airport was set to a computer-to-computer network. All you had to do was simply choose your normal AirPort network from the menu to get back to your normal setup. Does someone else have access to your Mac? It takes a couple of steps to setup a computer-to-computer network. It's hard to do by accident.

See. that's along the lines of what I thought, but selecting the normal network had no effect; it would never connect, no matter what I did. And as I said, this is happening on someone else's iMac too. Could the two be interfering with each other? How do you enable/disable it? It just appeared and then disappeared on the iBook and I have no idea how it did so. Where are the options? And no-one messed with the network settings on the iBook.

[Art Vandelay]

Originally posted by megasad:
See. that's along the lines of what I thought, but selecting the normal network had no effect; it would never connect, no matter what I did. And as I said, this is happening on someone else's iMac too. Could the two be interfering with each other? How do you enable/disable it? It just appeared and then disappeared on the iBook and I have no idea how it did so. Where are the options? And no-one messed with the network settings on the iBook.

Read the help for AirPort. It explains very well how to set it up. If this also appeared on another computer, then someone definitely did something. Macs can't just spontaneously create computer-to-computer networks.

[biscuit]

OK, I've managed to get myself into a similar situation. I created a network so my friend could try out his new Centrino, but then we decided not to bother. Now however, I can't get rid of the network I created; it's there whenever I turn AirPort on! There's no other network to select here at work and to tell the truth I've normally got AirPort switched off. I just don't like the idea of not being able to remove this thing; there has to be a way. I've looked in the Help and although it's clear on how to set this up, there's no mention of removing it again.

Any ideas?

biscuit

[jokell82]

In the Airport section of your Network Preferences, turn off the following option:
"Allow this computer to create networks."

Turn it off on all the macs and they wont be able to create computer to computer networks.