[midwinter]

Hi all.

Here's the situation. A while back my airport base stationi gave up the ghost after a couple of years of solid service, and I picked up a netgear WGR614 to replace it (it's an 802.11g base station). It worked just fine with my DSL and routed everything just dandy.

However... I've just moved across the country and yesterday I had a cable modem installed. The connection works fine if I go straight to the modem from a computer (usually my powerbook), and works MOST of the time via the router. But occasionally, the router just dies. Last night, I moved my pb into the bedroom so I could watch a movie, and when I walked in I completely lost the signal. What's more, ALL of the computers in the house lost a signal. I have to power-cycle the router to get it all working again.

I have reset the router to its factory settings, and for the moment, everything seems to be working fine.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? I have a good bit of experience with this stuff, and it's completely baffling me.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers
Scott

[aaanorton]

What options do you have selected in Sys Prefs > Network > Airport tab?

I've been on cable service(s) for a few years now, and the vast majority of difficulties I've experienced (mostly as you described) have been ISP network/eqpt related. Call your ISP and ask if there is a trouble ticket in your neighborhood. Have them replace your modem. Have them test your connection. Often my problems just resolve themselves in a day or two tops.

[midwinter]

Everything seems to be working OK today. I'm sitting on my back porch typing this (and watching a fire up on the mountain!) and I have 4 bars on my signal indicator. Maybe you're right and it was just a glitch in comcast's system.

Thanks!

[ghporter]

You probably ran into a situation where the cable modem had to "accept" your wireless router as an allowable network client. Most cable services verify/authenticate the user through checking the hardware address of the network device connected to them. Some cable companies refuse to accept anything but the original computer network card address connected to the modem at installation. Of course just about all routers, wireless and wired, allow you to spoof that by "cloning" the MAC address of your computer's network card in the router. It looks like your modem just needed some time (and maybe a power down then power up?) to see your router and connect with it.