Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Mike Pither · Oct 24, 2003, 02:51 AM

I have just purchsed a new AL 15" PB with an airport base station (no modem model). Before trying to install the airport I tried connecting the PB directly with the cable to my ethernet ADSL modem and everything worked (and still works fine). I then followed the airport installation instructions. I plugged in the airport and waited untill the flashing lights had settled down as instructed. Everything went very smoothly with the installation ,the computer finding the airport and filling in automatically all of my IPs account names etc. Now I have a strong signal and the lights flash correctly on the base station (middle steady, left & right flashing) but I can't connect. If I reconnect the modem directly with the cable to the pc everything works fine but when I plug the cable into the wan port of the base station, nothing! I have also tried connecting my Epson 740 printer to the base station and it doesn't print though it wasn't connected when I did the installation so maybe this is the problem there.

Am I missing something obvious? I notice that the Apple site says that some ISPs do not support airport, what does this mean, they won't help with a problem? If I connect directly or via airport this surely makes no difference to the modem.

aaanorton · Oct 24, 2003, 08:32 AM

Start over. Unplug the power to the AEBS and the modem. Wait 1 minute. Plug the modem back in. Wait for it to initialize and get an IP (watch the lights). Then plug in the AEBS and connect.

car1son · Oct 24, 2003, 09:45 AM

If restarting the modem and ABS doens't help (sometimes the DSL service gets attached to a particular ethernet address), investigate what "can't connect" means. Obviously you have signal strength and can commuincate with the Airport Base Station, since you set up its config. That's a good sign.

Open Interenet Connect. At the bottom is a "Status:" line. Does this read "Connected to the internet via PPPoE" or "Looking for PPPoE server"? The first is better news than the latter. (It describes the status of the Airport base station's connection with your ADSL service.)

If that's okay ("Connected to internet...", I presume what's happening is you try to go to a site in a browser and after the Mac thinks a bit, you get a message about not being able to locate or connect to that site?

Check the DNS config: Open Network Utility (in your Applicaions/Utilities folder). Go to the Ping tab. Enter the address 17.254.3.183 (that's apple.com.) Try a few pings. if you get a response, chaneg the address to apple.com and try again. If the first works and the second doesn't, the problem is your domain name server.

If neither of those addresses get a ping response, Open System Prefenence's Network pane. Set the "Show:" pull-down to "Network Port Configurations". This lists all the interfaces on your Mac (built-in Ethernet, internal modem, airport, maybe IrDA) in the order OS X will try to use them. Temporarily uncheck (disable) everything except Airport, apply the config change, and try the internet again. (You'll need to put the check-marks back to re-enable other ports to use dial-up of built-in ethernet, so don't forget you've done this.) This is to make sure OS X isn't just trying to stubornly use one of the other interfaces to access the internet.

Let us know how these things go, what you attempt to connect with and what kind of response or error message you get.

Scarpa · Oct 24, 2003, 12:04 PM

How did you configure the Powerbook to work with the ADSL modem? Did you have to use PPPoE or did your ISP provide a static IP for you to use? Did you setup the Base Station to use the modem the same as you did for the Powerbook?

Mike Pither · Oct 24, 2003, 04:34 PM

Thanks very much everyone, especially car1son. After trying all of the suggestions without success I disconected all of the other ports as you suggested, except for airport and it worked. I then reconnected then back up and it still worked even after a restart. The printer I then deleted and readded using rendevous as suggested in the Apple help and that works too.

Thanks again

blackbird_1.0 · Oct 24, 2003, 11:11 PM

when i called apple a few months ago, the guy told me to turn on appletalk as well, what does this do?

Uday's Carcass · Oct 25, 2003, 01:44 PM

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
when i called apple a few months ago, the guy told me to turn on appletalk as well, what does this do?

it shouldn't do anything unless you're using other macs on the network (and they're using appletalk too). otherwise turning it on does nothing.

ghporter · Oct 26, 2003, 09:42 AM

Mike,

A bit of a "post mortem" on your problem here...

It looks like you ran into a PPPoE issue. When you did your test run, your PB figured out that it needed to use PPPoE to get to the Internet, so after you got the rest of the system hooked up, it tried to use PPPoE again-when your AEBS what also trying; a recipe for failure. By falling all the way back to the begining, I think you got the PB to forget about PPPoE-just as it should, since it is connecting through a LAN, not directly to a DSL modem.

The devil is surely in the details, and these little DSL details will bite one in the butt just as surely as sitting on a bear trap will!

kanker · Nov 1, 2003, 12:27 AM

I'm having a similar problem, and I tried what was suggested, it didn't seem to work. Here's what I'm curious about though- when I connect my DSL modem to my AEBS, the Ethernet light doesn't come on. Should it come on when it's connected?Any help will be much appreciated. BTW, I can print with the AEBS.

Kevin