[Ceceil Felias]

Hi,

I'm helping a friend configure her MacBook 2.1 for wireless internet access. Now I'll be straight up with it and say I'm not exactly the most experienced when it comes to Macintosh computers, but I've been working with computers in general enough to know at least what I'm looking at.

Anyway, onto the issue: I checked her network settings, and the Airport info in her Mac's system information already showed her as being connected to the wireless network in question. I checked things further, particularly making sure the wireless network was working on my laptop (a Toshiba Portégé 7200CTe with a Cisco 802.11b wireless card). It did just fine. Next, I checked to see if the MacBook could see other computers on the network. Indeed it did, and to be sure I poked into the Shared Documents folder of my own laptop, even authenticating to it under my own laptop username and password to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

So apparently her MacBook and my Portégé are both accessing the wireless network just fine, even to the point of haviung no qualms with communicating between each other. However, mine's accessing the internet while hers isn't. I checked the specific IP configuration between both of them and, as expected, the subnet mask and gateway matched just fine. Her IP was in a similar range as mine, as well. Even then, we couldn't get her internet to work, and using the network diagnostics and onboard assistance did nothing to help.

Does anyone have any idea as to why we can't get it to access the internet through the wireless? There's no special authentication being used by either laptop, as far as I can tell. I'd offer the model of the wireless access point, but it's quite inaccessible, pardon the pun.

[Big Mac]

Can she reach sites through their IP addresses? I'd check the DNS setting on her system because everything else sounds like it's working.

[ghporter]

Is this a work or school network? It's possible that there's another step between the wireless network and the Internet. If it IS a school or work network, check with the IT people to see if there's something else you need to do to connect.

Up until recently, my school had every new student bring in his or her laptop so they could "configure it" for the wireless network here. While the network doesn't broadcast the network name, that's not the real purpose; they have the system set up to allow only specific, individual wireless cards, so they had to collect the hardware address from the students' computers so they could tell the network to accept and connect that computer. They only recently added a server redirector that lets any user authenticate onto the wireless network from any computer.

[Ceceil Felias]

It is a school network, and, as it turns out, there was a security implementation put into effect after all that I wasn't aware of up until now. I was already making calls to the network admins immediately after I posted this thread, so sorry, Ghporter, the advice wasn't directly used since I didn't even see it 'til after the fact, though you were right all along. :o

As it turns out, proper internet access IS restricted to just authorized MAC addresses, and since my Cisco wireless card has been in use for well over a year on the network, the transition to such a setup went by entirely unnoticed for me since they already had the needed information.

So I got the Airport's MAC address and, after a phone conversation after my personal webserver host decided to cack it while I was composing an e-mail to send to them (what rotten luck, eh?), the laptop connected just fine to the internet through the school network.

I guess this topic is rather useless now, though at least now I feel that I'm not quite as inept with a Mac as I first thought.

[ghporter]

When it reveals an IT mystery, NO post or thread is useless. This is just the sort of thing that NEEDS to be discussed so that someone will think of it when THEY run into a similar situation.

Oh, and I really like it when someone says "you were right." Even after the fact. Thanks.