[Andhee]

Hey, as the title reads, I'm having problems connecting to the internet after I've put my mac to sleep and woken it up again.

For the record:
I have a 2.16GHz Intel core 2 duo macbook, 2GB RAM, running leopard 10.5.1
802.1X is enabled.

I have a Netgear WNR834B Rangemax router which is wireless-n enabled.

Okay, whenever I put my mac to sleep, then wake it up again sometime, it fails to connect to the internet, when I've even turned off airport before hand, or not. The only way to reconnect to the internet is by doing a restart - which quite frankly defys the reason for 'sleep' - so it annoys me.

I THINK it started at the update of 10.4.10 when the internet started being temperamental, as before then it was fine. Being gone and bought leopard, hoping this would be the solution to my troubles, it wasn't. Because ive paid £80 for a new OS, I don't want to be reverting back to leopard 10.4.9, for obvious reasons.

At first I thought it was the router, and if I had a choice I would change it, but I only bought this in July before I got my mac (august), so I was all prepared for the mystical 'wireless-n'. If I had the money, and a family which were all mac owners, I would go for the airport extreme base station despite only having this base station 6 months in hope that it would solve my problems.

All the PC's in the house have no problem connecting to the internet, whenever they want to - it just works - excuse the pun. There are 2 laptop PCs in my house, and they both work fine. The main computer which the router is connected to via ethernet is fine, which leads me to think this is a netgear/apple software problem. I'd be willing to take my mac to an apple store to try it out on their wireless internet, but to be fair it is 45 minute train journey away and my dad wouldn't let me take it on my own as it cost us a fair bit (£1000). Even if it did work on their internet, it would be of no use to me, as I would have to hand out £120 to get an airport extreme base station, if I were to get fed up of the consistent problem.

I still have my old router around, but that had poor reception in my room and I don't want a connection which disappears when doors are closed (annoying).

Any help, or information you need from me to give me help, are welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[Veltliner]

I can tell you it is almost impossible that it is Tiger's fault (you wrote you had 10.4.10 installed, so it's Tiger, not Leopard).

If there would be trouble from the operating system, many, many people would have it.

So you can rule that out.

When did it happen the first time? Was it after some major crash. After you installed some free software from the web?

Proposal: check the computer with Disc Warrior. If you haven't got Disc Warrior, do an erase and install. And do the most recent upgrade, which is 10.4.11.

Other proposal: have the router you are using checked, or borrow someone else's router.

[Andhee]

Hey, thanks for the reply. Sorry if I didn't make it clear in my post but it now runs leopard, but the problem most certainly raised on the update of 10.4.10, as it was perfect for when I purchased my mac (10.4.9 or 8).

I think the update changed some wifi settings and because of that, my netgear router malfunctions, but I may try borrow someone elses router, and if it works with that then it'll just mean I need to buy a new router, only being able to sell my current one for £20 cheaper, when I bought it second hand anyway.

Thanks

[Cold Warrior]

Create a new user on your Mac, log in as that user and use wifi. Put it to sleep (still logged in as that user) and wake it to see if the issue persists with that newly-created user account.

[Andhee]

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior 

Create a new user on your Mac, log in as that user and use wifi. Put it to sleep (still logged in as that user) and wake it to see if the issue persists with that newly-created user account.

Strangely enough, it didn't persist, but then when i logged back on to my other user, the internet completely stopped. Restarted - still no internet. Went on to the other user again, put it to sleep, woke it up, still didnt work. Restart - worked.

[seanc]

Get out your old router. Reset it to factory settings, setting up a different SSID and different password to the one it previously had.
Set it up in your room and connect to it, set it as the most preferred network. Put your MacBook to sleep and wake it up again. Does the problem persist?

[Andhee]

Thanks for the reply. I can't set the router up in my room cos I dont have any kinda telephone line or whatever to plug it in to so that option is fairly screwed unless you have another idea. I could swap the old router for the new router and see how it works in my room, but from past experience, its really poor reception.

Here's a pic for when it cant connect to the net, in network diagnostics.

It shows network diagnostics on the 'page cannot be displayed' page.

Btw, my internet stopped working two times while trying to write this post, so now i've connected through ethernet as I really wanted to finish it without losing what i've written.

[seanc]

What I meant was forget the phone line, just have the router sat there as an access point for the test. I'm assuming it has wireless, it sounds like it does.

If you were to manually assign your IP address and settings for your home location, does that cure the problem?

[Andhee]

How do I go about setting up an access point, whats it do aswell. Sorry about me being noob to this btw.

[seanc]

Access Point = Wireless Router. Do you know how to configure the wireless part of your old router? What's the make and model of it?

[ghporter]

Access point: the wireless part of a wireless router. It's the radio (with a little extra) without a bunch of ports, and it does JUST the radio part of the task. While it's not for everyone, I've been a "separate router and access point" user for a long time.

Setting up an access point is usually about as simple as setting up a wireless router-without the "connection to your ISP" stuff to worry about. Most (maybe all) have a simple, browser-based interface that lets you configure them. You MUST use an Ethernet cable to do this configuration-some brands won't even let you at the configuration pages over wireless-because among other things you could simply wind up losing your connection when you make a change and have a terrible time getting it back. I don't know about what brands are common in the UK, but they are generally pretty much equivalent to each other. Shop around and get one for the best price you can.

[seanc]

Well like any other country, there are the common ones, like Linksys, Netgear, D-Link then there are the obscure ones like my Draytek.

I'm trying to get him to use the old router to see if it experiences connection issues when he sleeps the MacBook, even though it'll be useless apart from connecting to, it might help to rule out an issue with his current wireless router.

[ghporter]

That's a great plan.

Andhee, scrounge up your old router and tell us what it is (maker and model) and we can walk you through setting it back up for this testing. It's a very good idea to see whether or not it's your Mac or your Netgear unit that's causing these problems. Netgear has a decent warranty, so if that's what's failed, you'll only be inconvenienced, not out a lot of money.

[Andhee]

Right, I'll get it out of the loft tonight and update you then

Thanks!