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Fellow2000 · Oct 11, 2003, 10:48 PM

I just bought a new powerbook and was trying to set up the airport and could not get it to work. Here is the problems that I am having, can anyone help?

I have an ISP named telus near Vancouver, BC canada.

I recieved the webpage to login and change the physical address with the isp registration so I went in and did that. I am allowed 2 seperate physical adresses, so I left the one for my PC and changed the 2nd one to the physical address of the built-in-ethernet of my powerbook.

Then I plugged my powerbook in with the ethernet cable and everything worked great. Internet works great.

So then I went to set up airport.

I plugged in the airport base station and installed my card. Got everything showed up and it is showing that I am getting full airport reception in the menu bar, so everything woreked great thus far, buuut, no internet. It just will not load any pages

So I went through the setup assistant, the guy at the apple store said this would just set up the base station with the same properties as my computer and would just trick my isp into thinking that my airport base station was my computer. So basically the 2 would have the same physical address. After the assistand was done, it said everything was great, buuut,, still no internet. Can anyone help me. I have tried contacting my ISP but they will not help out with any hardware issues and apple care talk like is closed right now.

thank you for your help guys and gals, I really want to use this powerbook wirelessly but i am tied to a leash right now

aaanorton · Oct 12, 2003, 12:03 AM

Originally posted by Fellow2000:
I recieved the webpage to login and change the physical address with the isp registration so I went in and did that. I am allowed 2 seperate physical adresses, so I left the one for my PC and changed the 2nd one to the physical address of the built-in-ethernet of my powerbook.

I don't get it... They asked you for the MAC addresses of your hardware? What did the addresses you entered look like? Can you go back and change this?

Stingrey · Oct 12, 2003, 01:24 AM

Your Airport does the work. Your laptop will need to be configured to obtain IP address automatically. In other words, go to the airport basestation manager to set up your airport as your laptop was set up... If what I am picturing you saying is correct, you have the cable modem (or dsl or whatever) going into the airport, and then you ran the out port from the airport to your laptop, and while that was connected, your laptop could surf fine... Your laptop was set up with an IP address manually from what I imagine you are saying...

You should go to your airport manager and set up your airport with a manual IP like your laptop is currently setup (this is assuming your ISP INTENDS that you have a static IP, otherwise this setup is MUCH more simple) and then change your laptop Network settings in the System Preferences or whatever for both Ethernet and Airport to use "Obtain IP automatically". This is similar to my setup at home since I have static IPs to choose from, but can only use one from what someone else told me before. Anyhow, I am using one, and the only settings entered in my laptop are the DNS servers and Search Domains fields, which are filled with info from my ISP. Not sure if it is required or not, but that's how I've got it set up, and that works for me.

Rey :)

Stingrey · Oct 12, 2003, 01:28 AM

I should read before posting :( Not sure I was even close on the answer, except for the fact that you probably want to do the exact same thing I just described, but plug your PC into the out port on your airport, and see if you can set your pc to obtain IP automatically... Your airport should be the first thing plugged into the network to use it to distribute traffic. That is the simplest thing I can think of :( Not sure if it makes sense or not.

Fellow2000 · Oct 12, 2003, 05:13 AM

Hmm, let me clarify a little more.

The only way to get internet on my powerbook is when I have the ethernet cable plugged in directly to the dsl modem, airport is totally out of the picture.

My isp gives IP address' automatically, it is the physical address that has to be registeres. Normally this is just handled by their software, but they do not have software out for Mac so you have to do it manually. basically every network card and hardware piece has a specific address that just belongs to it. It looks like an IP address but a little longer. It is that address that is the one that needs to be registered with my isp.

Anyone have any further thoughts? Thank you so much both of you for your help and time posting, but the issue is still unresolved.

kovacs · Oct 12, 2003, 09:59 AM

You're using the MAC address of your airport station and not your tiBook right ? You can find the MAC address of your airport station by opening the Airport Admin Utlity, the ethernet ID is the MAC address of your base station. I don't know if you'll be able to add more macs to your airport network in the future without them knowing about it ( since the MAC address stays the same )...