[TheZee]

Ok, I use a NETGEAR wireless router and Apple airport card installed in my G3 ibook to connect to the internet. Recently I have noticed that when I click on the airport menubar icon and a certain network names appears in the list of available networks, all sorts of troubling behavior starts happening to my connection. Connection speed drops siginificantly down, pages often fail to load or once on a particular wepage, clicking on a link takes me to a Google random search. None of these issues occur if this other network name does not appear in the list. If the name does appear, then all of these issues occur. Anyone got any insights as to why this is? Is my network being hacked, is my router being hacked, how can I find out who, where & what this foreign network name is ??? It appears in my MacStumbler application but the GPS function does not produce any useful information. What gives ???

[seanc]

Try changing the channel and SSID of your router. It could be interfering with this other routers signal.
Also, make sure the usernames and passwords for your router aren't the factory defaults.

[ghporter]

Netgear's use of a URL for the network interface to their configuration system troubles me-greatly. Not using a non-routable IP (like everybody else except Apple, who use an app to configure AirPort units) means some bad things can happen. My brother-in-law tried to set up his Netgear wireless router at one point and it turned out that GoDaddy had squatted on the URL Netgear provides...

So anyway, seanc's suggestions are a great first step-of particular importance is changing that SSID! Make double sure that you use a unique name ("great psychologist's middle names?" tertiary characters from James Joyce? you get the idea) and not even just modifying the default. The big payoff of this is that there is absolutely no possibility that you might inadvertently choose some neighbor's (default named) network instead of your own. Stranger things have happened. And of course you have changed the admin password for the router, right? A good, solid password is important here.

[TheZee]

Thanks for the guidance. I will do whatever is necessary to have a more secure wireless network. This recent issue is really bugging me. For example, when I first got onto the web to respond to your posts, no other network addresses appeared in the list that comes up when I click on the Airport menubar icon and my connection speed was good, webpages opened up swiftly as they have in the past. However, suddenly, that bothersome network address(H3J95) now appears and, as has been always happening, my network connection speed has slowed down considerably, webpages take forever to load and sometimes don't load at all and/or when I click on some web address links, I get taken to some random Google search site page. This never happened before and it only happens when this unknown network address appears. Frustrating as hell and very troubling to me. I appreciate any and all of your guidance & suggestions here. Thanks.

[bmwparamedic]

May I ask how old your router is, sometimes if problems such as the ones you describe are prevalent the manufactures do something about it. I would check to see if there is a new firmware update that is out.