Wifi Problems Macbook Air

Question

Wifi Problems Macbook Air

****. I have a previous generation BAse station extreme.

We have iPad, iPhones (2), Macbook Pro Retina, and this summer my wife finally got a Macboor air 11 inch on my recommendation.

She encounters a recurring problem where the WiFi icon gets a exclamation point and she can,t connect to any wireless network. It'll take a few minutes, sometime sa restart, and it will come back. I had never encountered this problem with my Mac... until last week. At first I thought it was her MBA which had a hardware problem, but sicne mine has encountered it once... I figured maybe it's the Airport Base station? Should I buy a new router?

Just to give you as much detail as possible: I have ADSL Internet, and the base station is configured as bridge since the router handles the rest. The computers connect to the network broadcast from the base station, not the Bell Speedstream router.

thanks for any help

Posted on Jan 22, 2013 6:52 PM

Reply

Answer 1

msuper69

Level 6

8,689 points

Jan 22, 2013 7:04 PM in response to Ashsrighthand

Since you have the problem on more than one device, the problem lies in either the ABS or your router.

The sure-fire way to debug this is to elimiate the ABS from the network and connect directly to the router. This would required a wired Ethernet connection (adapter available on the online store).

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 22, 2013 8:01 PM in response to Ashsrighthand

I have been suffering with this problem on my Retina Macbook Pro.

What seems to be the problem is DHCP allocation. My AirPort network is a little complicated, with lots of devices, and I think the AirPort Extreme was having problems allocating IP addresses.

I only did this this morning so I'm hoping it continues to work, but try manually allocating IP addresses for the machines you are having problems with to prevent DHCP messups.

Open AirPort Utility, select your base station and click Edit and go to Network.

Open System Preferences, go to Network and Wi-Fi in the side menu. Click Advanced, and go to TCP/IP

In AirPort Utility, create a DHCP reservation by pressing the +. Call the description the name of this computer, leave it on Reserve by MAC Address.

In System Preferences, select Configure IPv4: Using DHCP with manual address. Note your current IPv4 address and copy and paste it into AirPort Utility dialogue under IPv4 address. Get your MAC address by clicking the Wi-Fi tab in the System Preferences window, and copy and paste your "Wi-Fi Address".

Close, save, restart, etc.

In AirPort Utility you can add extras, so do it for all devices having problems.

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 23, 2013 5:44 AM in response to kakososato

Your solution sounds simple enough but unfortunately, since my BS is in bridge more, I don't have access to these settings. Thx anyway.

Reply

Answer 4

Jan 31, 2013 8:13 PM in response to Ashsrighthand

I dont know if you're still having problems, but wouldn't it make more sense for your DSL modem/router to be in bridge mode, and the AirPort using PPoE to authenticate with the ISP and do the routing?

Reply