Airport Extreme Base gone screwy

[engelhart]

I went out this afternoon with a perfectly happy wireless network which has been working fine for the last three months. Came back to find my 17" Powerbook and 20" iMac would not connect to it. Have had this issue occasionally and a reset normally solves it so did this. Powerbook connected fine but iMac wanted nothing to do with it.

Have now spent the last 3 hours continually resetting the base station and fiddling with settings. Sometimes neither of the machines will connect (even when I have the powerbook a foot from the extreme), sometimes only the powerbook will connect. They sometimes won't see the wireless network, will see it but get the irritating "there was an error connecting to the wireless network" message or occasionally the powerbook will connect saying it has full signal and work happy as larry.

I am confused. My only presumption is that the base station is screwed but I cannot logically work out how this happened in the space of being out for two hours (especially when it occasionally works).

Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

Simon

 

[aquajet]

Try enabling "Use Interference Robustness"...often that can clear up those pesky error messages.

 

[mad jew]

Try playing around with the broadcast channel.

Also, it's a bit mad but maybe just leave it unplugged for an hour or so to let it cool down a bit. Sometimes these symptoms can be the result of a little overheating.

Take off any wireless security you may be using (WEP, WAP and so on).

 

[engelhart]

Thanks for the advice. I left it turned off overnight and then flicked it back on this morning. Have been fiddling with the suggested settings but still proving to be intermittent and still refuses to connect to the iMac with only occasional connection to the powerbook.

Am now pretty much convinced that the base station must be somewhat screwed.

Simon

 

[skoker]

Thanks for the advice. I left it turned off overnight and then flicked it back on this morning. Have been fiddling with the suggested settings but still proving to be intermittent and still refuses to connect to the iMac with only occasional connection to the powerbook.

Am now pretty much convinced that the base station must be somewhat screwed.

Simon

Could one of your neighbors have bought a new *reaching* cordless phone?

 

[mad jew]

Could one of your neighbors have bought a new *reaching* cordless phone?

Although it could potentially be an interference problem, I don't know that it'd be so bad as to make the Macs lose connections on various channels at point blank range.

It's sounding like a bad AirPort. Just out of interest, when you are actually connected, how many bars are your AirPort icons showing? Also, does the problem seem to be getting worse?

 

[yojitani]

Before you dump everything, try turning off your modem (cable or ADSL or whatever), then turning off your base station and leave them off for about 5 mins. (usually 2 mins is enough to reset). Make sure you unplug the modem from the base station. Then reconnect your modem and wait for it to light up/ connect, then switch on your base station. re the lan cable to the base station.

See if that doesn't sort it out. I've had this kind of trouble before and focused just on the base station. However, there is something about the connection between the modem and the base station that sometimes jams up.

YOJ