AOL and Netgear FS726t

[MacBkPro17]

Hi guys I have been reading the forums for a while but just registered today! I am a college student and been doing computer repair on the side for extra cash and have run into a problem with aol and a netgear FS26T pro safe 24 port switch I installed for a client of mine. The network consists of 8 computers and two printers. They all run os x 10.3 or 10.4 except one which runs 9.2. The existing network consisted of three switches, 50 feet of cat5 between the switches, and very poor network performance. I decided to simplify the mess and just have one switch. Everything works great except for aol which is horribly unreliable. My client swears to me that AOL used to be flawless. The head sales rep uses strictly AOL and refuses to use anything else. Any known issues with aol and this switch??? is there something I missed?? I forwarded forwarded ports 5190-5193 on the AOL computers. Also Im using a class c ip with the range starting on 192.168.1.10 . I took this job because the owner of the company is an amazing bass player and by speeding up his network he would want to give me some pointers. Now he just hates me because 70% of the business is done through aol email. Any help would be appreciated thanks


::EDIT:: Im running the stand alone AOL 10.3.7 and AOL desktop 1.5. Both crash often

 

[brop52]

AOL always crashes. I'm confused though. Is the internet through AOL or just the email, because you can get free AOL with internet from a third party.

 

[MacBkPro17]

Its the aol Stand alone 10.3.7 and Aol desktop 1.5 which is used for email only. safari and firefox are used for web browsing. I know AOL sucks but they insist that it was 100% stable. What are some mail clients that can handle AOL mail?? The reason they like AOL standalone is because of the attachment features. sorry for such a newbish question. I only started using apple software again within the last year when i bought my 17 inch macbook pro 2.4. I keep telling them that AOL sucks but they are insistent that it worked flawlessly. Its hard to believe since any version of AOL I have used has always sucked. But there is so much conviction in the mans eyes when he tells me.

 

[brop52]

10.3.7 is stable (on a PPC machine in Tiger or less). Anything higher it isn't stable at all. The AOL Desktop is also a very new application. I cringed through my parents using all of the beta releases and even the supposedly (non-beta) releases of AOL Desktop beta. Whether it is crashing during quitting, mail not showing as read after opening it, not deleting when trying to delete, or other odd bugs I have seen them all.

As for AOL Mail it is very easy to set up with Mail.app for the Mac OS X computers. For the OS 9s it is probably best to stick with the current setup as AOL 10.3.7 and PPC OS 9 is fine. Though going into AOL on the web is pretty easy too. (I also hope that your client isn't paying for AOL). As for his love for AOL attachment features I think Mail.app has probably the most superior attachment options available. Last, do you know who the ISP is?

As for your networking issues I don't know how much I can help you with that. I don't have much experience with wired networks and especially with such old hardware and switches.

 

[MacBkPro17]

The isp is time warner. I assumed they are paying for it. Aol seems to work for a while then gets a cant communicate with host message.

 

[brop52]

The isp is time warner. I assumed they are paying for it. Aol seems to work for a while then gets a cant communicate with host message.

Show your client this page. Does he ever need dial up access? If he doesn't, he should change his account to free. My parents were paying for years when they didn't have to. AOL even reduced the prices and didn't reduce our bill after we were using Comcast instead of dial up or when they reduced their dial up prices.

I could have sworn that I edited this last night. Anyway, you are probably having a firewall problem. You need to figure out ports and make sure that the computers are not liking each other. As the next poster says, you need to test each computer.

 

[corbywan]

Did you do the port forwarding on the switch or in the router? If it were me, I would set all the switch settings to default so it's just a switch with no other functionality beyond basic switching, or turn all the features off, or something. Or test with another switch, or plug the one guy with the problem directly into the router/modem and see what happens.

I'm trying to figure out if I can use the word "switch" anymore.

 

[MacBkPro17]

I forwarding the switch and the computer itself. No change. I reset the switch to factory defaults and still no change. Even when plugged directly into the modem AOL still receives a host error and crashes. I noticed on 10.3.7 the entrance page is out of date. Does this mean AOL no longer supports it??

 

[brop52]

I forwarding the switch and the computer itself. No change. I reset the switch to factory defaults and still no change. Even when plugged directly into the modem AOL still receives a host error and crashes. I noticed on 10.3.7 the entrance page is out of date. Does this mean AOL no longer supports it??

No they don't support it. It is three years old after all. Can the older Macs use 10.4? For example, my G3 iMac has no DVD drive but I was able to install 10.4 on there anyway. AOL Desktop also says that a G4 is required but that isn't true. It works fine on the G3.

Can I ask what the exact error message is? Does it just happen with AOL 10.3.7? Does it happen on all of the machines or just the OS 9 machines?

Is it this error? “AOL Host Was Unable to Start a New Session”. Though this is in Mac OS X.

 

[MacBkPro17]

well I cant remember as I havent been back there but the error was something about no longer being able to communicate with the host. And no the os9 computer is fine. But there are no worries I no longer work for this client as "i do not understand the intricacies of AOL software" (a quote from my former client). Guess im just an idiot but then again "the guy from the mac store redid everything for and now the network is operating at 10mbps." ROFL I hope they enjoy a wired network slower than my wifi!! lesson learned though AOL is trash and if you want it to work on a network the ip addresses must be static!!!