Internet Connection Problems, especially wireless

[4Italian]

Greetings. I have been having problems with my Internet connection for quite some time. I currently have Panther OS, but experienced same problems while on Jaguar. I have a G3 iBook, with wireless card.

1. Although I had location manager profiles set up for wireless, ethernet, cable modem, etc., I often have disconnect problem (no matter what connection mode I'm in) if I leave "unattended" for even 10 minutes. I reset my "sleep" mode to literally never occur, but this did not alleviate the problem.

2. More recent problem is my inability to connect to Internet through wireless. When I check on status, it shows that I am connected to the network, strong signal, etc. But when I go to connect to the internet, it says Unable to connect to server (unable to locate server?) - I have tried connecting to several different free wireless locations, including cafes, free university campus locations, etc. I have tried everything to fix this, but to no avail.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
JAM

 

[superbovine]

Your first problem i think has nothing to do with sleep or anything.

do you have your base station/router registered with your cable company. if you don't the cable company will disconnect your router peridoically because it think it is a rogue connection. for example if the cable guy registered a computer when he came to install your cable modem the only MAC address (MAC==the address of your network card not your Mac) the company knows is the computer that was registered. You can view your mac address in network, and clone the mac with your base station if you don't want to register your base station.

 

[mkrishnan]

for example if the cable guy registered a computer when he came to install your cable modem the only MAC address (MAC==the address of your network card not your Mac) the company knows is the computer that was registered. You can view your mac address in network, and clone the mac with your base station if you don't want to register your base station.

So is *that* what they do to try to get you to pay for their networking access? But then a lot of places, it is self-install...no one from the cable co came here until it stopped working (and they didn't fix it, so now they don't come at all), and no one has come for the DSL that replaced the cable either....

To the OP: it almost sounds like for some reason, your computer keeps giving up its DHCP lease...actually, to echo (kinda) superbovine, when I first got SBC Yahoo DSL in Detroit, I had a similar problem on a Win98 machine, and it turned to be related to DHCP leases. When I got a router, there was a setting to maintain the lease indefinitely. The router is always on so it doesn't let the modem log the computer out. But I don't know how to achieve the same on the computer directly if there is no router.

 

[4Italian]

Currently I have no cable modem

The cable modem was just an example - I don't even have a cable modem anymore. I usually hook up at work (ethernet) - no problems accessing internet or any company servers, just get timed out after a while (which forces me to restart my computer)

My bigger concern is wireless - free wireless Internet, not at home. I have it selected so that DHCP is auto by the DHCP server, not manual. The computer SAYS I am connected. I just can't access Internet. I did not have this problem a year ago... it is a new problem, and I don't know what (if anything) I changed to make this happen. When I was at my previous job, I was able to get on to our wireless (with username and password, of course) network with no problems... but still had timeout problem.