Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

macbook sees LAN, won't talk to world?

J

.JahJahwarrior.

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 1, 2007
438
0
I'm confused. My new macbook is annoying me. It sees that it's connected to the internet, according to the "network status" box that pops up under "system properties" on the dock. I have it manually setup with a static IP on a 10mbit network. My server will talk to it, and my print server will talk to it, but I cannot get www.cnn.com or the IP address for cnn.com to do anything. (and the same for any other webpage.)

My DNS numbers are the same as on every other computer in the house. Yes, I've checked. I've retyped and retyped and retyped and I'm positive, they are the same.

Can anyone help me out? My dad is trying to help me, but he's a 100% PC guy and is at his wit's end with it. I'd call Apple, but right now it's outside of their business hours and I'd really love to get it working tonight so I can bookmark a few pages to be able to look at while typing a paper at school tomorrow.
 
Is IPv6 enabled? I've run into that a few times with the newer Macs. On some IPv4 networks, if IPv6 is enabled, it just won't work. Make sure IPv6 is set to disabled.
 
It was set to "automatically" configure itself. I told it to configure itself "off."


However, it still does not seem to work. :(
 
Can you tell us a little bit more about how the network is setup? Why are you using static IPs? Do you have a DHCP server anywhere on the network (like in a router)? Are you connecting the MacBook wirelessly or through a wire? What are you using for a gateway -- a router? Is that set correctly on your MacBook?
 
-we use static IP's so my dad can use his computer the same at work and at home. He's got it set up some wierd way that is apparently very safe and all that. I'm not a computer wiz :) I just pretend to understand.

-I do not think we have a DHCP router. I know that gives you an IP automatically, right? We have a cable modem which gives a signal to a really old machine we call Nehemiah. Nehemiah somehow sends out a signal to one router in a closet, which then sends a signal to almost every room in the house. Somehow, the signal gets routed through a router in my room to. All of it is wired.

-The gateway is the server, Nehemiah. The DNS numbers are the "Gateway," right? They are set the same as on every other computer (all PC's, all running XP) in the house. Everything is wired, nothing is wireless.
 
LOL, wow, that's even more convoluted than my home network has ever been.

I'm guessing something wonky on this old machine Nehemiah that your dad is using as a router/gateway is causing this problem with the DNS. Let's try bypassing that. Set your DNS servers to be the following from OpenDNS:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

EDIT: And actually no, the DNS is not the same as the gateway. The gateway is the address of the machine that actually sends your traffic out to the Internet. A DNS server, as you probably know, translates names (e.g., cnn.com) to their corresponding IP address.
 
When I type in cnn.com, a blue bar appears, about an inchlong, on the left side of the address bar. And then it sits there. I get tired of it sitting, and I'm crawling under my desk to switch cables over (both of my machines have the same IP. My dad tells me he'll have to do something that'll take more than a few minutes to give them seperate IP's.), so I don't let it sit until it tells me it cna't find it. I figure if it can't find it in a minute, it can't find it in five.

This is only until college, fortunately. In the fall, I'll probably be on a wireless network at my college.
 
Well, just try doing what I mentioned and see if that works. It sounds like your father's got a really screwed up network though, so if setting the OpenDNS numbers doesn't work then you may be out of luck without his help. Even if he's got IPtables setup on this gateway machine (assuming it's running Linux), it shouldn't take him more than 30 seconds to permit another IP.
 
The opendns numbers do not work any differently for me. :(

The real trouble is, it's been a few years since he's had to mess with this stuff :) He says there is some table of something or other just for macs which he was trying to remember as he accessed Nehemiah through my mac the other night, trying to find a reason that it refuses to talk to the world.

And even once he permits another IP, that still doesn't get me onthe internet, right? The problem is the DNS numbers?


Maybe I'll try the nicer of the two old fashioned options: restarting the durn' thing. (kicking is the other one and I wouldn't dare!)
 
Man that sounds screwed up. There shouldn't be some special table for Macs. TCP/IP is TCP/IP, it's system-independent. That's the whole point of networks. If for no other reason than curiosity I would love to know exactly how your father has this stuff configured. EDIT: On second thought, maybe he meant a table for MACs, which would make perfect sense. He might have to explicitly allow MAC address access to the internet. Which is pointless, but if you really want to you can setup a network that way.

Just to confirm that your only problem is DNS, try this: from the terminal, "ping 72.14.207.99" (that's a google.com IP). If you can successfully ping that IP, but not ping google.com, then the problem definitely lies in the DNS.

You might try convincing your father to cough up $50 for a decent router (like the Linksys WRT54G or something) and bring his network into the 21st century. It's no less secure than using a dedicated Linux firewall/gateway, because that's exactly what the Linksys routers are. It would allow for DHCP or static IP use all together on the network (you can easily block out a range for DHCP and then assign static IPs outside of that range so there's no conflicts), so he could use static IPs if he really wanted to on his machines and everyone else could use DHCP. Plus, you'd get wireless out of the deal so you could take your MacBook anywhere in the house. You could even offer to install it for him :) It should be simple, and you might learn a little something along the way.
 
by "terminal," do you mean the server thing? If so....eh, it's got no screen. It doesnt' even have a proper case. It works and he's happy with it. And yes, I think that was what he meant. I think he wanted to make sure that he hadn't set it up in some way that mac's couldn't access the internet.

However, I might try to talk to him. I know he's not sure what else to do, and knowing him there is a decent chance he'll actually take the initiative to get a wireless set up. My mom has a laptop, she'd not mind too much being able to access the internet in other places.

For the moment, I saved the files I needed as html files so I can access them from school tomorrow. They have a wireless network there that I cna probablyg et a friend to give me the password to. (I work there, so I could ask, but the principal is a little upset at me right now because of a drama deparment screw up)

I'll leave it be till tomorrow. Thank you for yourhelp!
 
If it makes any difference, I was able to log on to my school's wireless network quite easily. I'm typing in a hallway, working on an economics paper.

The internet is slow, but I don't know if that's on my end or if it's just a slow connection here. I've got good but not perfect signal strength and it takes maybe half a minute.....maybe only 15 seconds.... to load pages. And, I'm playing music in yahoomusic and about ever 15 seconds it stops playing for a second or two. I'd use iTunes but I haven't moved all of my music over....havne't moved any over. :)
 
Ok....spent two hours in Terminal with my dad. ip chains, linux, masquerading. Those are the things he's confused about.

It seems that our server, an old machine (486) running something like version 2.1 of linux, sees my machine. I can see other machines. But, my packets are not getting past our server. It's like it refuses to retransmit.

We finally figured out (I should say he figured out, I was just watching) that the masquerading "part" of the program on our server wasn't seeing any data from me.

My dad tells me the packets are getting lost in the "ip chains" and that he has no clue what it is. XP machines have communicated fine with our old server, but the mac I heralded as superior and more robust refuses to. After this fiasco, there is probably no way he'll ever switch anything to mac, I think he's thoroughly disguisted with the macbook at this point. Whatever happened to "it just works?" ;) Especially since it's a Linux server and Os X is based on Unix..... right?

Can anyone offer insight? We might just replace the router, but I have a feeling my dad wants to figure out the why before he does it.
 
.JahJahwarrior. said:
My dad tells me the packets are getting lost in the "ip chains" and that he has no clue what it is.
Click to expand...

If I recall correctly from my days of screwing around with Linux as a routing server, the IP chains (or IP tables) are rules that govern what traffic is allowed to pass through its gateway and under what conditions. This certainly sounds like what is happening.

.JahJahwarrior. said:
XP machines have communicated fine with our old server, but the mac I heralded as superior and more robust refuses to. After this fiasco, there is probably no way he'll ever switch anything to mac, I think he's thoroughly disguisted with the macbook at this point. Whatever happened to "it just works?" ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's supposed to "just work"...but you have to admit your father has a really convoluted network setup going and, with all due respect, if he doesn't know how to maintain it and doesn't understand all the pieces of it then maybe he shouldn't be using something so complex and weird.

.JahJahwarrior. said:
Can anyone offer insight? We might just replace the router, but I have a feeling my dad wants to figure out the why before he does it.
Click to expand...

I've worked with Linux for a long time, but I doubt there's much anyone can do without seeing your setup. I have every confidence that this could be fixed with some IP tables configuration changes, or maybe a couple package updates -- how long has it been since he's updated that server? I did run into a circumstance at the office once where OS X wouldn't work with a certain server until we upgraded some modules, because it hadn't been touched in like 6 years. Vista, as it turned out, had the same problem with that server, so it's not just OS X. If you've got something hideously out of date, you can't expect it to work with all the new stuff I guess.

So it sounds like you isolated the problem, but the only person who's going to be able to fix it is your father. If he's fed up with it, then you're probably out of luck unless you get a router. I'd try to make him understand that he needs to either a) actually understand how to administer such a network if he's going to insist on using something so convoluted, or b) make life easier on everyone and drop $50 on a router.
 
Yeah, that's what I figured. :) It's been several years since anything's been changed, but it's been working fine for maybe 8-10 years? It's a decent system. I think however that now, the routers available will do exactly what he needs. He mentioned he'd bought a new wired router to replace Nehemiah with sometime, but he hadn't gotten to it yet. He might be convinced to just replace it in the next day or two.

And he does know how to do most of this, but it's been a few years since he's needed to. He was much more pleased when he found out that you could use Terminal like a Dos command program. He messed around with it for a while to figure out where the packets where going and what was talking to what to see if he could isolate exactly what the problem was.

But I think we've figured out it's not the computer, so maybe he won't be anti-mac for too long. We only run XP, no Vista. I've got a friend with Vista, if he comes over for any reason I'll see if he's got problems getting on our network with his laptop.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back