Need help troubleshooting a wireless problem

[bigwig]

I have an iMac G5 (Rev B, 10.4) connected over 11g to a D-Link DI-524 router. The wireless connection periodically hangs, necessitating a "turn Airport off/turn Airport on" cycle, whereupon the network works fine again until the next hang. Typically it hangs in 10-15 minute intervals. Note that the signal doesn't disappear, I have 100% signal. This hang doesn't happen on a wired connection, so I think this isn't a broadband problem.

The router's DHCP leases are set to 1 week. SSID broadcast is off, but turning it on doesn't fix the problem. WPA is on.

Any ideas on how to find the problem and fix it? If the router were simply broken I can't imagine the wireless working at all.

 

[ab2650]

Have you tried (temporarily) running it without WPA or WEP encryption and see if it makes any difference?

 

[bigwig]

Have you tried (temporarily) running it without WPA or WEP encryption and see if it makes any difference?

Are there known OSX bugs that cause hangs on encrypted connections? I'll try turning off WPA tomorrow and see what happens.

 

[Consultant]

Are there known OSX bugs that cause hangs on encrypted connections? I'll try turning off WPA tomorrow and see what happens.

Have you updated router firmware?
Old things die, especially old routers.

 

[pismobrat]

Hi,

Before you start killing you encryption. Please take a more scientific look.

Download iStumbler and see what Access Points are in your area.

- How many of them are on Channel 11, 6, 1 etc?
- How strong are the signals for the ones on 11, 6, 1 etc?
- Set your router to either 11, 6, or 1 specific to the channel that is the least conjested.

or go by Aruba... http://www.arubanetworks.com

 

[bigwig]

I ran iStumbler, but the results are odd. iStumbler gets the Vendor and Mac Address right, but my router shows up as channel 0, frequency -1, which I know isn't right. It should be channel 1. iStumbler shows a competing network on channel 1 and no competing network on channel 6, but I've tried channel 6 too and it had the same problems.

 

[pismobrat]

Sounds like time to buy a new router