Sorry :( - Another Wireless Router Thread

[groovebiscuit]

Hi,

Sorry, I know there are already a pile of wireless router threads but from trauling through them I can't find an answer I'm happy with.

I have a 17" intel iMac and at the same time I picked up one of these.

I've had nothing but trouble with it. The connection continually dropped, sometimes every 2 minutes, sometimes every 2 hours. My mate came round with his iBook and Powerbook and while mine was dropping both his machines stayed connected. I took the router to his house along with my iMac. We connected the iMac to his wireless router and it was solid all night. We plugged in my router and the dropping started again. Also, his brothers PC was experiencing dropouts as well.

Now I know there are Airport issues with the new macs (10.4.6 made no difference) but I don't think that's the problem. I think it's just the combination of the iMac and that particular router.

So, I'm looking for a new wireless router but I'm afraid to buy any incase I end up with the same problem. Therefore I'm wondering if you guys who have INTEL based iMacs can provide me with recommendations with wireless routers. Only ones that you have successfully used with your INTEL iMacs as I need to be sure it's going to work.

D-Link = NO, NO. I've had nothing but trouble with them in the past.

Thanks.

 

[Eraserhead]

I don't have an intel Mac, but I have a buffalo wireless bridge at home and originally we had a lot of problems getting it to connect to a Windows PC (it dropping out and stuff)... There were no Mac's trying to connect at the time though. If you have other wireless devices in your home, eg portable telephones or Bluetooth (well thats a given with an Intel Mac) it may be worth going into the Advanced settings for the router and changing the channel setting, this is because all of these devices use roughly the same frequency, changing this really seemed to effect the reliability of the wireless device.

Try setting it to channel 2 (the channel I use) but another channel may be more successful for you. I suppose this is unlikely to help after the testing you have tried but it's worth a shot.

PS eBuyer have a reputation as being one of the worst online retailers, they apparently have atrocious customer care, I would never buy anything from them though they are generally cheapest so I can see why you'd be tempted.

 

[groovebiscuit]

Thanks Eraserhead,

At first I thought it may have been my wireless phones causing the problems so I went through every channel on the router. It made no difference. I also tried diconnecting the phones completely, made no difference either

As for ebuyer, I've never had a problem with them and I've bought a number of things - but then again I've never had to return anything.

[edit] I should probably also mention that I've tried all the various security settings to (including no security), and it's made no difference either.

I've borrowed my friend's wireless router for now and it's running fine in my house. I'd just buy one of them but it's a 2 year old discontinued Buffalo one and there's none on ebay

 

[mmmcheese]

If you want reliability, you can't really go wrong with Apple's Airport products....you pay a premium of course, but remember that you already tried the cheap route, and you get what you pay for.

Others to consider are the Linksys WRT54 series and Netgear products.

 

[odedia]

Has anyone had any success with Edimax's products? I just bought a wireless ADSL modem+wireless router from them... Thanks!

Oded S.