Wifi or router problem?

[newmacuser2006]

I've done some searching but can't seem to find an answer to my problem. I have a 2008 24" iMac which is connected wirelessly to a Billion 7404VGPX modem/router. I've always had sporadic connection issues with it but they seem to be a bit more prominent now that I have a NAS in the network.

I can get a connection to last for ~12 hours before I get disconnected within the LAN only (internet is fine). All indicators say that I am connected - share folders are visible, Time Machine does it's auto backups as scheduled. However, when I actually try to access the share folders via Finder, or try to do a manual TM backup, I get a message stating that the location can't be found. If I turn off airport and turn it back on again, it's all fine.

Interestingly, I can command -k to the specific location fine.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this? Thanks.

 

[Tomorrow]

I can get a connection to last for ~12 hours before I get disconnected within the LAN only (internet is fine). All indicators say that I am connected - share folders are visible, Time Machine does it's auto backups as scheduled. However, when I actually try to access the share folders via Finder, or try to do a manual TM backup, I get a message stating that the location can't be found. If I turn off airport and turn it back on again, it's all fine.

I've had this issue in the past. The fix, in my case, was easy.

The router I had been using (a 2Wire gateway from AT&T, used as a wireless hotspot) did not support the number of devices that I had trying to connect to it. It overloaded the DHCP capabilities of the router side, and it kept trying to re-assign IP addresses to equipment already on the network.

Unfortunately, for some reason, the Mac computers in our house (3 of them) don't seem to want to change IP addresses either on the fly, or when you reboot. It would, however, reconnect if I simply disabled Airport and re-enabled it. Other devices in the house worked fine.

I switched to using an old Netgear wireless router (switching the 2Wire gateway to modem mode), with DHCP enabled, and assigned static IP's to the Macs. Haven't had the problem since.

 

[newmacuser2006]

I actually have the DHCP Server on with static IPs assigned to all devices. Thing is, there's normally only 2 devices on at a time, occasionally 3. When the iMac connection has dropped there hasn't been anything else connected.

Does it sound more like a router or a Mac issue? I don't have a spare modem to test this out on and if I was to go down the path of getting another router, I've been told to get an Airport Express for just the Mac to connect to.

 

[Tomorrow]

I actually have the DHCP Server on with static IPs assigned to all devices. Thing is, there's normally only 2 devices on at a time, occasionally 3.

Sounds counter-intuitive, but it's not the "at a time" part that matters - what matters is whatever has been connected to the router but isn't anymore. It tends to keep those IP's in memory.

Anything like an iPhone, iPad, Wii, or other device that connects intermittently, even for just a minute or two, gets assigned an IP address by the DHCP server. When that device tries to reconnect, it typically wants the same IP it had previously. The problem comes when one device (say an iPhone or other wifi-enabled phone) connects, gets an IP, then disappears from the network; and then another device (say a different phone, or a new device altogether) tries to connect using that "old" device's IP. It doesn't work well when a Mac is in that position.

If every single device is using a static IP, you might try disabling DHCP on your router, since you aren't using it.