router issues
 

I have switched from a netgear router to a linksys because, although the netgear performed it's job connecting me through my verizon modem to the internet, I was unable to send out any mail (using Entourage). I have a relatively new imac OS 10.2. as well as a pc (windows 98) and laptop (windows xp), that all need to be connected. I was advised to purchase the linksys based on its reputation and the fact that Verizon is using/selling them was another source of confidence. However, although my Entourage now works fine, I lose my internet connection on all computers daily. I have checked all configurations and by trial and error am sure that the modem is not the problem. I can restart my internet connection by powering down and powering up all my equipment but that's ridiculous. Anyway, it just happens again hours later, particularly when the computers are idle for an extended period. I have even downloaded the latest firmware for the router. I truly have no clue as to what the problem is. Neither does Linksys, although they admit to offering little if no support to Mac users.

router problem, not a Mac problem
 

Why is their lack of Mac support relevant? You report a loss of internet connection on all your computers, not just your Mac.

Anyway, let's try to get more info and maybe we can see what the problem is.
What does it say for IP address in your Mac's Network Preferences panel when you experience the problem?

Can you access the router's configuration page when you have the problem?

Believe it or not, the answer depends on the incident. That is to say, that what shows up as the IP varies. Last time it went down, it kept showing up with a "self-assigned" number. And to answer the other question, I sometimes can and often times cannot access the router setup page when the connection goes. Since I am new to routers and configuring for them, I relied on tech support to help me go through all the settings to try and make the necessary changes, if any, to restore service. Once they did that, we were able to access the setup page and check those settings a well. The reason I mentioned the lack of Mac support is because I was most interested in bringing the Mac back online and securing the internet connection for that computer. My desktop pc is running Windows 98 which is falling apart and needs to be updated to a better os soon.

You know, I had a completely different problem on another Linksys router where I'd lose wireless connectivity on my Mac. PC's were fine. I fixed it by upgrading the firmware on the router. (the firmware is basically the "operating system" of the router) If tech support didn't have you do that, either call them back and make them help you with it or look up the instructions on the website. It's pretty straightforward.

I think with Linksys routers you have to upgrade using a Windows machine, but that won't be a problem for you.

About the "self-assigned" address. When you turn your computer on, it sends out a signal, saying "hey! I'm here! tell me how to connect to the internet!". The router is supposed to respond with a "Alrighty, here's information about the network". If that exchange doesn't happen, then after a while, your computer gets tired of waiting and "self-assigns" itself a network ID. Why it does this is a little complicated to explain, but the gist of it is a "self-assigned" address is a Bad Thing, because it means your computer can't find your router and therefore the internet.

Hrm. I hope that's reasonably clear.

more info next time it happens
 

Okay, so next time you have the problem, let us know what the exact symptoms are.
Tell us if you can access the router's config page from each of your 3 machines.

Are you using a local firewall on the Mac & PC? Do both machines drop off the network at the same time?

Lost service again! I could not access the linksys setup page while the internet connection was lost. However, once again, I powered everything down and then back up and "everyone" resumed talking to each other. By the way, I had already downloaded the most current firmware. Once I had the connection back up, I went to my startup page and all the settings appeared normal.

details needed
 

How are you accessing the router's config page?
Do you type in a URL with the router's IP address?
What is that URL?
What fails when you do this? I presume the browser says it cannot locate the page - is that right?

There are usually status lights on your router. What do the status lights looks like when it is working correectly and when it is not?

And from the sound of it, it is your router that is misbehaving, so you probably only need to power cycle the router - not all your machines.

Yes. I access the router's page by typing in the IP address: 192.168.2.1 And yes, the browser cannnot locate it when I lose my connection. The routers lights do not change. However, this router only shows (lights up) Power, which ports are being used; Wireless-B; and Internet. As I said, they remain lit until I power down. I've suggested to Linksys tech support that the problem lies with the router which they of course denied. They say the proof is that it works when we check all the settings etc. Is it time to return the router? I believe it is under the 30 return limit so far. Do you have a router you'd recommend?

wireless?
 

Is your Mac (and PCs) connected to the router via an Ethernet cable or via wireless networking?

If you are using wireless, try connecting with Ethernet.

And tell us the results of doing the foillowing:

1) Open a Terminal window. (Terminal is under Applications/Utilities)

2) Type in the following and press Return:

ping 192.168.2.1

3) Copy and paste the results back here.

I have a D-Link 604 which ran me $30 after a ten dollar mail in rebate. It has 4 ports and does a fine job of handling my small home LAN serving DHCP from my G4 867. All my ports on all three of my computers are listed as "Stealth" from the Shields Up website.

I am also a verizon customer because they are the only choice for broadband where I live. Are you on verizon-dsl? If not, and you are on a dial-up, then you don't have a supposed 24/7 connection and that is quite different. Dropped connections are common to dial-up service.

There are support forums for the Linksys and most other popular brands of routers on dslreports.com. Most of the users are windoze but you'll still get help on most router issues there. There are some Mac users.

For general specs on routers and networking, check practicallynetworked.com. Once you have all the correct settings and firmware, you should rarely ever have a problem thereafter.

The Pc and Mac are hard-wired to the router. The laptop pc has a wireless card. The results of typing the linksys IP (192.168.2.1)into the terminal window:
command not found.

Did you forget to type "ping" before the IP address?

Disregard last message. Forgot the ping command. New result: they're talking:
64 bytes from 192.168.2.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=150 time=0.756 ms

Now can you launch your favorite browser on the gateway box, I assume that's your Mac, and enter the IP into the address field to bring up your router configuration?

I never have a problem bringing up the router setup page when I'm connected. Just when the internet connection is lost.

Yes, I am aware of that. But now while you have it up, you can verify the correct settings.

There's a lot of info you haven't provided yet. We've asked the questions and are still waiting for the answers, ie. dial-up or dsl?, ethernet cables?, exact message from dropped connection?, software firewall being used?, etc...

Sorry. I thought I had covered all that. I have a verizon dsl connection. Everything is hooked up using fairly new ethernet cables. The only firewall I have (unless there is one built into the Verizon modem) is the one in the linksys router. When the connection drops, the message is always "server cannot be found" on my next attempt to open a web page or send mail. Same thing when I return to the computer after it's been idle and the connection has been lost. Understand this, the connection doesn't always disappear when the computers are idle. It sometimes occurs while I'm actively using it. That's what makes this so difficult to figure out. The circumstances are never quite the same. Why would everything be "talking" and then stop hours later?

more info needed
 

Okay, I saw that you got the 'ping' working. But you didn't make it clear whether this was done at a time when you were having connection problems or not.
We are really only interested in doing this when your connection is not working. We want to find out what is working and what is not.

It might be useful to do these commands when all is working just so you can see what the "normal" situation is like. But please report the results when things are not working.

Another thing to try (in Terminal) if the 'ping' shows basic connectivity: (copy and paste results here)

curl -v 192.168.2.1

And I assume you have your Mac set to use DHCP (in Network Prefs)?

Yes, yes and yes. Mac is set to DHCP and I will send next message including ping results next time connectivity is dropped and I am forced to reconnect by powering down and up. I tried pinging when I had the tech suport assistant from linksys on the phone line. The results were what you would expect if there were no connection. But I will post them the next time it's dropped. Thanks for the advice so far.

If this never happened before you got the Linksys and it happens to both Mac & PC simultaneously, then 99% likely that it's the Linksys router.

Yeah, this definately sounds like a wonky router. Did you try the firmware upgrade thing? That fixes a lot of problems sometimes.

He did update the router, yes.

Firmware is loaded. But I agree, it appears to be a router issue. It's just so bothersome because the netgear router that I replaced with this linkys wouldn't send my email out. "Where does one go from here?"

Sorry guys, I didn't catch that.

Do you still have the Netgear around? Perhaps it might be easier to troubleshoot THAT. :)

I posted the netgear problem a while back. It was worse because with the netgear there was NO resolution to the problem. At least with the linksys, the connectivuty comes back when I power down and back up. The Netgear WOULD NOT send out my email from the mac. Someone suggested it was packet size etc. since the router always tacks on a few more "letters" to the pack and macs are send to 1500. However, changing the mtu size on the mac gets you into the whole admin thing and some of the replies in this forum said it might be a little risky. Is this making any sense?

I don't think there would be any problem in trying a different MTU. You can always change it back if it doesn't work out. My verizon-dsl is set at 1500 and works fine. I've never heard of not being able to send email being a router issue.

Perhaps you were blocking the POP/IMAP/whatever port outbound without knowing it.

precision
 

Ah - but here you are (I guess) telling us you had neglected to tell us before - that you can't 'ping' the router when you have "no connection". Is that true?

Part of the problem here is a lack of precision. There are many things that might cause you to have "no connection". We are trying to determine which things work and which do not.

True. Can't get any ping results when the connection fails. Every time I test the modem (by making a direct connection to the computer) it seems to be fine. But the router works well most of the time, too. It's just this dropping the connection that has me totally frazzled.

Okay - but we still need to see the results of 'ping' next time your connection fails. The exact error message etc might give us a clue. And try the 'ping' from each of your machines - I think you can do 'ping' from a DOS window on a Windows machine.

And let's leave the modem out of the discussion fo rthe moment. Your problem seems to be with the router. If you can't ping the router then the modem is irrelevant.

It sounds to me like either a bad router or misconfigured router. this sounds like a DCHP lease issue. a way to test this would be to power up the router, power up one computer, wait half an hour, power up another, wait again, power up another and then wait and see when they lose connection.

yes??

DHCP issues
 

That does sound like a good way to test for DHCP lease issues. But I would also like to know if the router config page says what the DHCP lease time is.

And I'm not sure, but I think you should still be able to ping the router even if you have a self-assigned IP address. But maybe the router is configured to refuse pings form outside of its 192.168.xxx.xxx network.

Wouldn't the typical default DHCP lease time be a week unless configured otherwise? It may be near the end of that period but the router config should tell that.

It might also be good to just test one internet connection to the gateway machine and leave the other two pc's off the router. If that's solid, then add another computer and test, etc...

it is not that the router is refusing pings from outside the network, it is that of you don't have an ip address on the same subnet as the router, then there is no way to route pings to the router. as far as DHCP lease times go, they very from manufacturer to manufacturer. for example, the airport extreme base station has you set a lease period of minutes, hours, or days. mine is currently set for 4 days. my thoughts on the issue were that when the perope was up, the router was not re-leasing the address, maybe because of misconfiguration, but most likely because something is wrong with the router. i think that DCHP lease issues are at the bottom of the list of things that go wrong with setting up home/office routers.

kfaulhaber, what you say makes good sense to me. I have a hunch you are right that his router is defective. But if he doesn't come back to the thread and continue the test that hayne has started him on, we'll never know.

Going back to his situation with the Netgear router, have you ever heard of such a router not being able to send email over a large carrier like verizon? It seems to me that there is something else going on there with that and that he should probably just get that remedied and then send back the linksys for a refund.

i have never heard of a router blocking the sending of mail without specifically blocking port 25, especially a home/office router. come to think of it, i am not aware of any home/office router that blocks any outgoing connections since any "firewall" effects are just a side effect of NAT. if he could send mail with his computer connected directly to the dsl modem, i don't see how it would stop working with the router added to the mix. the only mac-specific issues that arise with routers is whether they support appletalk. but since i have never used a linksys router or verizon DSL there may very well be a valid reason.

Unfortunately, I don't think he ever established on this thread whether or not he was able to send email while directly connected to his modem and no router.

Also, looking back at his first post, I see that Entourage was a part of the picture which could have been where the problem of not being able to send was coming from. I would suspect that over a router issue.

Hrm. Don't a lot of major ISPs block access to any SMTP servers besides their own? I believe Earthlink, at least, does this. Perhaps Verizon was doing that, too. Anyways, thatch is right, we'll have to wait for more news. :)

Yes, that's true of verizon too. But I think LonHS was just trying to send mail from Entourage through his Netgear router from his Mac and it's verizon account, which should have worked as far as I know.

is this a wireless router ?? from what i can gather it is. if so do you have a cordless phone? sometimes if you have a cordless phone that is operating on the 2.4ghz band it interupts the signal of the wireless station. ( causing a loss in connectivity to wireless clients) check your phone to see if its 2.4ghz if it is try boasting your interface robustness.

Looking back at the whole thread from the start, I think he's been on hard wired routers connected with ethernet cables.

i thought i saw the word wireless somewhere in there. if not sorry.

stupid me

wonstitel

Whoops! You were right. One pc laptop has a wireless card.

yeah i jsut found this

The routers lights do not change. However, this router only shows (lights up) Power, which ports are being used; Wireless-B; and Internet.

i was just skimming so i wasnt sure

Yup, and there was this from page 1 early on:

"The Pc and Mac are hard-wired to the router. The laptop pc has a wireless card..."

Yes, many ISP's block outgoing mail to any but their own SMTP servers. Mine is one of them, however, as stated before, the question was wheather the router was blocking outgoing mail. Also, any wireless signal can be distrupted, but wouldn't cause a permanent loss of connectivity. Of course, until the original poster returns, we are just talking amongst ourselves.

To answer: The email situation was bizarre. Entourage worked perfectly well when the Mac was directly connected to the modem. When using the Mac and the PC and the netgear router I could receive but not send on the Mac but I could send and receive on the PC. I even contacted Microsoft since both the Entourage and Outlook programs that I was using were Microsoft products. Netgear support technicians who said there should be no difference between sending from a PC or a Mac and could not help me resolve the issue. At the time, both the PC and the Mac were wired to the router via ethernet cable (as they are now). My final resolution was to purchase the Linksys which does allow the proper flow of email through both computers.

At the moment, I am exploring the possibility that the PC might be responsible for the current problem (interruption of internet connection). I was unable to take the time to try and ping the router when it went down yesterday because I was in the midst of some important work. But I took your advice and just powered down the router instead of all the equipment and it worked! The PC is running an old windows 98 with an update but now may need to be updated to XP. The operating system seems to be "falling apart." It's got some strange bugs like not being able to shut itself down. I am waiting to see if I lose my connection while the PC is off and just the laptop and Mac are running off the router.

the strange bug might be a hack. someone could have got you and changed some stuff in your registry. do you have wep enabled on your wireless connection? have you changed the default password on your router?

Interesting. I will check those settings. Thanks for the heads up.

Latest Information: I am not wep enabled; the default settings were all changed. The last time I attempted to ping the router when the connection was dropped it did not answer. I will try the procedure again. So far, I still lose my connection daily.

I never saw if you loose both machines at the same time or not.

Yes, I actually lose all three; both desktops (ethernet cables) and the laptop (wireless card). I was powering all the equipment down and back up to reestablish the connection. Now I just have to power down the router and when I power it up it, I'm reconnected. I'm not sure if that's significant here.

So it's the router that's dying. I think that router it busted, no matter what Linksys techs say. Just to keep them from asking you the same question, try removing a machine from your network (turning it off will work) to see if one of them is causing the router to hiccup and take the other 2 computers with it. Rotate until you been thru all the possibilites. Tedious? Yes? Eliminating possibilities? Yes.

I just read through this whole long string of posts here. I can give a testimonial here. I have and use a Linksys router. It works great. Linksys just also got bought out by cisco, and cisco is going to implement some of their technologies into consumer linksys routers. Now, however, this is my second Linksys router. Here is how my network at home is set up.

4 xp boxes
2 ibooks (wireless)
1 G4 desktop
1 Linux box
Linksys router crossed over to a D-Link 8 port switch
Belkin wireless access point.

Now on my first router everything worked fine for about oh I would say 3 to 5 weeks. Then I started losing connections somewhat similar to you. One day I lost connection, but every machine hooked into my extra switch worked fine, and every machine that was in the routers switch did not. Long story short I exchanged the router and it all works great now. Linksys routers are great when they work I guess. Especially since you cannot go into 192.168.2.1 (which by default is the routers ip on all linksys routers) tells me its a problem with the router. I would agree with yellow on this, and thought I would share my similar experience.

Um, I thought 192.168.1.1 was the default IP for LinkSys routers...at least it is for mine.

I think 192.168.2.x is Macs with "Internet Sharing" turned on?

hmm okay I stand corrected I have 3 linksys routers and all are 192.168.2 .1. (The linksys rep came through a few years ago and dumped like 25 of them off for us, thats how I got 3)

Now that I am using the Mac more than the PC desktop, I have the PC off for part of the day. However, I have noticed that when I power it up, I lose my internet connection. This could be just coincidence because many of those times, I've been away from both computers which means they've been idle long enough for me to lose the connectionn the way I had before. I guess I just have to figure out a way to determine whether it's a faulty router or something between the PC and the router or both. By the way, my default Linksys IP was 192.168.1.1 but the linksys tech assistant had me change it during one of the calls I made regarding this problem.

I have Linksys and Multi OS Systems running
 

I have Linksys and Multi OS Systems running: Just Fine.

It must be somthing with the Router. I never loose tough with it.

My Systems never loose touch with the router. Loosing touch with the ISP is another story. That happens periodically, but is beside the point here.

The Default settings in Linksys set no limitations on your continued connectiivty to the router.

****** Exchange the router. If you live near a Radio Trash or Best Buy or another store that offers a money back you could buy/borrow one from them if yours came via Mail Order....

------------------------------
If you bought from Amazon and many other mail order vendors they offer Advance Exchange. You then tell them the router is no Good. They send you a replacement. You send back the original they pay for all shipping.

-----------------

One last note once you have a Stable Rig, and this might be part of your Problem.

In fact you could test for it by Disconeecting from the Internnet and waiting for a failure to communicate with youu router (unplug router from DSL, Yes you will have no Internet access and wait for a failure to communicate with the router).

You may be coming under Wired or Wireless Attack. You eventually want to change your password from admin to somthing else. You want to change your router IP to somthing other then 192.168.1.1 e.g. 192.40.40.1. You want to turn of broadcast of your sites wireless name, you want to change the name of enterging you network to somthing other then linksys, etc.

Sorry for the "me too" post. but i've had the same problems with 2 Linksys routers. I exchanged the first one, thinking the problem was with the router, but the second router has the same problems. There are 3 computers on the network, 2 running OS X, one running OS 9, and they all drop connection with the router on at least a daily basis. Looks like its time to switch companies. It only seems to happen with the wireless routers however. When i had just a standard 5 port Linksys router, we never had any problems.

Just to update all you friendly folk that tried to help me: after trying everything and anything I took one last suggestion and exchanged the router with linksys. The new one is working fine. Thanks for your help.:)

firmware?
 

Have you tried to find a firmware update for the router? I had a similar problem with 2 netgear boxes which were fixed instantly with a new firmware update. A simplistic answer but sometimes they work the best.
Dave

Thanks. Firmware updating was one of the many, many suggestions that I tried. But to no avail. Since I exchanged routers with linksys, however, I no longer lose my internet connection, either on the wireless or wired computers.

good stuff
 

glad to hear all is well...
Dave