Packets sent out by the iBook, or by the cable modem?

It sounds as if the problem with this entire situation does focus on the base station. Thus, I am hoping that it is a hardware problem which would thus be solved by the new base station coming within the next day or two.

Well, let me tell you what I've done in the past and you tell me if this answers whatever question that would pose. To re-upload the firmware, I have removed the Ethernet cable from the cable modem, left the other end plugged into the WAN port on the AirPort, and plugged the other end into the Ethernet port on my iBook. I am able to get a connection to the base station, although, since I disconnected it from the cable modem, it is of course disconnected from the Internet at that point ...

from the iBook. You can ping the basestation but you can't seem to get past that.
First of all, I would have used the LAN port for updating the basestation firmware, not the WAN port.

But anyway, what I was aksing about is not answered by what you have done. I suggest that you connect your iBook by Ethernet to the basestation (LAN port) and turn off Airport on your iBook. Then the Airport (radio) capabilities of the basestation will not be relevant. You will be using the basestation merely as a router. So try using this setup and see if you experience the problem.

By the way, you started this thread by saying that the problem occurs when you don't use the iBook for a while - but I would guess that the problem would occur after a certain number of hours whether or not you use the iBook. I.e. my guess is that it is just a matter of time, not usage.

Okay, that makes sense. But I imagine in that case, the problem would still lie with the base station.

I'm not 100% sure which port I used. I want to say WAN, but I very well may have made LAN.

Forgive the confusion, but in that case, what would be gained using the base station as a router? If I was going to a wired connection as I was pre-AirPort, wouldn't I just want to hook it up directly from the iBook to the cable modem? Would something diagnostic be gained by doing so?

I've discovered that is indeed the case, although I wouldn't have known it except on a weekend (where I'm using the laptop for a more prolonged period of time). The connection does peter out simply as a function of time, not of usage.

As a corollary note, I'm becoming more suspicious that this is a hardware failure, because the disconnections seem to be coming more frequently. It's 3:31 pm, for example, and I just experienced it going "down" again, and I think I experienced one previously no less than an hour to an hour and a half ago. Before, they had been coming more like three or fours apart. The fact that the intervals are decreasing seems to me to possibly be indicative of a hardware problem ...

Hayne, it just occurred to me ... I actually don't have the equipment to follow that last suggestion of yours. I don't have two Ethernet cables. So to the cable modem plugged into the base station via the WAN port, and then the base station plugged into the iBook through the LAN port, would require two Ethernet cables, which I don't have ... I'd have to go out and buy one. I'd prefer not to, since I don't know the expense involved and I have new hardware coming from Apple which might solve the problem.

Ethernet cables are relatively cheap - much less than a dollar per foot. It is a good idea to have an extra on hand in any case since cables can go bad (e.g. if you roll a chair over it) and damage to a cable can result in intermittent problems or just lowered bandwidth. So it is always nice to have an extra that you can try swapping with.

By the way, the diagnostic advantage of connecting your iBook via Ethernet to the basestation is that we cut out all questions about wireless transmission. It seems to me that the problem is with the basestations router capabilities and this would be a way to ensure that the problem still existed even if we take wireless out of the equation.

diagnostic tool
 

Not directly related to your problem, but might give some useful info, is a diagnostic tool (a Java applet) available at:
http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123/

Not a bad idea; I'll have to remember to pick one up one of these days soon.

Okay, I now see how it would be of value and get your point. I'll probably pass this one time, however. Apple is sending out a new base station and taking back the old one, since it is still under warranty, so I'll think I'll pass on buying the cable ... since the purpose of that would be to specifically diagnose what within the hardware is wrong, when that'll be Apple's problem in a few days. ;-)

At least, that's assuming that the hardware is at fault, which I sincerely hope (and strongly suspect) it is! :-)

Thanks for the link!

lights
 

Okay - be sure to let us know if the new basestation fixes the problem. I.e. give us the news - good or bad.

Another thing to amuse yourself with in the meantime:
The lights on the basestation indicate when there is traffic (packets) on the LAN and on the WAN. (The third light just means it has power.) You could watch the lights to see if you are getting any WAN activity when you do things like pinging google. (I mean of course when you are in the 'Net-less' state.)

Similarly you could look at the lights (if any) on your modem.

Re: lights
 

Will do. At the very least, having the base station replaced will give me ammunition in other locales, if it isn't the fix. In other words, I can tell my ISP, "Look, this is a brand new base station, and I'm still having the same problem. The problem has to be with your cable modem (or your IP address, or your lease, or whatever)."

But I think so far the signs are pretty strong that the base station is the fault point.

Something to be on the lookout, for sure. I'll keep an eye out for it!

For reference's sake, when it's active, my lights appear to be left: dark; middle: solid white; right: white blinking.

Re: lights
 

I'm not handy to the manual right now but the meaning of the lights (there is more than jsy one & off - they have patterns when you are updating the firmware etc) is explained in the Airport basestation manual.

Re: Re: lights
 

Embarrassingly, I appear to have lost it ...

Okay, the new AirPort base station is here and set up. All appears to be working, and I've not experienced the disconnections I have in the past, although not much time has passed. The real test will be when I wake up tomorrow morning, whether I find it connected or not ...

One thing I am curious about is that ping is just flat not working, neither natively nor in Network Utility. However, things like dnstracer and whois are working ... ping is just the lone non-cooperating gunman.

Of course, a quick jaunt over to my ISP's status webpage indicates that Chicago cable modems were experiencing problems this afternoon. They say the problems are resolved, but perhaps I should just hang on a day or two.

Could be that your ISP is blocking pings because of all the Nachi infected machines out there. I've gotten 1516 pings denied by my firewall in 6 days and my machine is only on for 4 or 5 hours a day.

Good point. Especially given that tons of other stuff is working, i.e., traceroute, etc.

my two cents...
 

Hey there,

Great to see the fantastic level of support here! I can't match Hayne or Yellow in experience, but just wanted to offer the following:

I've had exactly the same problem; strange disconnection at seemingly random intervals using an iBook with Airport card, a wireless access point and a firewall router.

In this case, I was using a Netgear access point; not an Airport base station, but I should imagine that it makes little difference.

After about a month of battling with it and countless phone calls between myself and my ISP, I simply changed the Network settings on my iBook from "Using DHCP" to "Using DHCP with manual IP address".

I then entered an IP address that was high enough up not to be assigned to any of the Windows boxes on my network that request auto IPs through DHCP. (In this case 192.168.0.50)

I haven't been mysteriously disconnected since.

The solution came to me when I realised that the communication problem was between the iBook and the wireless access point, and not between the access point/cable modem and my ISPs servers. I couldn't access any shares on the local network when I was "disconnected". Similarly though, I could seemingly obtain IPs from DNS hosts, like google.com; just as you mention. On trying a site that I would never have visited I found that these IP addresses must have been cached, as was suggested here.

Sorry for the lack of technical mumbo jumbo, and the presence of waffle; just offering my round-about solution. I really hope the new basestation solves it for you...

Thanks for the thoughts, webmonkey ...

As for the new base station, it looks like this solved the problem. When I turned on my computer this morning, Internet access was up. So I'm going to go ahead and consider this problem solved, knock on wood!

There's this odd inability to ping, but I tend to think that might have been an external imposition based no some of the virii going around ... I'm not too concerned given that things like dnstracer and traceroute seem to be functioning fine from the command line.

I am very grateful to everyone here for their help, most especially hayne!

Just a final note to say that so far, the new base station is not exhibiting the same problems the other one was, and, knock on wood and God willing, it won't do so in the future.

My sincere thanks to everyone who helped me out in this thread ...