Airport Problem: self-assigned IP address?
 

(We just power-cycled the Airport Base Station, although that might be inconvenient in some situations). Has anyone tried the suggestion(s) in http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106879 from way long ago?

Bill

My bizarre fix...
 

I've been having the same problem on and off and it's been driving me nuts...

BUT I FIXED IT...!

My fix makes NO sense at all though.
I have two external drives, a recent Lacie (firewire) and a new Seagate (USB)
if they're both plugged in, my airport goes off air!

If I unplug them, and restart the MacBook Pro, then all is fine and dandy!

Can someone explain THAT one!??

cheers,
matt
:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:

Same story, late onset
 

My G4 Powerbook did not have this problem, not even once, while I was running 10.3. I've had periodic connection issues with our Netgear router, but since those took the G4 tower connected via Ethernet out as well, I assume those were real router probs, not wireless. I've roamed onto wireless connections in many places over the US, and also in Europe and Australia.

Since I installed 10.4 I've suddenly had this problem when trying to roam onto wireless networks in several different places. However, the Powerbook still recognizes my own wireless router, and has sniffed out at least one wireless router on the road.

This afternoon I fired up the PBook in Albuquerque airport, which has free WiFi. Up popped the box telling me that none of my preferred networks were available, but would I like to join this network called "sunport" (or whatever). I said yes, and the the little Airport icon shows full-strength. But I can't get a browser to go to any website, even the obvious ones like Yahoo. Internet Connect says I'm connected to "sunport". In system perferences I get the same information, that I'm connected to the internet via wireless network "sunport". Except that functionally I'm not; I can't get to any internet site.

So what did I break by installing Tiger? This is most frustrating..

I had a similar problem, and it happened after a set of changes I'd made to the server. This are what helped (of course after trying all kind of things): reset PRAM (don't know why?), and removed all my Locations (I had setup a 4-5 different configuration/locations) and started with automatic again. and that did it!

Solved
 

The solution for me was to lower encryption to 64 bit instead of 128

Here I was going to read the news before I went to bed and ended up spending the next hour trying to get wireless working. I'd never had a problem before that rebooting the router wouldn't solve, but something must have happened in the last week since I'd tried to go wireless (haven't been taking the Mac Book Pro mobile lately). I'm guessing there was an Airport update that could have messed things up, but I also did just upgrade my mini, which is on the same network, from Panther to Tiger, so who knows if that decided to steal some settings from the MBP.

Flipping it back to 128 caused it to die again, too. Ridiculous since I've been running that same router with various wireless Macs and PCs at 128 for the last 3 years, including having run it with this laptop for the last 4 months.

Hope you can all help me PLEASE! I have a new MacBook Pro (bought in January this year) running 10.4.9. All was well for ages. Worked like a dream and then suddenly it had trouble getting conneced to the internet. The connection showed up as working fine but pages wouldn't load in Safari and if I look at the network status it says "airport has a self-assigned IP address and may not be able to connect to the internet". The same thing happens if I switch off the aiport and plug into an ethernet cable (which previously worked fine).

What is going on? Please help. I switched to Mac from PC and was so happy and now I just wish I had stayed with a pc.......

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106879

this worked for me...

Airport Problem: Self assigned IP address?
 

With both wireless and ethernet down and Network PrefPane saying DHCP server (AirPort base station) is self assigning IP addresses. I tried all the suggested fixes including Apple’s DHCP lease renewal (106879) advisory to no avail.

Here is what worked for me with the following configuration: MacBook Pro, Airport Extreme (7.3.1), 4 computers connected via D-Link Gigabit switch to the Airport Extreme Base station. Latest OS on all. I did the following:

Open Airport Utility (in Utility folder) > click Internet > select Internet Connection > then under Connection Sharing>scroll down to “Share a public IP address” > Press Update and there you go. I didn’t even have to restart the modem, base station or the switch. All 4 computers were once again on line.

Dave

Craig Arko's suggestion from 11-17-2004 (almost four years ago!) on page 2 has just solved my problem.

This was my situation: Windows XP Home Edition SP2 desktop was the main computer, hooked to a Linksys Wireless-G WRT54G v5 router (and a Comcast Motorola Surfboard SB5120 Modem). My Macbook Pro (10.4.11) could connect to the Internet on all outside networks, and could see full bars/reception from the home router, but got the "AirPort self-assigned IP address" address and a yellow dot on the Network page.

This problem was frustrating because the message suddenly appeared late last year after months of flawless operation. Then, it re-emerged another month or so later after I thought I'd fixed it by restarting the router and modem.

We'll see if this sticks, but it's very encouraging because the new blackout roughly corresponded to the March 2008 firmware update. Make sure if you have linksys that the firmware is up-to-date!

I'm having the identical problem.

I have just set up a netgear wg602 v3 router. I have two computers with me, a macbook pro 2.4 ghz and a macbook. Both bought around march - april of this year.

One connects to the wireless network fine. The other gets the self-assigned IP problem. Both have all software updates available to them.

I have attempted to change the encryption settings from WPA/WPA2 to WEP and decreasing the bit encryption from 128 to 64. The good computer always gets on and the bad computer always gets the self-assigned IP problem.

I have trashed the airport preference file in system library folder. I have reset the PRAM. The bad machine connects fine on other wireless networks within the past 24 hours. I did a factory reset on the router and updated the firmware. Still same problem.

If anyone's curious, my ISP is Cox, if that might be relevant.

Self Assigned IP address
 

After troubleshooting so many of these problems, it appears that many macs don't like the ten digit passwords that come with the all in one 2wire routers. By changing the WEP key on the router to a 26 digit combination in lieu of a ten digit combination, this usually resolves the problem.

One more suggestion (that worked). I often have this problem with wireless connections from my Macbook (10.4). What fixed it today was to open the Keychain utility and delete the entry for the wireless connection that was giving me fits. Then I got to re-enter the password and, in effect, start from scratch. In fact, it turned out that there were multiple entries for the same router which may have been aggravating the problem.

self-assigned ip solved
 

I have been struggling with this problem for a couple of days and it was driving me crazy. I have tried all of the solutions above-mentioned with no success.

The problem came across after trying to find a solution to another problem I had with my Time capsule: an IP conflict which made me drop the connection every 10-15 seconds. After I solved it (it turned out to be because of the router configured wong - my dsl company (tele2) gave me the wrong parameters by phone, I checked on their web site and got the right ones!!!!!)

This is what worked for me: after deleting the plist file, restting pram deleting the keychain with no success, I chose to do a assisted configuration of the interet (system pref - network - assist me... - assistant...). I previously had location set to automatic and created a new one with the "assist me..." feature and this solved it immediately, I finally got a correct IP address assigned again!!!

I hope that this helps someone else - this is my first post, I thought that it was about time I could help someone else after getting so much from this site!

I FOUND A SOLUTION THAT WORKS!!!! First a little back story.

Got my Mac Blackbook and the wi-fi worked great from my Linksys wrt54g2 router. Moved to Germany and into an apartment and my connection issues started happening. My MB would connect once then loose connection quickly and would only recover connection if i either closed and re-opened my screen, or re-connected to my network... then it would drop again before my next page turn.

After multiple days of research I read about SOOOO many others having this issue and the fact the Apple pretty much refused to acknowledge the issue. It seemed that sometime near the OX 10.4.2 update the airport driver got fubar'd leaving all those with Intel based macs wi-fi connects messed up.

Some of the solutions i read about and tried had to do with changing my WEP connection to WPA. This did not work, but i left it as WPA as my research finds it a more secure connection. I also read about and tried setting my Wireless RTA Threshold in my router to 256 from the *2432 default. This as well did not work, though I have left it at this setting as it seems to be the best value for MAC's connecting over wi-fi. This is not true for PC's though so be careful.

More research, more research, o' my brain hurts and my patience is wearing..... then BINGO!!! I found a thread about connection issues that pertained to MB's not connecting to local-network printers. The poster mentioned that MAC's seem to have a hard time connecting to networks that had more than one wi-fi network present. This is my issue i thought. I have 8 in my available connections now. In my old home I had just mine. So i followed the directions suggested and it has now been 2 weeks of 100% perfect wi-fi connections.

Below is the excerpt from this page, http://www.macintouch.com/readerrepo...topic2005.html (Do a find for “Little Snitch”). The program the writer talks about is called Little Snitch found here, http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html. It's a $29 dollar program, but in my mind its well worth it to make my $1500 Blackbook work!

This may not be the Apple Fix we have been waiting for them, but its completely working for me.

note . . . i know very, very little about networking but know how to trouble shoot and just solved this problem on two of my macs. people in this thread had luck with changing their router settings so i tweaked some of my router settings. that did the trick. here's the hardware involved:

comp 1 - Mac mini PowerPC
comp 2 - MacBook Intel Core Duo2
router - D-Link DI-524
cable modem - Motorola SB5120
isp - timer warner cable

my previous router settings:

auto select channel
open system authentication
64bit WEP

new router settings:

channel 6 (a static channel)
shared key authentication
128bit WEP (<- after this change my macs started connecting)

now both macs connect fine. i've tried multiple restarts and sleep inductions on both machines and both are now consistently connecting. hope this helps some1.

btw thanks 2 all 4 making this a great forum

FYI, just this week Apple put out an Airport update specific to Intel based Mac's that covers issues of connections in locations with more than one wi-fi signal. FINA*UCKENLY!!!

@dubcee - glad you're up and connected.. maybe it was the update though?? your router settings are pretty standard.

i updated profusely on both macs to no avail. after changing the router settings then things connected. mayb a combination of the update and slapping the router around?

I must say, this is one impressively old thread!

I'm experiencing a similar issue when connecting my G4 iBook to the WiFi at the hotel I often stay at. My laptop works fine at home, and in the office, but occasionally gives me a self assigned IP address on this total open network.

Like others I thought I'd got it working be switching the wireless on and off, or assigning a fixed IP and flipping it back to DHCP. But the solutions do not work consistently.

Anyway, I noticed the following errors were appearing in my system.log during each connection attempt. Do they mean anything to anyone?

Nov 5 00:05:09 iBook airportd[128]: Error: process_command_dict() failed
Nov 5 00:05:10 iBook airportd[128]: Error: Apple80211Associate() failed -6
Nov 5 00:05:10 iBook SystemUIServer[102]: Error: airportd MIG failed = 5 ((os/kern) failure) (port = 48723)

Cheers,
Hugh

I just had this same problem and got an immediate solution from a netgear support forum.

I have a Macbook running 10.5.5, connecting wirelessly to a Netgear router.

In Network preferences, with AirPort selected, under Advanced settings, TCP/IP tab:

1. I changed 'Configure IPv4' from 'Using DHCP' to 'Manually'

2. Entered IP address: IP 192.168.1.200
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Router: 192.168.1.1
(You may have to tweak these settings to match your network. Check your current router configuration.)

3. In the DNS tab, I added 2 DNS servers:
4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2

Cleared my problem up immediately. Hope this helps.

I think I've fixed mine now.

I deleted the Airport service from the Networking section of System Preferences, and then added it back. It worked last time I was staying at my hotel with the troublesome Wireless.