Airport problems with Tiger
 

Ever since installing Tiger, I've been having 2 problems with my Airport network. First, my 12" PB 867MHz will no longer autoconnect to my Airport Extreme Base Station. I have to do it manually. The strange thing here is that in the Network.prefpane settings on the Airport tab for the Airport card, it's set to "By default, join a specific network," but the text box for the network always defaults to "Apple Network f170b6," which isn't the name of my Airport network. Not only that, but the network password for my network isn't showing up in my Keychains, even though I can manually connect to the network w/o entering a password.
The other problem I'm having is that my wireless signal has gone WAY down (at least according to the meter in the menu bar, and empirical experience seem to suggest that it's been accurate). I had to turn my base stations multicast rate down to 12 from 24 just to maintain decent signal strength.
Anyone else experiencing this with Tiger?

Try reconfiguring correct network settings in a fresh user account.

If that doesn't work out, get back to us with all the gory details, such as the firmware version of the base station etc...

i'm having the same issues with my 12" 867mhz PB. on mine the problem is not local to the airport card; it seems to be a general issue with DHCP. neither my lan nor my wifi will connect to either my router or directly to the cable modem. if i put in my router manually, however, it'll work just fine.

if the computer is trying to connect to the router via DHCP (wifi or lan), it causes the router to continually reset itself; very awkward.

I have the exact same issue with my 12" 1Ghz Powerbook. I have to manually select the wireless connection from the airport signal pulldown menu at the top. I have a Linksys base station.

I don't have this issue with my iMac on 10.3.9, and I didn't have it on my Powerbook prior to upgrading to 10.4. Network has not changed at all.

I'd like to second voldenuit's suggestion and add one. In the past some OS upgrades have caused similar problems for people. Messing with the network preferences has been known to help: turning on IPv6 or DHCP, turning off IPv6 or DHCP, etc. My variation on this is to delete the location in the network system preferences, then set up a new one with a different name and see if that helps.

a different airport problem
 

hi,

i also have an airport problem in tiger: after several slow downs and disconnects my airport connection seems to be fine now, but the airport express station doesn't stay connected to my provider resp. it doesn't automatically reconnect when disconnected by the provider... any ideas?

thx

Same DHCP Tiger Issue here. I'm using a Dlink di-624 wireless router. PowerBook worked fine under Panther but with tiger and DHCP the router reset itself ever 5 seconds. I did a clean install too. Setting a manual IP address works fine. I'm glad I was able to get the tiger upgrade for $11 as $130 for non working DHCP is pretty bad of Apple. This is really disappointing. I'm switching back to panther. I need working DHCP on my PB.

I consider this a major bug and alot of people are not going to be to happy about it.

Signal strength on my Powerbook G4 has also gone down - haven't had the time to troubleshoot it much yet but it definitely coincided with my Tiger upgrade.

Signal Strength on my 15 1.67 PB has gone down as well. At least thats the way its reported most of the time. It's also reported as more some of the time. When I used panther, I almost never recieved all bars on the strength meter (usually one short). This is of course from the same location all the time. Now, after doing a clean install of Tiger, I get either Full strength, or only the bottom dot for th majority of the time. Very rarley get anything in between. Its definately become more intermitant as well. I seem to disconnect all the time now. :confused:

Leo

Make a new, from scratch, location setting with the Network control panel, throw away all of your previous location settings. Other suggestion, re-enter your airport security password.

According to Macworld UK's review of tiger (via tuaw.com

I sit directly above my Airport Express most of the time, and used to get 5bar reception with panther. With the powerbook in the same position I have got 1bar through to 5bars. (currently 5bars)

Seems apple may have changed it then..

There appear to be a few issues here.

Some people seem to be having issues with their connection that may not be related to their wireless connection. If possible try connecting to your modem/router via a wired link (Ethernet USB whatever) and see if the problems go away. If the problems remain then they are probably not wireless related.

Apple has issued a warning here with regard to roaming clients using Tiger, on a Airport network, who may lose their IP address. I guess a patch is on its way. The note doesn't say whether the problem is on the base station or not, but it could also be on the computer. If it is the computer then it's probable the problem exists with all wireless systems, or may be more severe for non-Airport networks. You could check with the wireless access point manufacturers to see if they are aware of any issue.

FOR AIRPORT USERS.

I had to update my Airport Express firmware to 6.1.1 after installing Tiger. Hopefully, everybody else did too. It's possible your base station became futzed during its restart. You might want to try hard resetting your base station in accordance with the relevant links shown in this Apple document, which is an Airport troubleshooting guide that could give further guidance.

If you're pretty certain the issue is with your wireless Airport network, you can enable the base station to output its error log to a client's system.log which may help with finding out what the problem is. In Airport Admin Utility, select 'Configure' -> 'Base Station Options' -> 'Logging/NTP' Set base station logging to your IP address. Select level 7 for debugging.

Just a note of something I remember having a conversation about a while back.

Ibooks and powerbooks have in the past overstated or understated the signal strength greatly depending on firmware versions. Don't go by strength on the airport meter alone it can be decieving, i am sitting right now no more then 6 1/2 feet from my airport exreme through a sheet rock wall, behind me maybe 22 feets away also through a wall is my airport express, I am showing 2 bars and it keeps dropping to one. My connection and net speed remain unchanged though. Oh and below is the old forum post about this, although i know this has more to do with the recentness of Tiger.

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=37111

Update: Well I couldn't resist. I installed Tiger again, this time an upgrade over Panther. I could use DHCP over wired Ethernet just fine but Wireless and DHCP on the PB resulted in the router getting rebooted every 5 seconds. Manual IP works just fine. Anyone found a fix for Powerbooks using DHCP over wireless and Tiger? I called Apple support and they are unaware this is an issue. I'll call back when I have my serial number and can get farther.

Just a side note even though DHCP is not workin I'm showing better signal strength with Tiger than Panther. Full four bars constantly when Panther would usually only show three from the same position.

change computer name
 

If you're getting strong signal from your access point or base station, but no IP address (or a connection that repeatedly connects and disconnects), try shortening your computers name and see if that resolves it.

Apple -> System Preferences -> Sharing
Change the computer name here to something fairly short, like "iBook", "Mac", whatever.

Restart, and reconnect to your base or access point, and see if it works or works better.

TIGER no longer uses signal strength but instead uses throughput to set the menu strength meter. To check actual signal strength use something like iStumbler. Odds are it has not really changed at all. Also check the amount of noise.

When my connection wavered or was lost I would try many things, including picking up the iBook and holding it this way and that...and realized then when held "that" way it had a much better liklihood of getting the signal.

Yesterday I rearranged my office so that my desk faces a different direction so the 'Book faces "that" way. Now my Airport connection is much more reliable.

I fixed the "manually reconnect after sleep or boot" problem by simply rerunning the Airport Setup Assistant. Now it automatically reconnects, regardless of what wireless network I'm on.

shorter name solution works!
 

awesome fix saint.duo! i also have a dlink DI-624 router. the wireless connection worked fine under jaguar. but after upgrading to tiger tonight, everytime the powerbook tried to connect via airport, the router would freak out (reboots, time changes to some new random time -- different everytime it rebooted). according to the router logs, the router sees the powerbook request a DHCP address, but no lease is handed out. no error message, just no success message logged.

after shortening the powerbook's name from "robert paulson's computer" to "shadow4", the wireless worked flawlessly. thanks again saint.duo! :D

I tried the shorening my computer name from PowerBook to PBook but still no DHCP with my DLink DI-624.

10.4.1 did fix the issue for me. DHCP is now working again with my powerbook and this router. :)

I did some testing, I have an airport and airport express. I also have a 17 inch powerbook, I brought it inand litteraly touched the airport with my laptop, and the bars stayed at 2, but i used a program and checked the strength and it was at 81, i walked away 10 feet and it stayed at about 68-72 signal. The bars stayed the same. Now since the 10.4.1 upgrade, the bars are more true, but using Istumbler as suggested the signal was more or less the same.

On another note I have noticed people stating they cannot get an address or that they are losing connection. I have had a similar issue, where the service lookupd reports a hangup and restarts, when this happens as report in my system.log I must shut off my airport card and turn it back on, no idea what is causing the hangup, since the 10.4.1 upgrade it happens less frequently but it still occurs. I am going to try the shortening of the computer name as it is a bit long at the moment DevilMayCryForMe....i will shorten it to DMC and see if that fixes the issue. Below is a bit of the system log that is reporting the error.

/var/log root# tail system.log
May 18 08:31:59 DevilMayCryForme configd[34]: posting notification com.apple.sys
tem.config.network_change
May 18 08:31:59 DevilMayCryForme lookupd[22545]: lookupd (version 365) starting
- Wed May 18 08:31:59 2005
May 18 08:32:08 DevilMayCryForme kernel[0]: AirPort: Link UP: "Base Station" -
00112404ec4d - chan 11
May 18 08:32:10 DevilMayCryForme launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/us
r/sbin/lookupd"[22545]: exited abnormally: Hangup
May 18 08:32:10 DevilMayCryForme lookupd[22638]: lookupd (version 365) starting
- Wed May 18 08:32:10 2005
May 18 08:32:10 DevilMayCryForme configd[34]: posting notification com.apple.sys
tem.config.network_change
May 18 08:32:10 DevilMayCryForme launchd: Server 147a7 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0:
"/usr/sbin/lookupd"[22638]: exited abnormally: Hangup
May 18 08:32:10 DevilMayCryForme lookupd[22639]: lookupd (version 365) starting
- Wed May 18 08:32:10 2005
May 18 08:32:12 DevilMayCryForme mDNSResponder: Repeated transitions for interfa
ce en1 (10.0.1.2); delaying packets by 5 seconds
DevilMayCryForme:/var/log root#