Why can I not load webpages even with full Airport signal
 

Recently my internet page loading has slowed down.

I have broadband via WiFi router/Airport with Firefox browser. I have cecked all my settings.

- My Airport signal level displays maximum reception and I am not using any proxy server.

- Also, sometimes the signal just fluctuates to half level then back up again in random bursts - never done this before. But note that my problem persists even at full stable signal.

- If I let the browser just keep the loading after 1 minute I get CORRECTION :
After this warning I manage to connect once again at normal loading speeds.

Any ideas?

The only reason I can think of is that we have had abnormal torrential rain in the past few days...could this be the mystery?!

each time i've hit a problem like that, its always been somthing to do with my actual connection or modem, what i had to remember was that the airport signal, can be full strength regardless of any internet connection, as you can still run your own network on it, if you see what i mean.

id maybe focus more on the modem also and double check things are ok with your services, and all the obvious of course (all plugs and cables in the right place, not disconnected, modem maybe needing reset or on stand by etc.)

try turning all the power off on airport, the mac, and the modem and restartng the whole lot.

mind you though, torrential rain....

Thanks. My connection is working fine now...but not 30 minutes ago. It comes and goes in phases. Yesterday I have unplugged/disconnected everything there is, including the wifi router and restarted, which reset my connection to normal again, but this morning had the same loading problems.

let us hope its that torrential rain...

some questions...
 

Bitzomondo, lets try to track down the problem...

when you say your "internet page loading has slowed down" - do the pages ever load eventually? Do they just load sometimes? Or do they load for a while then all the sudden no pages work? Can you give a little more detail?

and a few questions that might give hints as to what's wrong:
- have you tried connecting directly from your modem to computer to rule out your isp?
- have you connected via ethernet from the router to computer (if an ethernet port is available on the router)?
- does it happen on all computers on the network or just this particular one?
- what about different users accounts on your computer?

or perhaps it was the rain :)

OK Brian. Note that I have been using these setups since October 2005 and never had any problems, just a few odd hiccups which where then immediately solved.

Please note I have Fasterfox installed with preset selected on 'Optimized'. This never gave problems.

My test page is google.co.uk:

The page does not load but hangs with progress bar just transparent. After approx. 65 secs I get the (CORRECTION) 'The connection has timed out ' response.

Sometimes, after this 'Server busy' response' I refresh and quickly get the google page. I either can surf normally then or not.

Sometimes google.co.uk loads normally but other websites, say: news.bbc.co.uk, does not at all. Just hangs there.

Oh no. And please don't let me. My WiFi router is downstairs where the broadband socket is. You might say then: well there you go, too much distance for signal to arrive....not really. Never had problems for past 8 months.

No. It doesn't happen to the downstairs abomination of a PC where the router is directly plugged in via ethernet.
I am the only admin user account. I have not set up any other accounts.

And not be funny at all, but the rain has stopped, the sun is out and system are back to normal...but for how long?

I don't think that the menu bar level meter is very reliable - in fact I believe there was some debate in the forums a while ago as to whether the meter gives you an idea of speed not signal strength.

Keep the Airport Client Monitor (/Applications/Utilities) running and look at its output when the problem strikes again. Also look in your system.log and console.log for relevant messages at the times the problem occurs.

Moving to a direct connect with the router let's you know if the issue is with the wireless signal. I'll assume that since the directly connected PC is working fine that it is a wireless issue.
Signal interference from many sources can cause the problem your having. Just becuase it worked great for you yesterday (8 month) doesn't mean nothing has changed outside your location. Neighbors could have installed thier own wireless network or even cordless phones that would interfer.
If your signal was weak to start with then it could now be over ridden.

Get a program like iStumbler to measure the actual signal strength or your wireless. Less than 30 I find is not usuable, 30-40 is touch and go, over 40 is usable. A great signal is 60 - 70, and sitting in the same room with a wireless router I rarely see much over 70.
Also check the channel number of your wireless compared to other wireless signal's that you can pick up. They should be at least 4 channels apart. If you see a crazy amount of other wireless signals you may just have your wireless overwelmed with other signals.

This is crazy. My web page loading has gone kaboom again (i.e. "The connection has timed out") . I tried everything with no success.

I got my connection back by logging into my Router homepage from the Mac, disconnecting/re-connecting it. I got normal connection then. But I can't keep doing this everytime I have this problem. It makes no sense.

My iStumbler results (now that all is back to norm)

Plugins: Airport
Secure: Open
Mode: Managed
Network Name:WL
Signal: 69
Noise: 47
Channel: 11
Samples: 228
Freq: 2462

Is this good?

I don't have this. I have Airport Admin Utility and the table is empty.

My apologies - I forgot that Airport Client Monitor is downloaded as part of the Airport Management Tools. You can download them from http://download.info.apple.com/Mac_O...ementTools.dmg

I find that although iStumbler is good for finding wireless networks it is less useful for testing them. Airport Client Monitor pings your router, and thus provides a better indicator of network performance. It is useful to open the ping window to see the actual ping output. For example, if your noise to signal ratio is good, but the pings fail to reach their target, you know something else is at fault.

Again, please check your logs for relevant messages. If interference is not an issue, then some sort of failure of the Airport card or the router has to be the cause - without inspecting logs you will not know which to blame.

[EDIT also check that your router doesn't have a log output that you can view]

Thanks for the assistance btw.

I installed the Airport Client Monitor and ran it. But I don't know how to interpret the data:

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3...monitor7ri.png



Ping window?

Also I opened the Console utility to look at the system.log and console.log which gives me a long list, application performances I presume. What am I looking for??

The green line shows signal strength - the red line the noise (i.e interference.)

The blue line is data transfer per second and this changes rapidly. It appears to be at regular intervals but that may just be because the app can't ping your router at intervals of less than 1 second.

The red and green lines are close together meaning any temporary interference may cause problems. Note the interference doesn't have to be the result of something you're doing - it could be your neighbour.

Are the antennae on the computer and router OK? Just how far from the router are you?

Is your network 802.11b or 802.11g? You appear to have good ordinary data transfer speeds for the former but fairly poor if the latter.

The system log is time stamped and these are shown along the left hand edge of the display - post anything that is recorded at the time you note problems occur.

I'm sitting 2 feet from the Base Station
Secure: Open
Mode: Managed
Network Name:**
Signal: 40
Noise: 0
Channel: 10
Samples: 50
Freq: 2457

Thanks bramley. Right.

The router is a 802.11g 3com brand.
The router is on the 1st floor, my Mac is on the 2nd floor at approx. 45 degrees vertical angle from the router.

(In the past I did have problems like if a mobile phone was placed near the router, but these recent problems are just way too exaggerated.
Also (4 comparson) in our very large open-space studio we have 2 G4's and 2G5's on WiFi broadband and the connections are amazingly fast).

Here is the system log PART 1. Just a curiosity, what on earth are The Regents of The University of California doing inside my system??

Here is the System log PART 2 (see above):

Your Airport network seems more noisy than usual.
Have you tried changing it to a different channel?
Choose one that is at least 3 away from those used by neighbours etc (as shown in iStumbler).

Yep, i was just going to suggest changing to another channel for Bizz because hes on 11, which is the default for most wireless routers. Also, if you use channel 1, you may see a better signal strength because channel 1 uses a lower frequency than 11, thus; the propagation characteristics are better for Non-Line of Sight transmissions. Also, from my experience, very few people use channel 1 so interference may not be as much of a problem. As hayne indicated, try to pick a lower channel that is at least 2 away from the others found in Stumbler, but getting one 3 away is even better. To do this, all you have to do is login to your router and change it. Let us know how it turns out!

Right. I went out to watch a film, came back and started to surf the net and Lo and Behold my pages don't load again. So I open iStumbler and AirPort Client Monitor and both give me the same readings as the one outlined above i.e. when surfing was normal.

So from my Mac I decide to login to my router and disconnect/connect and Lo and Behold my page loading times are back to normal. This is strange.

By the way my Router is an 11g firewall and not 802.11g as mentioned above (or is that the same?!)

OK, I don't understand this. How do I know what my neighbours are using?

Following however hayne's and bored's combined advice I located the channel settings in my router and set it to 1. After a brief period of disconnection, I checked the router channel and noticed it had set itself to 4 as so:

http://img277.imageshack.us/img277/8493/channel6dy.png

iStumbler shows channel 4. Noise at 47, as before. But less Transmit Rate fluctuations on the AirPort Client.

Do you think what happened is fine?
I guess I should wait and see if the problem comes back again.

Also, I have encryption options in my router:

http://img277.imageshack.us/img277/8...ryption0zk.png

Shall I leave it at disabled or..?

Thanks
(PS. Any reasons for The Regents of The University of California being in my system log? My computer is not being used as a TMA monolith for any masonic activity of said Regents??!)

You'll want to enable some sort of wireless security so that other people cannot share your bandwidth. 802.11b/g is all encompassing so if you see 11g, thats it. To find out what your neighbors are using, their SSIDs should show up in iStumbler. personally, I dont like iStumbler, i prefer MacStumber, but they provide the same information. Since you know that you are on channel 4, look in Stumbler to see if anyone else is operating on channel 4. If anyone is near it (within 2-3 channels) i would change it to something that is not within 2-3 channels of another user. That should help.

Ok. On iStumbler there is only one SSID showing, mine. So am picking up signals from no one else.

So let us say that my problem is officially solved. I will give a short feedback, say tommorrow morning, to say if all is fine. Thank you.

One thought is that the 'noise' is coming from a 2.4G portable phone or even from a microwave oven, but it seems too steady for that. I use only 900MHz and 5.8GHz phones in my house for this reason.

Could be nothing to do with it...

Thanks all. It seems that all is fine now. At the first sign of trouble I'll re-post.

Well, I have a Phillips TV set to standby just half a metre from my Mac and a portable gigarange phone with base station.

I'm sorry I missed the conclusion of this thread. FYI, there do appear to be some permissions problems with the machine that may be affecting Airport.

Also APE (APE is not recommended) appears to be reporting some problems with the Security Agent.
There are also the following messages, but these may be the result of problems with Active Directory, with which I'm not familiar.
I would look at a system reinstall as being a good idea.

cannot connect to particular websites
 

I have an iMac G4 in OSX 10.4.6.

I've been accessing www.nytimes.com for years. Since 3 weeks ago Safari or FireFox or whatever browser cannot connect me with the new york times website.

I've cleaned cache, repaired permissions using applejack and still I cannot get access.

My wife's PC is connected to the same router and I am able to access the New York Times website on her computer.

What is it about my iMac that's blocking this particular website?

First, I would log in as a different user and see if the problem persists. Let us know how that turns out.

cannot connect to particular websites
 

Thanks for your response.

However, I logged in as a different user and still I'm unable to access 2 particular websites. One of them being www.nytimes.com.

Ok, now post the relevant logs concerning this phenomenon from the Console in the utilities folder. You should be able to find it because the logs are timestamped. That should help give us an idea of what exactly is causing the error.

My previous connection problems have been solved. Thank you.

I can connect to the New York Times website from both a G4 (10.3.9) and G5 (10.4.3), with both Safari and Firefox.

What error message does your browser display?

Have you tried other similar websites? e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/,
http://www.iht.com/pages/index.php, http://www.newyorker.com/

Start-up flashing planet
 

I restart my iMac and I get a small flashing planet that continues flashing on and on without actually starting my computer..

If I unplug from the router and restart, I get a flashing planet going for about 15 times and then it turns into an alternate flashing question mark (?) and Finder icon (2 faces looking at each other) for about 15 times and then I get the apple icon and the computer reboots successfully.

I then have to plug into the router to get online.

How can I fix this Start-up problem?

This is a problem with my computer as my wife is also hooked up to the router without problems.

History:

I talked with a friend who works for Apple on & off and he told me to ping www.nytimes.com in Network Utility. I cannot remember all that happened after that but I crashed.

After resetting my router and cable modem with the help of Linksys tech support I was able to access the new york times and democracy now.

Network and startup problems are probably unrelated.

Go the the System Preferences and set your current startup partition again, your Mac seems to be confused about where to boot from.

If that doesn't help, you might need to reset the nvram.

I'm not sure why you posted in this thread as it doesn't seem to be related.
But in any case, when you get that "planet", it means that your Mac is trying to boot from the network instead of from the OS that is on the hard drive.
You should open up the Startup Disk preferences panel and set the startup disk to be your internal disk. That should fix it.

Thanks so much Hayne. You were right. I was booting from the network instead of the hard drive. It's now fixed.