Wireless on an iMac not up to scratch

homerun_homer

I got Eircom Next Gen broadband in and I've a laptop using the internet right beside my iMac. Laptop is perfect for internet but the iMac won't load anything. It has worked but it's not reliable. Should the mac be this weak or should I ask in a store/customer care about whether the wirport wireless is faulty?

whoopdedoo

homerun_homer wrote: »

I got Eircom Next Gen broadband in and I've a laptop using the internet right beside my iMac. Laptop is perfect for internet but the iMac won't load anything. It has worked but it's not reliable. Should the mac be this weak or should I ask in a store/customer care about whether the wirport wireless is faulty?

why dot you plug straight into the router if you're right beside it?

we do it here and damn it makes such a difference

Talisman

Did Eircom supply you with a Zyxel router? I have a client who got one with their NGB installation and had to disable the wireless network for the same reason. The solution to their problem was to connect their Time Capsule to the router and use it for the wireless network.

Zapho

Do you have problems with just loading webpages or do you have trouble with local network too, like sharing files with another laptop wirelessly?

The reason I ask is because I had a similar problem with a mac and my iphone in my house. All the windows machines worked with the router fine, but the mac and iphone had trouble solely with loading webpages (local network worked fine). The problem turned out to be with our router's DNS server. I changed it to an open source DNS server and it worked fine for everything. You can specifically set one in the mac's network configuration but I don't use macs day-to-day so I can't tell you how to do it off the top of my head. Try googling it.

Actually - I ended up fixing by changing the DNS server IP address directly in the router's configuration itself...it was easier that way!

barryj

Firstly, the wireless signal should not be significantly different from another client (e.g. your laptop) located beside it. There is a chance there is a fault in the hardware. There's also a chance that things are misconfigured, either on your iMac or on your router.

If you recently bought your iMac from Apple, then you should be aware that you can return/replace it within 14 days, and you have 90 days phone support to work through any issues. Outside of that you have a one year hardware warranty.

If you are within the 90 days, I would suggest you phone apple and work through the issue, with your free support.

Other things to consider:

Make sure the iMac is not using the same IP address as another device on your network. Assuming everything was left as default on both you're wifi router and the iMac, then you will be using DHCP, which should automatically assign network settings to each device, and these should be correct.

When you say it has worked - was this when your laptop was turned off? This might indicate the two devices using the same IP - which will not work correctly.

If you log into your router, you should be able to see a list of wireless clients.

When you mention weak - do you mean that the wifi signal is showing up weak? You should be able to see the icon on the menu bar - if you old down 'alt' and mouse over the menu bar icon, you'll get further info - of interest are the RSSI value (somewhere in the -50 to -75 range would be typical. Lower values indicate stronger signal. Also the transmit rate is of interest - it will depend on what type of router you have, but assuming you have a 802.11g it should read 54, 802.11n should read 130.

Another issue that can happen is interference if there are other wireless devices in operation nearby. Sometimes changing wireless channel can help.

- barry

barryj

whoopdedoo wrote: »

why dot you plug straight into the router if you're right beside it?

I think the OP said he was using a laptop beside the iMac, not that the iMac was beside his router.

- barry

Freddie59

Seems to be an ongoing problem

Bought a 27" iMac last June and it was, to say the least, sporadic. Ended up hardwiring it - problem solved. But this may not suit in all cases.

Here's another thread on it