MacBook Air (2010) & Eircom Netopia

lukejr

Hi All,

My MacBook Air (13" 2010) knocks out the wifi of the Eircom Netopia after about 30 minutes of use.

I have narrowed it down to just the MacBook Air. Normally everything runs fine and there is 100% uptime, but once I turn on my MacBook Air, use it for 30 minutes or so the wifi knocks out, and any device connected via wifi stops.

Anyone else experience this issue?

Pixelcraft

probably an IP conflict, best to assign IP addresses for each machine manually

fasty

What encryption are you using on the Netopia? My parents have one of those routers and my sister's Air doesn't cause that sort of issue. It's using WPA.

Talisman

Here are some suggestions for you:

- Check that the firmware on the router is up to date.

- Change the Wireless Channel used by the network. By default most wireless routers are set to use channel 6/7 which means there is a lot of interference in this range. Changing the channel to the highest or lowest available can reduce the interference. If you don't have any wireless devices that were acquired in North America try using channel 13, otherwise try using channel 1 (Devices certified for North America can only use channels 1-11 and won't see a network outside of this range).

- Don't use Eircom's DNS servers - they disappear from time to time.
OpenDNS servers: 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
Google DNS servers: 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4

- Assign a static IP address to your computers. The reason for this is that the Netopia routers aren't great and the built in DHCP server can literally go on strike sometimes if it feels it's being over worked. Without DHCP you have no IP adresses for your network and hence no network.

- If you need to use DHCP then manually configure it on the router. You can define a range of addresses to use e.g. 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.110 would give you 11 addresses in the DHCP pool so you could use upto 11 wireless devices on the network.

I always advise clients that if they have a Time Capsule device they should run their wireless network through it and connect the router via the WAN port for internet access. The Netopia boxes are cheap and aren't great quality which is why they are supplied by providers.

fasty

The suggestion to update the firmware is probably the best place to start but your other troubleshooting steps are for general Internet connectivity issues.

I don't think setting up static IPs or using alternative DNS servers is going to stop the router locking up when his Macbook Air is connected to it.

Sad Professor

I've had problems with DHCP with every router I've ever used, including Apple's own Airport EBS. It wouldn't necessarily be a daily problem, but I'd probably have to reboot the router once every one or two weeks. For that reason I'd always recommend assigning manual IPs to each of the devices on your network.