[GLLUG] Anyone with experience with Macs and AirPort Extreme?

Michael George george at idealso.com
Sun Jun 15 21:31:32 EDT 2008


Well, what I found is that there are a lot of networking problems with 
10.5.  Most of what I found had to do with extremely poor performance 
and continuously dropped connections.  One post in particular said that 
the Airport Extreme devices were no longer playing well with Cicso WAPs. 
  Whether the "cisco problem" extends into their Linksys acquisitions, I 
do not know.

My router is working fine, and I don't have any plans to change it.  If 
I had a greater need for the Mini to work I might try OpenWRT, or even 
go back to the Linksys Firmware for the WRT54G...

Given that the 10.4 systems and WinXP were no-effort connections, I am 
inclined to blame Apple and I am hoping that a future update might 
resolve the issue.

Karl Schuttler wrote:
> It might be worthwhile to see if the problem exists in OpenWRT,
> another linux firmware for the WRT line. OpenWRT isn't tough,
> especially if you've done any networking in linux, but it is mostly
> command line (no web gui out of the box). It may be the easiest
> migration to make it work, if you find that others aren't running into
> this issue.
> 
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 6:18 AM, Michael George <george at idealso.com> wrote:
>> Yes, those bastards.  This is not an isolated dd-wrt issue, it has been
>> happening to many people with the Airport Extreme devices under 10.5.
>> It was a problem at 10.5.1 (but not under 10.4) and still is now.  They
>> aren't giving it attention because they made it work with their WAPs.
>> If it doesn't work with Ciscos, they don't seem to care.
>>
>> I have connected my iBook (10.4) with no hesitation.  I have connected
>> Windows XP with no problem.  The software running in dd-wrt is in very
>> wide use and I'm sure if there were problems with it meeting the
>> standards of 802.11b/g, they would get fixed.  However, Apple adopted an
>> unfinished (beta) spec (802.11n) and put it into production hardware.
>> Internal to the computer, no less.  When it isn't backwards compatible
>> their best answer (not that they gave one) is "spend several hundred $$
>> and get one of *our* WAPs".
>>
>> If you think dd-wrt is such junk, then why don't you download the latest
>> linksys firmware and install it on your router?  When you do, please
>> tell me if your problem goes away...
>>
>> Eduardo Cesconetto wrote:
>>> Those bastards? I blame your crappy Open Source driven router, I have
>>> the same issue with my WRT54GL w/ DD-WRT is junk too... You get what u
>>> pay for...
>>>
>>> On Jun 14, 2008, at 9:20 PM, Michael George wrote:
>>>
>>>> Well, no go on either of these.  I can set up an ad-hoc network with my
>>>> iBook and an original AirPort card (802.11b?), but it keeps getting
>>>> connection timeouts to the Linksys/dd-wrt WAP.  I am not about to spend
>>>> $300 for a Apple WAP to connect this thing.  Those bastards make
>>>> incompatible hard/firmware and expect me to spend more $$ on them?  No
>>>> way.
>>>>
>>>> Sean O'Malley wrote:
>>>>> It doesnt really seem to be a related issue, but the early 2006 minis
>>>>> have a firmware update for them. It is called
>>>>> Apple Mac mini early 2006 SMC Firmware
>>>>>
>>>>> A more related fix would be:
>>>>> ----
>>>>> from http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4993837
>>>>>
>>>>> Alright, so we know that after updated to 10.5.2 people were still
>>>>> having
>>>>> trouble with Airport. I was one of them, and I figured it out. Here is
>>>>> what I did:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. Navigate to Library\Preferences\SystemConfiguration
>>>>> 2. Locate com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
>>>>> 3. Drag it to trash
>>>>> 4. Hit the spotlight, type in "Keychain Access"
>>>>> a) Remove all passwords to every network
>>>>> *now I don't know if that's necessary, but I did it, and it worked*
>>>>> 5. Restart Leopard
>>>>> 6. Connect to a network and you should be problem free
>>>>>
>>>>> By deleting com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and restarting your
>>>>> system, you are allowing Leopard to create the new 10.5.2 file.
>>>>>
>>>>> My theory is, is that the two conflicted with each other so it wasn't
>>>>> copied properly, and thats why some people had the problem and some
>>>>> didn't.
>>>>> ---
>>>>> my guess is you just need to axe the password to the airport.
>>>>>
>>>>> That at least lets you start the config from scratch. :)
>>>>>
>>>>> Sean
>>>> --
>>>> -M
>>>>
>>>> There are 10 kinds of people in this world:
>>>>     Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>> --
>> -M
>>
>> There are 10 kinds of people in this world:
>>        Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.
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-- 
-M

There are 10 kinds of people in this world:
	Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.


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