[Ti] Disappearing AirPort network

[Kynan Shook]

I had a similar problem (but not quite the same) when I was first 
setting up my 17" too, Steve, although mine was somewhat worse in some 
sense.  I just usually couldn't join the network, although I could 
always see it.  The WAP was a graphite Airport base station, and a 500 
MHz iBook connected to it just fine.  However, it would always tell me 
"an error occurred while attempting to join the wireless network," or 
something along those lines.  I couldn't even administer the base 
station, and even having the computer right next to the base station 
didn't help.  What finally allowed me to get it working was to change 
various channel and interference robustness settings; Sometimes just 
enabling interference robustness on the laptop, or just on the base 
station, or both would make a difference.  Also, changing channels, 
sometimes by only one or two channels, would help.  The effects of the 
interference varied for me; sometimes I couldn't join at all, sometimes 
I could join but the connection didn't always work, sometimes I could 
join and the connection would work, but the Airport status (as reported 
in Internet Connect) would never show up.  At this point, I have had my 
setup working perfectly for several months now in my current location.

Anyway, this is different enough that it's likely not the same issue at 
hand; my Airport has been working fine for me everywhere I go, and I'm 
a certifiable wireless network whore with my PowerBook.  But maybe it 
will help somebody out there.

Honestly, if you have to restart your computer more often than once 
every two weeks or so (when running OS X; OS 9 is a much different 
story), I think there is something wrong with your computer.  Whether 
it's a corrupted OS, bad hardware (third party RAM is VERY likely a 
culprit), or poorly written applications or kernel extensions, well, 
you may never find out.  Intermittent problems are almost impossible to 
track down.  But my iBook has been running now for 160 days without 
being restarted.  My main computer isn't quite so stable, between 
running Panther betas and doing various other less-than-kosher things 
that are known to lock up computers.  Even so, I'll often have uptimes 
around 2 weeks to a month, until one application freezes everything.  
If you have the time and the patience, you might be able to track down 
the issues.  Most people instead decide to just live with the 
inconvenience of restarting periodically, however.


Steve Wozniak <steve at woz.org>
> As has been reported by a number of us in the past, on my 17" Big Al I 
> lose the AirPort network occasionally. The signal strength goes to 
> zero and the network itself disappears from the AirPort menu. Nothing 
> I've tried has worked other than restarting.
>
> Today I was setting up a brand new Big Al. I had upgraded to OS X 
> 10.2.8 but I had this problem before and after that OS revision on my 
> prior Big Al. I had only installed only a few apps and the only one 
> that might play with the system was Stuffit Deluxe  8.0.
>
> On the brand new computer the problem arose again. I tried a few 
> things like turning the AirPort on and off, going to sleep and waking 
> up, etc. I checked the system profiler and the data for the AirPort 
> card was the same as before. Only a restart cured the problem.
>
> I use Apple AirPort Base Stations at home and at work. The problem 
> occurs at both sites.
>
> On a related note, I now have to restart my PowerBook every day or two 
> for various problems, this being one of them. Usually some app just 
> stops behaving correctly or loses some functionality, and a restart 
> clears things up. I suspect that apps like IE and Eudora don't like 
> 'too much' use in one session, but that's just a guess. Anyway, this 
> restarting is getting annoying.
>
> I was one of the ones not using IE in MacOS 9 and would go a week or 
> two between restarts.