my sleep/lockup problems traced?

[Reid Conti]

Well, ok, not entirely.  I was having this whole problem of my airport
signal going to zero a few months ago, so I'm sure it's more than just
the simple answer I provide here.  But I have discovered something
interesting.

As you may recall, my ibook was occasionally (and more frequently)
losing it's signal.  All of a sudden nothing, from 4 base stations
visible, to zero.  Putting the computer to sleep, then waking it again
(and I verified by sleeping using the menu option and NOT just closing
the lid) would bring back 3 wireless networks, not the 4th, the
linksys i was using.  For that to work, I'd have to go reset the
linksys.  Not sure if I ever tried JUST resetting the linksys, and not
sleeping the computer, but I can't imagine 4 networks would have
magically showed up.

So it looked like the linksys was locking up, which caused some kind
of bug in the airport software on my 600mhz ibook that made it lose
track of all networks.  By sleeping and waking it, it would get its
senses back, but of course my linksys was down because it was locked
up.

I finally got pissed the other day, ripped the linksys out of the loop
and threw it down the hall.  I reconfigured my roommate's belkin that
was doing access point only (both are B-only routers, BTW) to do the
routing duties, reconfigured my airport express in client mode to use
the belkin instead so I could still stream music, and went on my way. 
Well, nevermind how impossible it is to reconfigure airport express
when in client mode (you have to reset it, as it's not visible as a
base station when in client mode.. so you have to use the manual reset
switch.  And the damn thing takes ages to come back up, this goes for
any time its' restarted it seems).  Oh, and at some point both the
laptop and AX tried to use the same IP, and no matter how many times I
restarted each network connection, they REFUSED to pick different IPs.
 My ibook kept saying another device was using 192.168.2.9.  Yeah, NO
KIDDING.  This is why we use DHCP.  PICK A NEW ONE!  grr.  Finally I
resolved it by giving the ibook a manual IP, or rebooting it, or
something.  any of the above would have worked.  So yes, all seemed
resolved at this point.

Until it happened again.  And again.  And again.  The belkin was
locking up every 20 mins or so.  I can no longer remember if I was
sleeping the ibook or just resetting the belkin.  I think both.  So
again, some kind of bug in the airport software seems to make all base
stations disappear ... er... now I'm trying to remember if the
remaining 2 base stations still showed up.  Well, I guess it would be
easy enoguh to go home and test, but the roommate was getting annoyed
at the connection dropping constantly.

Finally I decided enough was enough and yanked the airport express,
opting instead to use my old "long cable" method of stereo bliss.

Problem solved.  Later in the day I plugged the AX back into the wall
and had it join the network.  It's been living happily ever since, but
I haven't been using the music streaming feature at all, which is why
I have the AX in the first place.  I suspect several things are
happening here.

First, I'm streaming music using 802.11b to a base station, which is
then streaming it out to  the AX.  The base stations obviously don't
like this consistant streaming, sometimes they start skipping before
they crap out entirely.  Cheap base stations not liking high data
rates?  No clue, although I don't seem to recall having this problem
when I've done several-hour local network file transfers one-way via
wireless, which is clearly more demanding on maximum bandwidth on the
wireless.  I'm thinking (hoping?) that if the laptop and base station
were both G-compatable, and of course could talk G to the AX, I would
not have this problem.

Secondly, airport software seems to hate it when the base station
locks up.  If the base station didn't lock up, there would be no
problem.

Or perhaps the airport software is freaking out at some point, and
that locks up the base station?

hmmm....

The linksys is current hardware and the latest firmware, and my ibook
has the latest software, as does the AX.  Not sure about the belkin's
firmware, but on top of spending much of my weekend futzing with these
things, plus working 8 hours a day/7 days a week at two tech jobs, I'm
not really feeling like messing with the belkin's firmware.

I'm hoping this all works better when I use the AX as my only base
station...  I posted this on Apple's support site, and while some
people are having problems with dropouts, nobody is having this base
station lockup issue I am...  odd.

- reid