Which is another way of saying all is not right in Media Nation.
Got the digital box from Comcast this morning. I only had to go back once before everything was working properly.
Now I am dealing with our wireless Internet problem. I picked up an AirPort Express at the Apple Store after talking with a guy at the Genius Bar who seemed pretty knowledgeable (if not quite a genius). Here’s what I’m trying to do:
- Attach the cable coming in from outside the house to the back of the cable modem.
- Run an Ethernet cable from the back of the cable modem to the AirPort Express.
- Set up a wireless network using the AirPort Utility software.
I’ve come close a couple of times. I’ve had a strong signal coming from the AirPort. By all appearances, we should be good to go.
But none of our Macs will connect to the Internet. (For the moment, I’m running the EtherNet cable directly into the back of the family iMac. Very frustrating.) And then sometimes, when I try again, the AirPort doesn’t even show up in AirPort Utility.
I’ve got a 7:15 p.m. appointment at the Genius Bar, and I’m hoping someone will walk me through it step by step.
Discover more from Media Nation
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You may want to check what sort of ethernet cable you are using to connect from your cable modem to your Airport base station. On occasion, cable modems are designed to connect directly to your computer via a regular ethernet cable, but require a crossover cable if you are using a router. Your symptoms sound like this could be the case as you can connect to your Airport but the Airport does not have real Internet connectivity. Take a look at the manual for your cable modem if you have one and see if they give you any insight into what type of ethernet cable is required.
Did you enter the same settings into the new AEX as were in your old Airport? Are you switching your iMac back to those settings when the Ethernet cable is not plugged into it? Can you set up the AEX by plugging it directly into the iMac (to eliminate variables in signal while doing setup)?-dan h
I’ve got Airport Express, but it’s connected through a Verizon DSL modem. The big trip-up for me was getting the IP address for the modem, which took an awfully long time on Verizon’s helpline to resolve: They don’t provide helpful instructions for their Mac customers, online or in printed materials. Now it works like a charm, and only rarely needs to be rebooted.
Mac: “It just works.”Sounds like you’ve got a couple problems. First, your Airport/router isn’t talking to the Internet, or talking to the cable modem. Second, it sounds like you’ve got some problems with the new router. Is there a firmware update available in this AirPort Express utility thing? Try that, first.Checking for the crossover cable is a good idea. See if you’ve got another Ethernet cable laying around the house somewhere, anywhere. If you carry one in your laptop bag, that’d be great and would be proven to be the right kind of cable. I don’t know if your new aIRpORT thingy has more than one Ethernet plug — check and see if there’s one marked “uplink” if there are more than one, or try the other.Try configuring the Airport Express to get its WAN (Internet) address from DHCP through the airport utility, if there is such an option.
Not sure if it’s the same in the Mac environment, but did you try auto-detecting the way the proxies access the Internet? Your system may be set to No proxy. Toggle to Auto-detect proxy settings.
Mike: As I wrote the following day, the Apple help line was great. Mainly, the guy explained the correct way to do a hard reset, which was necessary because I had screwed it up with my experimenting. Once I did that, the unit really did configure itself.Good thing — I don’t want to be messing with proxy settings.