No, I won't be criticising a platform here. Heaven knows Windows has tons of issues with wireless networking. I'm currently having trouble with a user who bought a MacBook Pro. I set up a WRT54GL in their house, put Tomato on it and boosted the signal a little bit. Here's the problem:

When she sets her laptop up in her kitchen (which is right below the router) she isn't shown her network. She is, however, shown at least 10 other networks with 25% signal strength at most. If I take the laptop upstairs to their office, it sees their network, and I can then carry the laptop downstairs and it will hold the connection. I was also perfectly able to access the network from my own laptop.

Why on earth is it not showing her her own network? This almost seems like the opposite of Windows' obnoxious wireless zero config

Maybe it's because you boosted the signal?

Have you ever sat right next to the speakers at a concert?

Blindly boosting signals (especially above spec) lead to problems, and this looks like one of them. Try turning the router back to normal levels and see if the problem goes away. Re aiming the antennas may also help.

Modern Macbooks all have 802.11n cards and antennas, and something with the MIMO part of the radio may be confused sitting near to the non MIMO router. Unfortunately I don't understand wireless a ton to really explain this well.

*edit* I also have to say, I'm quite surprised that you are putting 3rd party firmware on customers equipment. Beyond boosting the radio power beyond spec, what advantages does this serve, vs the possibly increased support cost?

Heres an article talking about what increasing that value does. It also increases noise in the signal, and it may be pushed beyond spec to the point where the Macbook can't deal with it at close range.

I'll vouch for running Tomato. I wouldn't want to support anyone's Linksys router without it. But the settings should be able to sit at defaults mostly, especially radio power. With that router and a MacBook I didn't find any issues with signal reception around the house.

Speaking of picking up others' signals... I can pick up 44 wireless networks from my house. I need to walk around the full perimeter of the top floor to get them, but I was quite surprised nonetheless. I listed them with a snooping program as they won't all show up in the OS' own WiFi menu.

Any of them have clever names?

Increased transmit power on the AP may increase the range (which generally you don't want anyway) but when the other side replies, the AP won't be able to hear it.

Increased transmit power when the client is next to the AP just means the client radio gets overwhelmed with the signal. You don't want somebody shouting in your ear and neither does the WiFi client.

If the router really is the problem, then I would have to start criticizing the MacBook. I've set up at least 10 WRT54GLs just the same way, and have never had this kind of issue with a Windows laptop (I've had other issues, unrelated to the router, but never this one).

Besides, I didn't max out the signal. When you put Tomato on the WRT, it usually defaults to a transmit power of 42mW. The max they suggest is 251. I set it to something like 80.

My question would be why does OSX only let me see the 10 access points? Why can't I see all of them? And why can't I choose a wireless network as being my preferred one? In that way, it is a little like wireless zero config, which I think is the worst part of Windows wireless networking.

I'd still be loath to blame the Macbook here. More likely the router's transmitter electronics are, on this particular unit, a little less forgiving of the boosted power than the other ones you set up. Tolerances in electronic components can vary widely, and the signal power might default to the correct strength for the majority of the components that come off the line.

Why did you need to increase the transmit power anyway? Unless there is a problem with it, you generally don't need to mess with it.

Increasing the range is pointless if at the stock power it can cover the entire house anyway. All you're doing is generating extra heat, using more power and sending the signal further out into the street.

Also, just because it lets you type in the maximum of 251mW doesn't actually mean it works properly at that level or even actually transmits at that level. All the Tomato web interface is doing is passing your settings to the Broadcom utility that sets the parameters which isn't particularly intelligent about what it lets you set. The utility lets you do things that you're not supposed to do and assumes you're following the limits for the particular hardware you've got. The radio is designed to operate at a specific transmit power and turning it up may have adverse affects on the signal to noise ratio or spectral purity.

Matt, you may want to open the network preference pane and then click on the wireless network on the left. Then you can click on the advanced button that appears on the right.

I don't know about clever, but one neat one is named with the string of magic numbers from Lost. Most of them just have default names, many of them Bell### indicating they're AP/Router/Modem combos from Bell Canada.

If clever means not changing it from the default then yeah, there are loads of LINKSYS and NETGEAR around me...

Running them more than about 70mW is enough to generate enough heat to cause longer term damage to the radio.

Possibly it's illegal to go above 100mW in the ISM band in some areas.

That said I have mine bumped up a little to the Tomato default only. Whilst you are only boosting the transmission one way that may still help a little if the receive sensitivity is good enough and a remote device isn't so good.

Okay, I will attempt to change the transmit power back to the default. I suspect that will not change things...

Some tips for WiFi connection issues with Macs... http://www.macmaps.com/WIFI1048.html

Might as well check this as well (which is in reference to #12 from the above)


http://michaelhyatt.com/2007/01/fix-for-wireless-connection-problems-on-macbook-pro.html

OS X will see more then 10 access points. It's reporting what it can see clearly and should be able to join. Odds are, if it is a noise issue due to the boosted transmit power, the customers router in question is polluting the channel (and those near it) enough that the MacBook can't see the other access points your other device can. Remember, 802.11b/g works in the 2.4ghz range, where only 3 actual isolated channels exist in the spectrum space allowed. Also, since it's a metal Macbook Pro, they tend to have less range in general then the plastic MacBook or a plastic Windows box. As for setting a preferred access point, thats what the Network system preference is for.


As for never having this sort of problem on a Windows laptop, the issue comes down more to the hardware and antennas. How many customers did you set up with 802.11n cards and MIMO antennas in the laptop? Did you do any checks to see if the connection was actually stable and not having some sort of occasional packet loss/connectivity issue due to the elevated noise?

On the wrt did you click the scan option next to the wifi channel selection. and picked a channel not in use or the one with the weakest signal?

My apologies to everyone involved in this thread.

The problem was not the MacBook. The problem was not the router. The problem was not Tomato or the juiced up wireless.

The problem was that I was polite.

When I left my client's home that afternoon, I politely turned off the lights in the office. Little did I know that the surge protector that the router and modem were on were on a switched outlet (actually, only half of it was switched).

So when she called me back in because she couldn't get wireless, I would go up to her office, turn on the lights, check out the router, find no problem, be able to connect her laptop to the network, then leave the office (turning out the lights) and go downstairs where she promptly would lose internet access because the router wasn't powered.

Upon a second visit, I was in a bit of a rush, and didn't even turn on the lights when I went into their office, so I saw that the router didn't have power.

So yeah, now everything is fine. Thanks for the input and I'm sorry if I offended any Mac owners. It really wasn't my intention to bash Macs.

That is a rather amusing problem. As for any offense, it was more your automatic assumption it was OS X, and lack of features (preferred networks) that came across as bashing. At least when we bash Windows, we have actual reasons :-)

That is absolutely classic!

It reminds me of a story my computer serviceman told me back in the '70s. The client's mini-computer would only work as long as the repairman was on the premises. As soon as he left, the computer would crash.

It turned out that the computer was on a raised floor with the wiring underneath. As long as someone was standing on the floor it deflected enough to tighten the loose cable and make the connection.

tanstaafl.

Thanks Matt

A friend of mine got a new dishwasher because her old one stopped working. When the installer checked the circuit after it was installed, he found it was off. There is a switch in her kitchen she never knew what it did, and it turned out that it is connected to the dishwasher and got switched off.

She needed a new dishwasher anyway, but kinda embarrassing to have the installer find the problem.

Yeah. I've got one of those switches in my kitchen. Totally unmarked and they never actually told me what it does. I turned on everything and turned it off to see what happened.

There is also one in my garage that for some bizarre reason actually turns off the washing machine and the freezer sockets. Not quite sure why they're wired like that.

I hear those British do some wonky things. Did you hear the one about the handbrake?...

I wouldn't be surprised if the company that build my house and the surrounding houses were just inept. Many issues over the years have been discovered to have been screw ups during initial construction.

Almost the same embarrasing problem I once had. I lived with my now-ex and we bought a dishwasher. Problem was that sometimes the circuit breaker tripped when we used it. When the electrician came, he found out that even when the dishwasher was off, there was around 7-8A used on this circuit. It turned out that the socket in the garage was on the same circuit (of course not marked in the breaker box), which my engine heater and compartment heater was plugged into...

Stig

I've got one of those just inside my kitchen. Turns out it's for the lighting spur for the downstairs toilet. Figured that out after spending a couple of hours changing bulbs and poking things with the multimeter. It now has a dymo label stuck to it. I don't know why it needs another switch: there's a perfectly functional switch inside the downstairs toilet to control the light.