MacBook Pro :: How Does AirPort Prioritize WiFi Connections
Nov 5, 2009
My MBP 3,1 (early 2008?) normally just connects to my WLAN when I start it up but very occasionally it connects to a nearby WiFi Hotspot. When it does, turning Airport off then on again sometimes gets it to connect to my WLAN but sometimes it just keeps re-connecting the the hotspot. The only solution - and it works every time - is to reboot. But rebooting seems such a Windows thing to have to do.
Does Airport "prioritize" its choice of connection, e.g. first tries to connect to the last WLAN it was connected to? One other thing. If I go into Network Prefs and click the Advanced button, I see my WLAN there but there seems to be no way to tell it to connect to that particular WLAN - the equivalent dialogue in Windows for example has a Connect button so you can select a WLAN and hit connect to force it to (try to) connect to that one, but there's no Connect button in OS X. In case it's important, I don't broadcast the SSID on my WLAN.
View 7 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Jan 9, 2008
This is a technical question out of pure curiosity. I could probably dig through the documentation, but that would probably take longer than my curiosity would hold out, so I figured "why not ask?"
I occasionally switch between wireless (g) and wired (gigabit) networking with my home laptop on occasions when I want the extra speed for accessing large files. I'd noted before that this was pretty transparent, but for the heck of it I did a test today:
Connected to my home server (10.4's built-in AFP sharing, gigabit to a new Airport hub) using wireless, and started playing a medium-bandwidth (1.5Mbit/s) video file. With it playing, I connected the hardwired Ethernet, waited a bit for it to get an IP address, then tuned off the Airport card. I was honestly surprised that the video didn't even stop playing (and not due to caching), so obviously the transition was transparent enough to the app that it didn't stall out long enough to mess up the video. Switching back worked as well--in fact, I could tell it was changing, because via wireless there were slight glitches in playback, I'm assuming due to the way the player (mis-)handled preloading on a relatively slow connection.
Which got me wondering: How exactly does OSX prioritize network traffic when there are two available paths? All to the faster one, some connections prioritized over others based on hardware, or does it spread traffic around?
Also, given two alternate paths to the internet, what kind (if any) of load-sharing will the OS do by default? I'd always assumed that you'd need a special router to combine two separate internet connections (say, cable and DSL), but this got me wondering if OSX (given two network paths) would do some of this load-sharing by itself. I of course don't have two internet connections in the same place to try this with.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jul 4, 2010
My tenant uses my wireless network and lately has been sucking up so much bandwidth that I can't even hold a connection on XBox Live for more than 10 minutes. She is on the guest network so is there any way to prioritize bandwidth on my Airport so that it knows to give the main network priority over the guest network and so if I'm on XBox Live or downloading a movie and she's downloading something of her own it'll give me at least 75% of the bandwidth and her only 25%?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jun 27, 2012
Does anyone know if it is possible to tell my mac book air to never connect to a certain wifi connection on OS X 7.4?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jul 19, 2009
I have an Early 2008 White MacBook. Recently I have been having problems acquiring wifi signals with it. My iPhone, othere peoples' phones, my sister's computer and everything else can get wifi in my room, but my MacBook has not been able to "see" the connections for the past few days. I am tethering my iPhone 3G right now and it's killing my data plan, I have used 3 GBs in 2 days (I have 6 GBs on my data plan)
View 10 Replies
View Related
Aug 28, 2009
Is anyone else having problems with SL dropping your wireless connections. I've never had any problems with Leopard and my home wireless network but SL has dropped my connection numerous times since I did my install. The only way to recover seems to be to reboot my computer.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Mar 11, 2009
If I am connected to WiFi on one network and wired ethernet to another network which one is it going to use? And will it switch to the other if a site cannot be displayed or accessed on one network?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Mar 25, 2012
At least 2-3 times daily my brand new Imac drops the connection to my home network- I have tried to reboot my airport extreme- my ipad and iphone and nest thermostat do not have these issues of dropped connections. As soon as I click the pale wireless signal at the top of the imac, it finds my home network and joins again, but it is a drag to have to redo this every time I want to stream music around the house or check my mail. All of my updates are current.
Info:
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Nov 18, 2010
So I have the 2010 White Unibody 2.4Ghz Macbook and the airport works perfectly fine whether I am at home, the library, school, etc. The problem I am having with it is when I am at home and using the airport, and my iPhone is also connected to the same network, the wifi will work on my iPhone but will stop working on my Macbook. It still shows I am connected but it will not connect to any webpages. As soon as I turn off the Wifi on my iPhone and refresh the page on my Macbook, it will load. Is there anything I can do to fix this. By the way, My Toshiba laptop has no problem with using Wifi the same time my iPhone is connected to it, my Macbook is the only one having problems.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 13, 2009
I have a NetGear Router, locked to a Cable Modem from my ISP, I use a WPA setup with Tkip. I have had this enabled since last November. Now for some reason today, the MacBook will NOT CONNECT, it asks for a WPA code, even when I enter the code it comes up "connection timeout"
I have rebooted the entire network, and while everything else connects the MacBook refuses point blank to even attempt, with the connection timeout message showing within seconds of an attempt.
I cannot restore due to GB's of Data being on the HD and no Mac compatible external available.
View 2 Replies
View Related
May 6, 2012
i am traveling to my parents and want to use my aiport to get wifi. my fathers computer is not running on wifi. what do i need to do to get my airport to work with his router
Info:
MacBook, iOS 5.0.1
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jun 5, 2014
airport will no longer connect to my WiFi, it chooses a self assigned IP address which will not connect
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Nov 8, 2010
I just bought a new mbp and my old 17" MacBook pro 2006 2007 models screen was not really working so I decided to take the screen off and use it as a kitchen computer with an external monitor. The problem is that my airport extreme is in a room right next to the kitchen and the old mbp is not picking up any wifi signals not even the neighbors wifi but, my new mbp can pick up the signals where is the wifi antenna located?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jun 2, 2012
How to replace a airport card wifi in a 2007-2008
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Sep 11, 2007
I've recently converted to mac and replaced my 8 month old Vaio AR11s with a new white macbook(2.16ghz). Recently I am having all sorts of problems with the wireless. I've been reading this forum for a week of so now and realize that I am not alone with my WiFi woes. My problem is the fact that my wireless intermittently drops and although the signal strength is still showing full I have no internet connection until i turn off and on the airport card.. this happens on both psu and battery!
I have tried installing the 2007-004 update, deleting the airport.plist file and the 2007-002 update and it appears to fix the fault for a while but then it comes back. I' ve also messed with enable/disabling frame bursting,different channels on my netgear wnr834n router but my other mac(using ethernet, bought a 24" imac tuesday!) and wifes vista laptop (wifi 802.11g) are fine so I have ruled out the router.
View 24 Replies
View Related
Mar 1, 2010
For wireless: [URL]. Click wireless basics. "For a WiFi network you need an apple Airport base station connected to your cable/dsl modem". Can't I just hook up a wireless router to my cable modem, and ta-da, WiFi.
View 18 Replies
View Related
Jun 29, 2012
I'm encountering an issue with a new Macbook Air and would grateful for any insights. I have an Airport Extreme (latest model, 5th gen, A1408) based network (all updates applied). I have a new 2012 MacBook Air (11") that I noticed was suffering from VERY slow wifi speeds. After looking into it, I realized that if I used the configuration utility to separately name the 5GHz network and connect to wifi on the 2.4 Ghz network, the speed radically improved.
To illustrate, using speedtest.net, I saw download speeds of 35-38 Mb/s using the 2.4 Ghz network. This drops to 2-3 Mb/s when using the 5 Ghz network. The Macbook Air is showing an RSSI value of -56 when connected via 5 GHz and -51 when connected via 2.4 Ghz.
Other deivces in the home have normal connection speeds on the 5 GHz network, as does a previous generation, 2011 MacBook Air.A friend's also new, 2012 11" MacBook Air exhibits the same symptoms, so the issue is not specific to my unit.
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
View 6 Replies
View Related
Oct 28, 2010
I just installed a new AirPort card into my 2006 Mac Pro and it showed up just fine and I was looking forward to getting it online without using iPhone-tethering. BUT, I just can't get it to find any networks? What might be the problem? I've googled, rebooted, updated my drivers etc etc.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Dec 10, 2009
I have a WiFi network setup with two Airport Expresses. One is "n" and one is "b/g". After a day or so I notice that the wifi speed degrades significantly. I'm not sure what settings to play around with. Could it be the channel? In general, is there a better channel to select?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Mar 30, 2010
I have an iMac and my wifi keeps changing to my neighbours network called "BTFON" which I believe is some kind of BT network/Zone which gives me a login page asking me to pay to use it. I keep having to manually change it back to mine. In system preferences I have ticked the box marked 'Ask to join new networks' but it never does ask me, just joins automatically, for no reason i can think of. I'm using OSX version 10.5.8.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 7, 2010
I have an apple airport (age unknown), but it is one that looks like a mushroom cap. I have a network set up in WPA2 format. A nintendo DS user wishes to connect to wifi, but requires a WEP set up. Can I run both kinds of network or must a switch back and forth (since I like WPA2 more)?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Sep 1, 2010
I got my Kindle 3 today (yes I bought one over the ipad simply due to the price) and Ive spent some time trying to connect it to my imacs airport wi-fi. I have tried Customer service over at Amazon but sadly, no reply as of yet. It seems that the Kindle wont connect to "enterprise or peer-to-peer networks". So everytime, I enable sharing and my network shows up - it either wont accept the password or it tells me that "Kindle does not currently connect to enterprise or peer-to-peer networks"
View 7 Replies
View Related
Sep 1, 2010
I was just checking if I can set the Airport express to receive my Airport Extreme's WiFi network and connect a non-WiFi device to the Airport Express ?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jan 18, 2007
A eMac, and I want to be able to access the internet wirelessly with it.it doesn't have an airport card and eMacs are notoriously tough to upgrade.
Would a USB wifi receiver work in place of an Airport card?
The eMac only has USB 1.1. How much will that effect speed if I go with this solution?
View 6 Replies
View Related
Mar 30, 2010
I'm running a PowerBook G4 15" FW800 (running 10.4.11) which has only ever connected to the internet via an Orinoco WiFi card, and I'm trying to upgrade it to a better card whose signals aren't stopped by a couple inches of walls. So I bought an AirPort Extreme card on Ebay and hooked it up, but it's not working right. I'm hoping for some advice. Note that I don't have an AirPort base station; I have a Linksys router, which the Orinoco card was able to communicate with fine. Anyway, I got the AirPort Extreme card (no software CD included), and hooked it up as demonstrated in this video. My laptop already had some AirPort software on it, which refused to acknowledge the existence of the card.
I then I installed the software available here, which seemed to overwrite the previous set of software; I also ran Software Update. No matter what, the laptop refused to acknowledge the existence of the card. Applications->AirPort Utility, AirPort Admin Utility, and AirPort Disk Utility all turn up blanks. AirPort Utility, for example, just says it's "unable to find any Apple wireless devices". The software that was there before I installed the software linked to above gave a different message. if I do get the laptop to recognize the card, will I even be able to connect to the Linksys without an AirPort base station or something?
View 15 Replies
View Related
May 3, 2010
I just jailbroke my iPhone 3GS and installed MyWi to work with my iPad. I also tried it on my MacBook Pro using Bluetooth. After I paired my iPhone and MacbBook Pro together everything worked fine. Now under the Airport Menu I see a separate category labeled "Devices" which is just below where my Home Network is.
My questions is how do I go about deleting this? I've tried everything. I deleted my device under Bluetooth Preferences, quit MyWi, messed around with the Network Preferences and it still appears under the Airport Menu. I even clicked connect but of course that doesn't work since I quit everything and deleted the device in Bluetooth settings. It's not even listed under "Preferred Networks" when you click on the advanced tab. It appears as "(my last name) Hotspot" and is under a tab labeled "Devices"
View 1 Replies
View Related
Oct 9, 2010
Setup main airport extreme with one laptop wireless N and another with the lower grade plus 3gen touchs. Could I set up the express to send out the N/B/G WiFi while the extreme sends out only N wifi?
View 7 Replies
View Related
Dec 17, 2010
Can the ethernet port on the the airport express be used to plug in a non wifi piece of equipment. Example I have a wireless router: WiFi to airport express (via ethernet connector) to xbox360.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Dec 21, 2008
I want to buy an Airport Express to stream by iMac Itune library but not sure if it works as I want -
I have a normal Asus wireless route in my living room. My iMac is in my bed room and can only be LANed via wired connection. My home Hi Fi audio system is in my living room but there cannot be LAN cable between my router and Hi Fi audio system.
If the Airport is connected to my Hi Fi audio system, can I still also stream my iMac Itune libarary? Or Airport must stream a Wi-Fi connected computer?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 22, 2009
I have a 2008 Mac Pro. I am wondering whether its a better idea to go for a WiFi internal card,or is it better to get the airport extreme for wireless internet with router? My knowledge of WiFi/setup is quite limited.
View 4 Replies
View Related
