Imac 20" keeps disconnecting from Netgear wireless router?

[dan steinberg]

Hi there everyone, I am hoping you might be able to help with an Imac wireless networking issue.

We got the stepmom a refurb 20" Imac from apple's website, to replace her older Winbook laptop that had broken. She loves the Mac, but it's having one specific problem, it keeps losing its wi-fi connection with the netgear wireless router located 20 feet away in the next room, through open doorways.

The old winbook laptop never had this issue with the same router, so as far as we know, the router itself is fine (not sure of the exact model but it's a white and silver model that looks a lot like the model shown on netgear.com). We also tried a couple of things with the router itself, like updating to the latest firmware, and setting it to G only instead of mixed. The imac has all of its software updates for Leopard.

The one thing that fixes it is to re-power the router, and then everything's fine for a while, but it happens again a few hours later. A hard wired ethernet connection is unfortunately not an option.

Any ideas? I was going to have my Dad buy a new router in case the Imac's wi-fi chipset just does not like the netgear's specific chipset, but I am worried about what to do if it still occurs with the new router. For that matter, are there any particular wi-fi router brands you guys would recommend?

Thanks in advance for any ideas! My stepmom is a Mac "switcher" so I want her initial mac experience to be a positive one!

[graylocks]

a friend of mine had a macbook doing something similar to this. somewhere in the airport network prefs there was an option to always join preferred network or something like that. once i selected that for her, the problem ceased.

[timg]

If you're gonna replace the router, get an Airport Extreme. It's not cheap, but I bet it works flawlessy with the iMac.

[Paul F.]

I would try setting the Netgear router to use a different wireless channel, in case you're getting intermittant interference from some other device... (cell phone, wireless phone, etc).
That may help.

Otherwise, I'd concur with timg... if you're replacing the router anyway, go with an Airport Extreme...

[GGD]

Check to see if there are any firmware updates available for that Netgear router. Also are you running the latest OS updates from Apple?

[dan steinberg]

We'll try to set the router to a different channel and see if that helps, but I kind of doubt that there's any interference. It would seem to me that if that was the case, the old winbook laptop would have spotty connections as well?

For the "always join preferred network" setting, I think we tried this both ways, but no dice. I can have him try whatever setting it has not been on, and see if that helps.

That's a good suggestion about the airport extreme, and if the wireless needs were going to be forever, I would definitely have them go that route, Thing is, in about 6 months they are moving into a condo with structured wiring, and after that the Imac WILL be able to be hard wired, so what we had in mind was more of an inexpensive router to get through these last few months of wireless.

Any thoughts on Linksys routers? I use a WTR54G and my 2 generations of mac laptop have never failed to connect and hold a connection.......

[timg]

If you're going to go the cheap router route, then I would only suggest staying away from anything Netgear that looks like what you had. Their consumer routers have been crap for a while.

[dan steinberg]

To answer the other post, yeah, the router has the latest firmware and the mac has all of its Leopard updates.

[kj4btkljv]

You don't necessarily need to do the full blown Airport Extreme. You could do the smaller, much less expensive Airport Express. I've had one of the first gen. models since it was released, and it still works fine today. Works fine every day I use it as a matter of fact.

There's probably at least one of the refurbished models on this page:
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/sp...ccessories

Jeff

[datbeme]

Try a different router.

It's probably not the cause of your problem, but I had been using an old Netgear wireless router for many years without issue. I upgraded the firmware about 4 generations to take advantage of unPnP, and I found that the connection kept dropping. After tearing my hair out for a few days, I downgraded to the original firmware and the problem went away. I once again tried the latest firmware, and the problem came back, so I downgraded one version at a time until things were good again.

I found that the connection problems persisted at anything other than the original firmware version.