Networking nightmare

I'm having something of a nightmare getting my mixed Mac and Windows home network working. I have external drives connected to both the Mac machines and I need to be able to access them and the contents of the intenal HDD from a couple of Windows XP machines for backup and file sharing purposes.
I initially got the windows sharing enabled and that allowed me to access the home directories, but it didn't allow me to access the external drives. So I installed Sharepoint on both Mac machines and tried to create additional shares.
That seemed to work in part, but I kept getting access rights warnings which manually going in and giving r/w rights to everyone didn't seem to help resolve. So int he end, I kind of gave up on that and deleted all of the Sharepoint shares.
Now when I try to access the Macs from the Windows machines, they either don't appear on network neighbourhood or if they do appear, when I try to access them they demand a password for a guest user (e.g. iMac/guest) but I don't have guest accounts on the Mac machines and I can't edit the user information - I can only put in a password and, predicatably, that doesn't work as the account doesn't actually exist.
So right at the moment, I have absolutely no way of accessing any files anywhere on either Mac from either of the Windows machines.
How do I unwind the mess that now exists to at least get back to the limited functionality that is meant to be available?
All help greatly appreciated!

Hi Brian!
I belive SharePoints is still the way to go. It's the simplest way to do some complex Windows sharing on your Mac OS X system.
I did have a long "how to" on what I thought you should do and then I remembered my Microsoft best practices for creating Windows shares.
Create your Windows shares with Everyone full control, which means you'll need to select the "Show System Users & Group" option. While you can't make the owner Everyone, you can set it as root and set Group to Everyone and set all permissions to r/w.
Use your Mac OS X's file permissions to set owners and groups and control access.
Hope this helps! bill
1 GHz Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Similar Messages

Help! Network Nightmare

Hi. I'm living in an old office building with a lot of other people. We have a cable modem in the basement which feeds ethernet to a router upstairs, and that router feeds two others. At any given moment the system might have as many as 8-10 users.
Very frequently, the internet quits working, and any combination of resetting modem, routers and computers won't get it going again, until poof, at some point we can connect again.
Our paltry knowledge of setting up a proper network is surely to blame. Can anyone suggest some solutions?

hammondbeck,
First, you posted this the iPhone Internet and Networking section.
Second, are all of the routers doing NAT, if so that can cause some routing issues, but only for those connecting to the routers that are already behind a router.
Third, if you connect directly to the first router in the series, does it have any network utilities?
Hope this helps,
Nathan C.

Can I have two separate wifi networks at home?

My set up is as follows:
I have an AEBS that has a network name of "X" and is connected to my cable modem.
I have a Netgear ethernet switch connected to my AEBS.
I have set up a separate "network" named "Y" that I've configured by "repurposing" an older AE generation 1 that I have hard wired to my ethernet switch.
When I attempt to connect to network "Y", all my network connections begin to fail until I unplug the AE from the the ethernet switch.
Is what I'm attempting something that just can't happen without some kind of "collision". or creation of a network nightmare?
TIA,
JIM

I have set up a separate "network" named "Y" that I've configured by "repurposing" an older AE generation 1 that I have hard wired to my ethernet switch.
That older generation AirPort must be configured to "create a wireless network" and operate in Bridge Mode. Is that the way that it is configured?
If yes, test by connecting the older AirPort directly to the AEBS and bypassing the Ethernet switch. If the older Airport has been setup to "create a wireless network" and it is in fact in Bridge Mode, then things should be working.
Once you have confirmed that this is working, add the Ethernet switch and test that way. Things should work. If they don't, then you need to start troubleshooting the switch.

Unable to create new network

Hi,
I am using Mikrotik router RB750GL and connected one of the ethernet port to the new airport Time Capsule. However, i am unable neither to create a new network nor extending an existing network using MacBook Pro. I have only managed to detect the TimeCapsule but stated "An unexpected error occurred. Try again".
Information:
Airport Time Capsule 2TB (just opened from the box today)
Detected other wifi devices (1)- stated Airport Time Capsule e862d5
Troubleshooting steps:
1) Tried to connect via Macbook
2) Tried to connect via Ipad and Iphone
3) Tried resetting the Airport Time Capsule (10 seconds, power off) for several times. Similar error was noted.

Your problem is obvious.. it is called yosemite.
This is bug infested network nightmare.
You can setup the TC manually if your Mac won't do it automatically.
See Airtport Utility can't find Airport Time Capsule on either of my 2009 Macs
The ipad version of the airport utility usually works ok.. I am not sure if that is what you mean by your second step in troubleshooting.
Try again in complete network isolation .. if it still fails it is possible the TC is faulty.. a fair number are faulty out of the box.. I personally had this happen.. it acted poorly from day one and was completely dead by day five. Not a great piece of hardware overall .. !!
The replacement behaved much better from scratch.. it was easy to see that the first one should have been returned immediately but I needed to see if it was just me.
Do full hardware resets between attempts at setup.. it is much better than messing with any other method.. It is in the link above.

Msg about no signal, no bars, then poof full signal all in 3-5sec

So, I've had my iphone for about two weeks. In that two weeks I've been using my phone when a pop up message comes up saying (next time I'm going to write it down) something about not being able to connect to the network (and there are 0 bars). I click ok, and then immediately after the phone gets full signal again and works like a champ.
The last time it happened was yesterday and it was while I was looking at an app store review for something.
I did some searching, saw a lot of "signal" posts, but without digging through pages I didn't see a similar post. Is this a hardware or just local network issue? Stopped by the ATT store on my way home and asked (with little expectation) and of course was told by the guy that helped me that he'd never heard of such a thing, and that I should just reboot the phone and it should be ok.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks,

OP, there's hundreds of posts in this forum that just don't get it, a sad read about blathering about poor signals and all that. Apple and ATT are telling users to turn off 3G on the iPhones (the only ATT-branded phone available today that disables WCDMA without a hack or SEEM-edit; if you don't know what SEEMs are, that's a whole different read).
First, the bars on the 3G network aren't "signal" - it's a representation/ratio of power available to the CDMA/WCDMA device compared to the noise on the network - Ec/No. Apple changed the "bars" from the originally-mapped RSSI (wrong) to Ec/No (correct) - I posted about this months ago.
For ATT, every WCDMA device on a network - the boxes on the towers _and every single 3G cell phone_ generates noise - and the system has to be balanced to work properly. Resets are acceptable. Verizon's completely controlled device deployment (I have a VZW PDA to go with the iPhone) keeps conflicts to a minimum and their system power balanced. Each cell phone is a potential disruptive force within a network - and most of the posters in this forum don't get that; read the analogy at the bottom of this wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-far_problem
Your iPhone, moving from place to place, is a potential source of disruption to other ATTWS 3G devices. When you move from near a window in your house to the basement with your phone in your pocket, you're changing the power balance of the network around you and the ATTWS phones in your area - if a bus with 10 ATTWS subscribers drives by your house, that temporarily disrupts your connection to the network. If a couple of people down the street use unlocked 3G phones from across the pond that aren't set up to work well with the ATT 3G network, you'll all have less-than-stellar service - VZW controls all of their phones and the software on those devices; I've had two dropped calls on my VZW PDA since February and none on my V325 in over two years, in part due to VZW's vast experience with CDMA networks.
ATTWS is new to the CDMA networking thing, and they don't control the types of phones on their network - I know guys with E71s, unlocked 3G RAZRs direct from MOTO, O2 and Telstra phones in my neighborhood, and I've got a wireless broadband card, and we live near three major roads carrying tens of thousands of cars and hundreds of full buses everyday - a networking nightmare for ATTWS with unlicensed devices competing for data and voice capacity.
Wipe your iPhone, start with a fresh firmware and install your apps, install apps from your PC/Mac and not via the 3G network, get one of the new ATTWS SIM cards (out for a few weeks now), and don't move around your house/office quite so much - and it wouldn't hurt to get a repeater (ATTWS is currently in closed beta testing of femtocells to help equalize the network loading). VZW tells us that they won't guarantee our phones will work in our houses - they just don't tell us why. The reps in the ATTWS stores are generally clueless - or they'd be working somewhere else - the stores are retail outlets, not tech help centers. BTW, all smartphones and PDAs should be rebooted periodically - don't let anybody tell you differently - the iPhone's got at least six radios stuffed in it and in close proximity to a processor, all in a box that fits in your pocket; XP boxes go wonky if the network goes down, your iPhone or my Treo do the same when they're cut off from the network, and they do sleep from time to time.
Another reason that your "bars" go away - I live near both 1900 and 850 towers; using Test Mode confirmed it for me, and I can see the bars go to zero when my iPhone's likely changing from one network to the other or when it goes to sleep, and my Treo does it to, to conserve battery power or when they get bumped off the network.
Apple's got to work on their software a little more to get the power balancing thing down, but my backup Z9 and my mom's V3xx get bumped off too. It's not just them, it's you too. Don't waste too much time poking around these forums, head over the iPhone and ATTWS forums at HowardForums.com - they've been at it a lot longer and have some posters that really have an idea of what's going on. And, take your iPhone to an Apple Store - they have diagnostic software that can troubleshoot issues and failures; Apple generally doesn't moderate these forums like HoFo, but just edits out bad behavior - at HoFo, the mods chime in and seek to help out.
That's my last post here in these forums, good luck.

Time machine issues - ejecting time machine server volumes and slow backups

i've got 2 client machines set up to back up using the OS X 10.5 Server - problem is one is a laptop and therefore needs to be disconnected from the office network frequently. Time Machine doesn't seem to want to let go of the Server drive at all - just won't unmount. Any ideas on this?
In addition, if a backup is running and then interrupted, the next backup runs at absurdly slow speeds. Is there any way to remedy this?
Also, are there any good resources on Time Machine out there? the Apple docs are pretty paltry, and although I understand that its operation is supposed to be dead simple, it would be good to understand how it thinks a bit so as to be able to troubleshoot problems like the ones described above.
thanks in advance
david

Sparsebundle in use is well known..
Look at C12 and C17 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Lion and TC is a network nightmare.
Reboot the TC on a daily basis might help.

HP Officejet Pro L7780 - Network Letter Nightmare!

Hello.
I'm hopin somebody can help with a problem I am having with my HP Officejet Pro L7780:
The printer is connected to my wireless network and all is well with this. The problem lies with the network letter that it assigns itself to on my PC (Windows 7 Ultimate) for the in-built card reader on the printer. It is using the same letter as a virtual cd-rom drive on my PC - and I would like to move the letter the printer uses - and not the cd-rom drive, as I have my PC setup in a way where different types of drives are grouped together. Is there some way (possibly through the Windows registry) that would allow me to change the letter of the network drive (as it seems to automatically assgn one) and keep it using that new letter rather than interfering with the cd-rom drive and denying access to it every time Windows 7 boots?
Or alternatively disabling the card reader function on the printer as I don't use it?
Thanks to anybody who can solve this - as it is driving me mad!
This question was solved.
View Solution.

I finally found a solution to this problem that works for me.
I too have an HP printer that was mapping its memory card slots to a Z: drive every time I booted my Windows 7 computer.
To change the mapping to another letter to free up the Z: letter, I placed a memory card into one of the printer memory card slots. I then disconnected the Z: drive from the printer mapping (right click the Z: drive in Windows Explorer and choose the Disconnect option).
I then used the "Map network drive " option on Windows Explorer toolbar to map the printer memory card slot to another drive letter. You have to know the network address (or name) for the printer to do this: \\[printer network address or name]\memory_card (e.g.: \\192.168.1.108\memory_card). This address goes in the "Folder" textbox of the Map dialog window. Make sure the "Reconnect at logon" option is checked. And make sure you select a new drive letter that won't be needed for anything else later. Then click "Finish."
After I did this, the printer has continued to use the new drive letter at boot-up instead of Z:, leaving Z: free for other applications.
I don't think the above works if there is no memory card in one of the printer memory card slot.

MacBook Pro's (17" 2.4 intel) The lion nightmare continues- wi-fi networks forgotten after sleep/restarts?

Hello all,
I made the mistake of upgrading (funny word for what I got) to Lion, and ever since, I've had numerous issues with my trusty MacBookPro (2008, 2.4 ghz, 17"). The latest problem has been severly annoying though, and I just would like to see if any of you have some tips I could try out. Basically, every single time I close down the lid to put my computer to sleep, or even after it goes to sleep on it's own, when I go to wake my computer, it no longer is connected to my wi-fi network, and for a period of 2-5 minutes, is acts like it is searching for networks. When this exercise is over, I can use the pull down menu brought up by clicking on the wifi icon to select my network and the computer re-connects. I saw that Apple released an update for 2011 MacBookPro's that had this same issue, and this made the problem even more irritating to me since they failed to address those of us who have older computers that have the same issue. I have tried erasing all known network in the network preferences window using the plus and minus buttons, and then re-adding my network. That didn't work. Any advice you guys have would be great, and if anyone knows of Apple issuing refunds for people who purchased Lion, please let me know;)
Thanks very much for your time!
-Randall

every single time I close down the lid to put my computer to sleep, or even after it goes to sleep on it's own, when I go to wake my computer, it no longer is connected to my wi-fi network, and for a period of 2-5 minutes, is acts like it is searching for networks
the computer does disconnect if it goes to sleep to conserve power, as WiFi takes a lot of it.
now connecting back up is the problem, so what you do is review the Wifi secuirty page here, change your network name and password on the router, WPA2(AES)
then connect manually on the Mac and when it says "remember this in my keychain" do so, this way it will connect automatically.
If you have a "hidden network" on the router, the Mac has to keep asking "joe network are you there?" and this is security issue obviiously as you could be taking your machine to a coffe shop and it's asking where "joe is" thus letting the hackers know you have a hidden network someplace.
So the Mac doesn't ask "joe are you there" it only does so when you boot up, not waking from sleep where it can be moved.
So turn off "hidden network" on your rouer as it's not protecting you one bit, the hackers can sniff hidden networks too.
Got it?
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3047
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

Nightmare!!! nothing listed in the network prefrences!!!!

i have no airport, ethernet, or bluetooth listed in network preferences???
i was have an issue with my mac book leopard using v10.8 and connecting the my linksys router with my aiport, at first i was able to connect but was not able to browse the web. After reading hundreds of post through this forum i took the advice of many people.yesterday went home and kept troubleshooting and created a huge issues, i logged in my computer in safe mode in attempt to see if i could connect and browse, unsuccesfull. i than deleted multiple internet inconfig.plist files that were listed to be safely removed. empty trash can. rebooted mac and cleared pram. restarted mac in safe mode and the airport showed not configured and when attempted to open network preferences it would just keep loading and than not respond and would be forced force quit program. i rebooted the mac and went into fixed permissions. let it run through and rebooted. the mac would than let me open network prefernces but it does not list bluetooth, aiport, or ethernet. aiport in the upper rite corner of the screen shows not configured. when i look into about this mac and view the aiport is shows it but does not list the "locale" its blank. in network prefernces if i attempt to hit the plus sign to add a new connection the mac loads intell it it become non responsive and i have to force close it. i am lost and feel helpless here and am hoping someone has some info to help. i do not have a leopord boot dvd so i have not attempted to reload the os. please if anyone has any info to help it would be greatly apperciated, thanks

I realize this is upsetting for you, but try to contain your question to one post and do not post the same question, worded differently in different threads.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2212060&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2212945&tstart=0

Networked Canon ir4080i UFR II Nightmare

I'm the only Mac user in a company of about 40 people using a networked Canon ir4080i printer. Getting my computer to print on this machine was not fun, but using some of the forum discussions here I was able to do it. I'm using the UFR II driver. The way it finally worked for me was to, in the Printer Setup Utility, choose Add > Default Browser > More Printers > Canon IP (UFR II). Then I typed in the printer's IP address and I was home free.
The problem now is that it won't always print. We do have a password on our printer that comes up every time you print. So it asks for username and password and I type them in (except sometimes it won't let me type in those boxes unless I tab between them for a few minutes, trying to type in each until finally it lets me type. I have no idea if that is related or just another weird thing). Then the printer monitor opens, as does a little app called UFR II Gauge. Half the time the Gauge thing disappears pretty quickly from the dock and the document prints. But just as often the print jobs just stop. No message or error, it just stops. If I hit Start Jobs the little UFR II Gauge comes back up for a few seconds then disappears and it says Jobs Stopped again. Or sometimes the UFR II Gauge just stays in the dock as well, and if I click on it it comes up just sitting there - not frozen but not doing anything, either.
If a document doesn't print for me once, chances are it won't print again (at least for a while). But I can sometimes bring something else up and it will print fine. Doesn't seem to be dependent on file sizes (I'm the graphic arts guy here so most of the stuff I print is pretty big). It will refuse to print Microsoft Word as often as it refuses to print InDesign or Photoshop.
Sorry if that was way too much information, but does anyone know what's going on with this thing? I've Googled until I couldn't google any more and got nothing....
Thanks,
Noah

Some Clarification (I Think)
After another half-day of testing I think the problem is with a specific document that will not print. It's a one-page testimonial created in InDesign using the same setup as 3-4 other testimonials that print just fine. This one, for whatever reason, stops printing jobs every time I try to print it. I have renamed the document, copied everything out of it into another document and then tried to print that one, altered sections, changed psd photos included in it to jpgs. Nothing works.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Noah

How to contact Internet from my local network?

I'm able to get onto the Internet by piggybacking on a nearby open LAN.( I am not a new user, but I'm not a computer scientist.)
This is a desperation act because I can no longer connect to the Internet via Earthlink, my ISP. I have checked every aspect, physical connections to switching from my G5 to my iBook and back again to configure my Airport Extreme base station. I have even switched AEs. I have changed my own network stats. I have replaced the phone wire. I have changed routers. I have even changed modems, but I was unable to program it, thanks to missing instructions mostly meant for Windows users anyway.
I am using a Broadmax DSL modem from Earthlink, and have spent close to two hours on the phone with 3 techies. They really tried to help.
When I mentioned my phone line was from Verizon I heard ununderstandable muttering. The paranoid thought came to me: Was Verizon sabotaging Earthlink to get its customers to switch? How's that for paranoia? I even called Verizon to switch to them, but they are total incompetents -- the techies are good, if you get a good one, but the rest of the outfit haven't yet figured out what to do with two tin cans and a length of string.
The Earthlink techies and I finally agreed it might be a bad modem and another is on the way to me.
I am not confident.
My first and original modem, the Broadmax, could always be fixed by going through the unplugging it for a few seconds or hours, and then I'd have no problems for many months, until I went away and unplugged it. Getting back on the Internet was a nightmare.
The phone line, DSL, is OK. I can make voice calls over it, but the DSL just isn't there.
Having tracked all, and I mean ALL, the usual suspects, I am on the point of hiring an Apple guy to come in and help me. But I would appreciate any advice from someone knowledgeable about this situation.
G5 iMac, 1.8 mHz; 2 G3 ibooks; G4 PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.6)
G5 iMac, 1.8 mHz; 2 G3 ibooks; G4 PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.6)

OK.

File & folder sharing with privileges on my network does not work. What is wrong?

My Timecapsule is creating a network between my iMac with OS 10.7.5 and my Macbook Pro Retina OS 10.9.2. I am trying to setup a folder on my iMac with controlled access privileges to work as a server for others using the Macbook as a client. I followed different tutorials to the letter, but it did not work, I could not get the connection. Then I called the Apple help line. It turns out that just setting it up with a 'sharing only' account etc. in 'sharing ' in the 'system preferences' is not enough. One also has to set up the same priviliges in the 'get info' window of the folder directly at the same time...so a double setup. They could not explain properly why and there is no mention of this whatsoever in any tutorial I found on the internet. Anyway, I tried that and it still did not work. When I add the user in the 'get info' window and press enter, suddenly the user does not show up in the privilege box with the user name but instead a line saying something like "searching for user" and something small dudeling next to it......I called Apple again. After two agonizing hours on the phone where I was treated like an imbecile it turns out one has to somehow go through the address book ??? Why, I have no clue and how, I do not remember, but suddenly it worked.
Anyway, now two month later I had to add a new user account to my Macbook and I need to give it access to my server folder on my iMac. Well same problem again. I cannot remeber what we did 2 month ago an cannot call Apple, because my service period has expired. I tried myself and got the dudle in the folders 'get info' window again. Then by mistake I deleted myself as the only administrator account on the Imac from the access privileges to that shaered server folder. When I tried to put my account back into the folders privilege settings I got the same message and the dudeling thingy there too. Frustrated I thought it is best to just re-start the computer.......that was the end of it all: Now the startup window does not show my account name and icon anymore, just two lines to fill in the account name and password. The upper line has an arrow pointing left, the lower for the password an arrow pointing right. I filled in the account name and the password....the dudle circle comes and nothing happens, it seems to crash. When I click on the arrows the sign-in lines disappear, only the three buttons for going to sleep, re-start and turn off at the bottom are the only items left on the screen. I tried 10 times to no avail. This is turning into a nightmare!! My account is the only user account on this iMac.......
What am I doing wrong? Or what is wrong with my iMac?
Why is there nothing mentioned about these issues in the tutorials or anywhere else? Why do the tutorials say it is so easy, when even the staff on Apple's helpline cannot figure it out without having lengthy side conferences with their co-workers and managers???
Does anybody know what I have to do again with the address book to add this external 'sharing only' user account to the folder's privilege settings?
I assumme I have to re-boot my computer tomorrow and restore it from the Time Capsule. How do I do that? I cannot log in????
With the setup I had working for the last two month there were still issues with acces conflict to new subfolders and files inside the shared folder between me and the Macbook account user. I have read that the solution is to create a group and give the group access privileges to the folder. However, I could not find any details on the exact steps to follow. I need the exact steps, otherwise this will turn into the next nightmare. Where can I find this info.
I would really appreciate your help with answers and solutions to these complex issues
Thank you

check out managed datasources in the manuals

Finder lock ups due to samba shares being invalidated by changing network

I often leave my macbook online for a long time unattended, for simplicity I tend to plug it into its power lead, and also connect it up to my gigabit network. I know i've set the priority in my connections to prefer the wired connection over wireless but just to keep things simple i disable airport so i can be sure that i will be connected via gigabit.
I'll then go in and map a network drive from one of my PCs on the lan, this is mounted and available.
Sometime in the future i'll go mobile again, like i just did today. Disconnecting power and gigabit ethernet, i re-enable airport. After a short while its all good to go.. I then start using the internet connection. All is fine.
Then finally i spot that my samba drive is still mapped, i've had trouble selecting this drive to use it, but sadly also you get real trouble by just trying to eject the mount. Doing so and nothing happens.. after 10-20 seconds everything is frozen, including the animated dock, and top toolbar, and you are presented with the spinning wheel of activity.
applealtesc does NOT bring up the force close dialog, and eventually i was forced to force a shutdown.. apple power button isn't it? I had the power button held down for a long time.
Generally i find the mounting samba drives a bit of a pain in the finder but i can put up with it. Samba shares on windows are a nightmare but they rarely bring down the whole system when a connection has been broken.. i'd love it if mac OS would time out the samba share and just give up, rather than hanging in the way it does do.
Obviously i'm accessing my LAN through a different interface and IP address than i was when i set up the connection. I am not sure if you have a similar problem as described if you just disconnect from the network and have no net connection at all.. not sure what it would do with a share in this way.
Is this worth logging as an actual bug? anyone got any suggestions to fix it?

Ok, no luck yet. Maybe I can ask another question directly related to this issue. I am trying to find the cause of this and I am wondering if there is a brief dropout in the connection to the NAS. By brief, I mean really brief. The NAS is connected via a Homeplug network connection (network via the homes power points) and maybe for a very brief period interferrence on the lines dropped the AFP connection.
Is it normal that it is then impossible for AFP to reconnect, even when the NAS is clearly back on the network?
Any drop will have to be very brief as I can always stream music without issues, and no drop or slow down has caused buffering issues.
But, I don't recall getting this issue when directly connected to the iMac via a short ethernet cable for the initial Time Machine backups that take over a day.
What I don't understand though, is if the connection did briefly drop and loose the AFP link, why can AFP no longer connect back? Why do I need to sleep the iMac and then wake it again.
HTTP connections to the NAS never seem to drop, and when I can't recconnect via AFP, I can always connect via HTTP? Is this expected of the AFP protocol? Or is it an unexpected issue?

Do not buy a 4510L - internet randomly hangs while browsing - likely 4G network issues

Ok, so I was excited to jump into a 4G wifi hotspot. I did some quick research and noticed the Samsung 4G hotspot was having some internet connection issues. Samsung had released an update but I didn't want to bother. I mentioned to the Verizon Wireless sales person the hotspot issues and she mentioned she hadn't seen any issues with the Samsung or Mifi device... so I purchased the mifi4510L... and so starts the nightmare!
So the mifi4510L device started up and I connected to the internet. My connection speed was slower than my 3G ATT smartphone. I restarted the device a few times and finally noticed really high speeds both down and up. Apparently upon reading the manual, at first it was flashing yellow (3G connection) and after 30 minutes it finally found the 4G (flashing green) with 4 bars.
I immediately start noticing that when I'm working, websites start to randomly hang... using windows xp. I restarted the device numerous times, took out the battery, sim card and it still would hang on random websites. So I tried using my personal Windows 7 laptop... same problem... how about my Android smartphone on wifi... same problem... oh and an old laptop I have at home with Windows Vista... same problem.
So, of course, the first thing to do is jump on google to see if this is a wide spread problem with mifi. The problem is though, that many people don't know how to describe the problem. I saw a few instances of people having somewhat similar problems and exchanging the device numerous times and even switching out sim cards.
By now it is very late at night/early morning. I thought since many people seem to be having issues maybe Verizon customer service would be aware of the problem and could help. Well now I was talking to someone who barely speaks english. He has no idea about what this mifi thing is and has never dealt with any tech support regarding the device. I was put on hold while he researched the issue, I asked about resetting the device, and he mentioned the Mifi has no reset button... later, I found a pdf of the manual and found the reset button..I was working in the dark and never noticed it was right there in front of me, So before I hung up the phone, Verizon customer service promised they would call within 48hrs and give me an update on what they had found... It's been a month and still no call.
So a week later, the problem is still occurring, even at different locations with 4bars on 4G. I decided to stop by the Verizon wireless store. I asked about issues with the mifi and was told there weren't any issues. I found this strange since I had now seen so many posts online about the problems people were having. I tried every salesman in the store and was told the same. Ok so now I wanted to try out the Samsung hotspot. At first I was told I could only exchange it for another mifi... then they said oh I would just have to pay a restocking fee. Some online posts seemed to suggest that exchanging the device and sim card helped so I did just that. I made it home, and the first thing I notice is that now I had no sim card... a trip back to the store to pick up the sim card. It took about 10-15 minutes before it established the 4G connection but I was back up and running. I was online for about 10 minutes and no hang so I went to bed.
Another week goes by and now I am really frustrated. Calls to Verizon are the typical; there are no problems, just reset,restart,or go exchange for a new one.
And now I found the following video that suggests it's the 4G network itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AQMMK87N2g
Verizon is supposed to be a great company! Why would they destroy their reputation just to make a quick few million dollars. The Customer Service/tech support was a horrible experience and the 4G network doesn't seem to work properly.
A call tonight to Verizon concluded with "well with any new technology there are bound to be some issues, over time Verizon should have some type of fix".
Where is the class action lawsuit?!?!

JV1, if you are early enough to get out of the contract, do it! If you browse through these forums (and other on internet) you will find this is Verizon 4G, it will NOT get better anytime soon. This problem has existed since launch, through the 4510L is the worst device they have, it's not the culprit, I have had all of them. It is the network.
Oh and by the way, Verizon isn't stupid, someone else pointed out to me the small print on the contract prohibits you from pursuing a class action suit against them. All disputes have to be settled by arbitration which is binding per contract. Guess they knew this would happen......

Need help configuring Aiport Extreme A1034 to optimize network signal.

Greetings, I am a very loyal mac user from back in the days of the Quadra 650. I have torn apart and fixed most macs for the last 13, but I must say configuring this wireless network has got me stumped. Any help would be gladly appreciated.
I went from a ibook 1 Ghz with a plastic case to a aluminum powerbook g4 1.67 to find out that the metal case greatly diminished the computers ability to receive a wifi signal from my Rv park. I then decided to buy an Airport Extreme A1034 that has the antenna port and then bought a Hawking 15db directional antenna. My intention was to have the Airport Base station receive the 802.11b wifi signal sent out from the office of the RV park through the Hawking antenna, and then have the base station take that signal it received and send that high speed wifi signal to the airport card in my Powerbook G4. Sounds simple enough, I thought it would be. I have found that using Airport set up assistant doesn't give me that option. I then proceeded to get into the workings of the Airport Admin Utility. I have found myself ready to pull my hair out trying to configure the 6 different tabs being, Airport , Internet, Network, Port Mapping, Access control, and WDS.
I do know that everything in the Airport tab is correct. The big problem I think is between the Internet, Network and WDS tabs. It seems that the Airport base station was basically made to have a high speed connection plugged into it via ethernet and then the base station broadcasts to host computers such as my PowerBook G4. My initial thought was to connect via Airport WDS in the internet tab and then set my powerbook to connect directly to the base station through the airport card. I read up on this via Apples Designing Airport networks that came on the Airport installation CD. It talked in detail about setting up the WDS tab to do something like I want but it still involves a hard wired ethernet connection at the start of it. I have also played around extensively with the Network control panel and the sharing control panel , I thought about turning the airport card inside my powerbook into a software or virtual base station and then try some sort of WDS relay. Through all this I had the Airport extreme go none responsive on me and not letting me log in. That's another story of 10 hours of **** fixing it, but i did. Even the reset button stopped working for a while. As of now I can access everything everywhere. I also have ALL the IP addresses Hardware(MAC) address, subnet masks and router addresses for every location in this proposed wireless chain. I just need someone to end this stressful nightmare. They say you learn through trial and error, that is how I learned most of my computer skills over the decades, that and Applecare certified tech training many years ago, But it doesn't help anyone if I stick a large knife through my base station. I can provide a phone number if your willing to call. My email is [email protected] . If your in the San Diego area, I can get ya free passes to the nudist colony where I live, if your in for a new adventure in turn for setting up this network for me. Check out http://www.deanzasprings.com . its where I live.
Rich

1. First, can someone confirm that the Extreme card be used as a WDS main base?
Sorry, but no you cannot use the AirPort Extreme card in a WDS as either a main, relay or remote base station. It does not support this function.

Networking nightmare

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