Troubleshooting the AirPort: more follow-ups

AirPort-related items continued to dominate our email this weekend (see our MacFixIt Extra on the AirPort for other recent items).

Work-around consensus Many readers continue to emphasize the TCP/IP control panel as the key to fixing connections problems that only affect TCP/IP: (1) Make sure TCP/IP's "Load only when needed" is unchecked as a preventative measure and (2) toggle configurations when a problem occurs. If that fails, try a PRAM zap before giving up in despair.

Ready or not? Other media sources voice their opinion My AirPort continues to function well, after the initial 48 hours of problems. It's almost like it needed a period of breaking in and now its fine. However, other recent media reports echo some of the frustrations I had.

An article in the Washington Post (thanks, David Wang) states: "hooking this gadget up can be a maddening hassle, the sort of headache that Windows users are used to and that Apple users like to be smug about avoiding."

A review in Macworld, while positive overall (it gives the AirPort Base Station 3 and 1/2 mice) notes that " reestablishing broken connections can be difficult."

New iBooks work better? Bill Smook has an intriguing claim (that we cannot confirm). He believes that Apple may have made a silent fix to currently shipping iBooks that (in addition to other changes) makes AirPort connections more reliable. He has two iBooks from different production runs. Of the newer one, he writes: "I first noticed that the keyboard is different. Much better. Different feel. Strong/solid! It also comes with Mac OS 9 and a new version of the Mac OS ROM (3.1.1)." And all the problems he had with AirPort connections on his first iBook did not occur with this one.

Network name mystery solved Eric Belsley (on the MRP) used EtherPeek to figure out how the AirPort derives the name it broadcasts to its wireless network. It helped him to get his Lucent WaveLAN card to work. Read Friday's updates for the details.

Running AirPort from a non-AirPort-ready Mac: another inconvenience Bill Cheeseman bemoans that fact that non-AirPort-ready Macs cannot run the AirPort application or Control Strip module (only the AirPort Utility works, as we have discussed before). When Bill uses it for a PPP connection, he finds: "I cannot hang up the Base Station modem from my G3 minitower, nor even detect whether it is currently off hook. I don't like having to trust it to hang up automatically after 10 minutes."

Update: Jim Bailey replies: "Actually, there is a way to hang-up the modem. You can use the Airport Utility across the Ethernet connection to hangup the modem. There is a "Reset" menu item under the menu "Base Station" that is available once you select the Base Station and enter the password. One of the things that resetting your Airport Base Station does is hangup the modem. It also will disconnect anyone using the Base Station wirelessly though."