Any Resolution to 2Wire/Mac Wireless Issue?

[nathanduvall]

Hey guys - I'm a new Uverse customer and I'm hoping I'm hoping I can find someone that can help me. I've been on the phone with Uverse tech support several times now and they claim to have never heard of a 2wire/Mac issue, but obviously there is one with the number of people reporting similar issues elsewhere.

Here's my problem - I've got a Macbook Pro running 10.6.3 and I've got a 2Wire 3800HGV-B. I experience constant wireless drops, sometimes as many as one every 3-5 minutes. I've tried just about everything from changing wireless channels to moving, power levels, authentication types, hard coding the DNS servers into my Mac and changing wireless modes - but I still seem to be having intermittent issues. I just read a thread on a different forum recommending setting it to b only and so far that's rendered the best results, but I've it still drops fequently. Here's my current setup:

• SSID: Enabled
• Wireless Channel: 11 (although I've tried almost every one now)
• Authentication: WPA-PSK and WPA-PSK2
• Power Setting: 10
• Wireless Mode: 802.11b/g
• Not using MAC filtering

Also, just to note I've experienced these same connectivity issues with on my iPhone as well as an iTouch - odd that they're all Apple products...

Sorry for the long post but hoping to get all of this out there so someone can assist and I can spread the word to others I know with Mac's thinking of switching to Uverse in the near future. Thanks.

[sammiemo]

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indycolts2k6 wrote:

Here's my problem - I've got a Macbook Pro running 10.6.3 and I've got a 2Wire 3800HGV-B. I experience constant wireless drops, sometimes as many as one every 3-5 minutes.

[snip[ 

Also, just to note I've experienced these same connectivity issues with on my iPhone as well as an iTouch - odd that they're all Apple products...

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You say you're a new customer, have you always had issues, or are they more frequent since upgrading to OS X 10.6.3? If the problem is more pronounced since upgrading, here's something you can try:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/04/02/wireless-dropping-problems-with-mac-os-10-6-3-update-a-simple-fix/

From the link:

* Open ‘System Preferences’
* Click the ‘Network’ icon
* At the top ‘Location’ pull-down menu navigate down to ‘Edit Locations’
* Click on the + sign to add a new Location
* Name it anything, click OK,
* Select the “Network Name” (wireless router) then click Apply

Hope that helps!

[nathanduvall]

Yeah, I'm a new customer as of 3/20. No upgrades to my MBP that I know of since then. I'll give this a shot, but  I'm pretty sure this is an ongoing 2wire/Mac/DNS communication issue, especially since I'm having the same type of issues on my iPhone and iTouch devices.

[sammiemo]

I haven't had any such issues, though I don't use the wireless feature of the RG that often (I have an Airport Extreme hooked to it that I use for 802.11n).

Can you look in the system log in the Console app (Applications -> Utilities -> Console) and see if there are any network related messages logged whenever this happens?

There are several Mac users on the forums here, so I believe this a problem with your RG or your particular setup rather than with Apple equipment in general.

[nathanduvall]

Thanks for the reply. I'll keep an eye on the console and report back what it says when I drop the next time, give me 30 seconds, lol.

[gabbits]

Funny - I have two Macs and the wireless dropping problem just started yesterday.  And I have had 10.6.3 for a couple of weeks. 

I have been a uVerse subscriber since Sep 08 and also had this problem with a PC running Vista until I replaced it with an iMac last July.   Just strange that it started happening  yesterday. 

[nathanduvall]

I've had console up for almost 24 hours now and I'm not seeing anything logged when my wireless connection drops out. I was hoping it'd say something, but no luck.

[oz_1 ACE - Wizard]

I am starting to suspect a few bad RG's my friend is running 10.6.3 on a MB using only the RG not affected I use an Airport Extreme with the RG no problem and I am running 10.6.3 on a 5 month old MBP.no affect It could be a bad wi-fi card

in a few Mac's it was documented months ago but moving the unit to a friends house and not having any issues would

take that equation out of play.

[Randito]

I've had similar problems with my brand new AT&T 3800HGV-B uverse setup. 

All of the Apple products in my house stopped working -- the Mac mini running 10.5, the Macbook Pro running 10.5, the iTouch, and the iPhone 3G. 

I ran iStumbler to swtich to the least conjested channel in my neighborhood.  Nothing.  I switched to 802.11b from 802.11b/g.  Nothing.  Neither the Mac mini or the Macbook Pro was able to get a valid IP address from the DHCP server on the router.  I flushed the cache on the Mac (dscacheutil -flushcache).  Nothing.

I ended up rebooting the 3800HGV-B and that fixed the problem.  But I have a nagging suspicion that problem is going to show up again in 5 days.  That's how long it worked after the initial install before everything went bat-crap crazy.  I set the DHCP lease on the router from 24 hours to a larger value in an attempt to stave off the inevitable. 

[Alex_A]

This problem is occuring with PC's also.... not only Mac's... I think it has to do with a recent firmware upgrade on the 2wires.. Because I didnt have issues, before the upgrade...

[oz_1 ACE - Wizard]

I don't have this problem with my Mac but my neighbor has stated on his HP at least once a week this occurs very strange

problem indeed and a reboot seems to fix it. But I do use an Airport Extreme for my wireless instead of the RG.

[ThomasLee_1]

I have a very new MacBook Pro, and a few days after switching to AT&T UVerse for Internet service, I noticed that I was starting to get random disconnects.  I had recently installed a software update from Apple, and I thought that might have caused it, but now I think it didn't.

The message I always get whenever a disconnect occurs is:

4/29/10 11:56:15 AM    kernel    AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 4 (Disassociated due to inactivity).

These messages appear in the log (Applications -> Utilities -> Console, click All Messages -- filtering on 'kernel' or even 'AirPort' helps narrow them down), for anybody who doesn't already know.

I tried changing many router settings to make these disconnects stop, including the channel, the security protocol (WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc.), and the wireless mode (802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11b/g), because there are many threads on forums suggesting that I change these.  None of them worked.  I tried deleting my network settings on my MacBook and recreating them.  That didn't help.  I even tried changing a kernel setting in /etc/sysctl.conf, which one person did after talking to Apple support, but that didn't help me.

What finally seems to have helped is rebooting the router, as others in this thread have said.  It is going on an hour since I rebooted it, and I have had no disconnects since then.  At this point, my theory is that, a few days after a reboot, the router starts to act "funky" -- behaving in a way that deviates just enough from the standard to cause problems for Apple's software.  But other devices may not notice the difference or may be able to work around it (most likely this isn't an intentional workaround, just a lucky accident).  If this is correct, there's a bug in the router's firmware, and I hope they find and fix it soon.

[ThomasLee_1]

In case it helps somebody, after rebooting the 2Wire gateway, I stayed online for almost 5 hours without a single dropped connection, whereas before rebooting it I got between 5 and 10 dropped connections per hour, no matter what other techniques I tried.  I'd guess that my gateway was defective, except that other people are posting about this problem, so unless it's a common physical defect, I consider a firmware bug the most likely culprit.  I don't know how to report this to 2Wire, though.

[FuzzyLogik]

Hi, first time poster here as I discovered these boards last night. My father's been a Uverse customer for at least a year, service has been fine for the most part. Lately however, I've been having a similar issue. My iTouch's wireless connection will work fine for a few minutes, then disconnects and can't reconnect. I found that my siblings' iTouchs were experiencing the same issue. That same day, the XBox 360 that was connected wirelessly also became affected . Whoever was using it would become disconnected after a while. They could reconnect, but shortly afterwards they would be disconnected again. All the PCs connected wirelessly in the house were working fine though. I figured the problem was with the RG (2Wire 3800HGV-B) after making sure it wasn't just one particular device that was having a problem. Ended up resetting the RG and it only provided a temporary solution as the disconnects occurred again a couple of days after.

I was gonna give a call to customer service today until I decided to dig a little deeper last night and see what else I could find. Discovered this thread last night and decided to test the possible solution: http://utalk.att.com/t5/High-Speed-Internet-Access/Suddenly-laptop-will-not-connect-wirelessly/td-p/...

After replicating the issue with my iTouch, I went ahead and disabled the Wi-Fi Protected Setup. Since then my iTouch has yet to drop connection and the same goes for the XBox. Maybe the Mac products (and even XBoxes) aren't compatible with this feature? I'd like to hear of anyone's result with this if they decide to try it.

[nathanduvall]

Well, things had been going fairly well for me up until last night. I hadn't noticed any drops for several days but then it all came crashing down. I've changed about every setting imaginable in the RG, but I've never noticed this wi-fi protected setup option, but will look for that when I get home. The only other thing I know to do is buy a Linksys router and try to figure out how to bridge the connections.

[nathanduvall]

Ok, I just wanted to update the thread to let anyone else know that disabling wi-fi protected setup has *knock on wood*  seemed to aleviate my wireless connectivity issues - at least for almost a week now. For more details of how to do this, hop over to this thread.

Thanks to  Oakseer for the posting this!

[kjeffp24_1]

I hope that works for you but I finally just bit the bullet and bought a linksys e3000 to put in bridge mode and that solved all of my problems. The bridge mode was a bit tricky but in the end I just set it to DHCP, connected a cable from the uplink on the linksys to the RG and then put that in DMZ plus. I changed the Linksys router IP to 192.168.2.1 to avoid any conflicts and put everything besides the HPNA equipment on the linksys.

I have an iMac, iPad, iPhone, and a MBP and all are working great on wireless N now. The dual band of the e3000 allowed me to put most of them on the 5Ghz channel to avoid any conflicts in my area. It's kind of an expensive thing to have to do to have reliable connectivity but well worth it.

Good luck

Jeff

[nathanduvall]

Yeah, I must have forgotten to knock on wood, because literally as soon as I finished that post, a few hours later I went down again. I was still connected to the RG fine, but I'd just get a blank white page when trying to browse, etc. I literally made every setting change possible within the RG, the last was disabling wi-fi protected setup, which kept me up for about a week, but still a no-go. Finally, I just gave in (like Jeff above me) and installed a router to serve as the wireless, following these instructions:

http://www.sbbala.com/uverse/pg2.html
http://utalk.att.com/t5/High-Speed-Internet-Access/Linksys-WRG54t-router/td-p/108437

I also got lucky and got a response back from a Uverse technician (Preston) who was nice enough to check everything over. He emailed the following back to me earlier today and I thought I'd share it with you all, since it will most likely effect all Uverse customers who are also Apple product users, as I am. I hope this saves others some time and frustration. You can email uversecare@att.com and you'll likely reach him or the L2 technicians there.

Begin forwarded message:

Nathan,

Unfortunately this issue is a known issue going on with the 2-wire firmware, and we are actively working with 2-wire to implement a fix for it. I apologize for the inconvenience, if you have a 3rd party router (Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, etc) that does wireless, you should be able to hook it up to the 2-wire RG and put it in DMZ Plus mode, and disable the wireless as a work around for this. In the meantime is there anything else I can do for you?

Thanks,

U-verse Care

Preston
AT&T U-Verse Tier II Technical Support
U-Verse SMS / Special Projects
SMST Hours 7:00am to 9:00pm Monday - Saturday

[mikeflash]

I have the same problem as everyone else with a SL Macbook Pro. If Uverse has admitted the problem is with their product (2Wire) why do we have to jump thru hoops. They need to refund us months of interrupted service hourly, daily and monthly. Everytime I get a tech (6) so far,  to my house, they all go through the motions of trying to fix the problem but to no avail. I've also had Apple replace the airport card as my MBP was new with SL already installed. This is so aggravating for the last six months I'm ready to go to another provider, maybe back to Dishnet or Comcast cable.

The thing I don't understand about this whole mess is why is the fix taking so long, it's not like it happened yesterday but many MONTHS ago. AT&T can put pressure on 2WIRE if they want to. I guess the Mac population isn't that big on Uverse or they just don't care.

One of many Unhappy Customer of Uverse.

[oz_1 ACE - Wizard]

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mikeflash wrote:

I have the same problem as everyone else with a SL Macbook Pro. If Uverse has admitted the problem is with their product (2Wire) why do we have to jump thru hoops. They need to refund us months of interrupted service hourly, daily and monthly. Everytime I get a tech (6) so far,  to my house, they all go through the motions of trying to fix the problem but to no avail. I've also had Apple replace the airport card as my MBP was new with SL already installed. This is so aggravating for the last six months I'm ready to go to another provider, maybe back to Dishnet or Comcast cable.

The thing I don't understand about this whole mess is why is the fix taking so long, it's not like it happened yesterday but many MONTHS ago. AT&T can put pressure on 2WIRE if they want to. I guess the Mac population isn't that big on Uverse or they just don't care.

One of many Unhappy Customer of Uverse.

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I don't know what to think about this as I have 2 friends with MacBooks using 2wire only and no problems and one client that has to use an Airport Extreme to keep from having this issue.

[Randyk3]

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oz wrote:

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I don't know what to think about this as I have 2 friends with MacBooks using 2wire only and no problems and one client that has to use an Airport Extreme to keep from having this issue.

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Neither do I since I was having this trouble with my iMac and Macbook Pro wireless but not with the Dell laptop.  I also installed an Airport Extreme as a work around.  But since the upgrade on the RG all of my computers work fine on the 2Wire.  I no longer use the AE.  

[mikeflash]

Randyk3  said "  But since the upgrade on the RG all of my computers work fine on the 2Wire.  "

What kind UPGRADE. New Box or new firmware, What? Need more of an explanation please. Also how did you upgrade.

[Randyk3]

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mikeflash wrote:

Randyk3  said "  But since the upgrade on the RG all of my computers work fine on the 2Wire.  "

What kind UPGRADE. New Box or new firmware, What? Need more of an explanation please. Also how did you upgrade.

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I was referring to the firmware upgrade,( 6.1.9.24-enh.tm), that uVerse pushed.  I have the same RG since the original install in Sept 2008.  I did try moving it around to correct the wireless problem but it's now back in the room where AT&T installed it.

[mikeflash]

You mean this one I have too. It doesn't work for me.

Manufacturer	2Wire, Inc.
Model	3800HGV-B
Serial Number
Hardware Version	2700-100531-006
Software Version	6.1.9.24-enh.tm

[Randyk3]

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mikeflash wrote:

You mean this one I have too. It doesn't work for me.

Manufacturer	2Wire, Inc.
Model	3800HGV-B
Serial Number
Hardware Version	2700-100531-006
Software Version	6.1.9.24-enh.tm

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Even the hardware version is the same as mine.  That's why I don't understand the different results for different users.

[mikeflash]

I appreciate the updates anyway, Randyk3. Someone will come up with a fix for all MAC's but for now it's very discouraging for Mac users. I can't use my Netflix streaming movies or Ebay for bidding wars or anything that requires quick responses as I never know when I'm going to lose wireless connection. Even when I try to post this it will Drop connection but will reconnect and resend this page. Sometimes I can stay online for maybe an hour or just 15 mins and less. Again Randy thanks for the input.

[nathanduvall]

Yep, I'm with you there Mike. I will say this, it does pay to complain. AT&T gave me a $100 credit for the frustrations we've had as new customers, which appeased us for now, since we found a work-a-round via installing a Linksys router behind the RG. It sounds like you've got the same problems we do, so while it's frustrating as hell, just follow the steps to installing a wireless router and I can pretty much guarantee you uninterupted service. Then call AT&T and ask for a credit. They owe it to us until they (2Wire included) get off of their collected asses and fix the firmware - which they now admit is the problem.

[eyeonthedesign]

You my friends are NOT alone dealing with this issue. there are more Macbook Pro users having the very same issues than you realize.

-Drew

[mikeflash]

Some MacBook Pro owners claim they have NO problems at all and so many others can't stay online for more than 15 mins. at a time. It's so dishearting    that these Corps. won't step up and fix their problems. I'm hoping to see a solved flag pop up on this topic soon but doesn't seem likely.

[txflood]

We have an iMac that also has the issue. It seems to be constantly losing and then reestablishing the wireless connection if i point it to the RG. I have had to go to the Linksys router connected to the RG to workaround the problem. Sigh.