Connecting a MacBook to a Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router
Added: August 21st, 2007 (tagged with: computer)
So, I bought a MacBook on Sunday. Got home, spent some time going through entering in my information to setup the system. Get through all of it, load up Safari, and get an error message that I am not connected to the internet. Now, I have a Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router and have had no problems with connecting to the internet through my HA Pavilion zd8000 Windows XP laptop since I bought the router over a year ago. So, I go through the OS X's Network Diagnostics utility about a dozen times trying to get it to work. It recognizes the network exists, I have a green light for AirPort and AirPort Settings, but I have a red light for Network Settings. So, I boot up my Win XP laptop, just to make sure I can connect from there, yep, everything is fine. I ran into an issue when I was setting up my wireless network, I needed to install an update before I could use WPA2. After a quick browse online, I found out that the MacBook does support WPA2. Okay, just to make sure, I'll turn off Wireless Security all together. Nope, not the problem, I still couldn't connect with my MacBook. Another hour or so browsing, and I found something in a forum about MacBooks not supporting all wireless channels. I change the channel from 6 to 1, and BINGO! I was able to connect to the internet! Download Mozilla Firefox, build up some of my bookmarks, and figure out how to customize more bits of my MacBook. All was good. :-)
Until Monday... I get home from work (after being able to connect to a few of the wireless networks in the building) and downloading Quicksilver and Adium, and I'm not able to connect to my home network. Argh... Forget it, I'm disconnecting for the night...
Tuesday, I spent some more time browsing forum and came up upon this: WRT54G firmware Mac DHCP conflict. Solution found! The WRT54G's latest firmware breaks DHCP connectivity with the Mac. So, reverting the firmware (from v1.01.0 to v1.00.9) fixes the Mac compatibility issue and I can connect to the internet again. :-)
Problem
Cannot connect to the internet on a MacBook with a Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router
Solution
Revert firmware from v1.01.0 to v1.00.9. Firmware available on the Linksys FTP site: ftp://ftp.linksys.com/pub/network/wrt54gv5_v6_fw_1.00.9_US_code.zip
