Having problems with wireless internet and my Macbook.?

Question

I'm at a family friend's house and they have a totally unprotected wireless internet. (It's a Linksys router, not sure which model.) My macbook picks up the signal, and even connects to it showing various signal strength (So it isn't stale.) But won't actually do anything regarding the internet (MSN, Safari etc.) The people who live here have 2 laptops, both of them PC's and they both work fine on the wireless. I tried resetting the router a couple of times but it made no difference. Like i said the internet is unprotected completly, my mac will find it and connect but wont load any internet related programs. Anyone know what to do? I'm stuck. (I also ran the network diagnostics program thing on my mac but that didnt help either)

hopefully the person that answered this reads this too :) you seem quite well versed. I understood everything you said, except the part you added on, how would i go about specifying the ip etc. and do you mean specify my macs ip to the wireless?

Answer 1

It's been my experience that the Linksys WRT54G version 6 routers do not work well with Macs because they don't properly implement the DHCP standard (used for assigning IP addresses, gateway and DNS information). Try updating the firmware on the linksys to the newest available.

If an update is not available, I've had success on my PC by specifying an IP, Gateway and DNS address. Note: be sure the DNS is not your router -- specify an internet address.
Good luck!