Mac friendly wireless router
02 January 2009, 08:10 PM
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Mac friendly wireless router
I have a white BT Homehub that its signal keeps dropping out and is really starting be a PITA. So today I went out and fought with the MK traffic and went into PC World and purchased a Netgear DG834N RangeMax Next Wireless N. Gets home and starts to connect it all up downstairs by the BT phone landline. The I go upstairs to my dads PC (wanted to install the software on his first) and I needed to connect the Netgear directly to the PC so it could configure itself. So that was not possible, so I take my rather heavy 24" imac down stairs and place it on the porch table and connect the netgear to the mac via ethernet cable. Puts the CD in and its not mac friendly. It was just find the instructions yourself from the CD rather than a wizard. I even tried playing around with the 'networking' feature in System preferences to no avail.
Now I never seem to get the right router without problems. I did a bit of research and found out that most routers are not mac friendly unless you are familiar with the network setting and what not which I am not.
Do I take the Netgear back and fight with the PC World sales guy to give me back my money or is there a solution. Why is nothing easy and why has no one made a wireless router that is bomb proof as I read often that somebody's router has blown up or stopped working for one reason or another that no one can explain or give a valid answer for.
So to the loverly members of ScoobyNet, can you please advice me on my best course of action.
Many thanks
Now I never seem to get the right router without problems. I did a bit of research and found out that most routers are not mac friendly unless you are familiar with the network setting and what not which I am not.
Do I take the Netgear back and fight with the PC World sales guy to give me back my money or is there a solution. Why is nothing easy and why has no one made a wireless router that is bomb proof as I read often that somebody's router has blown up or stopped working for one reason or another that no one can explain or give a valid answer for.
So to the loverly members of ScoobyNet, can you please advice me on my best course of action.
Many thanks
02 January 2009, 08:54 PM
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But I don't have Leopard to make the most of a time capsule/ time machine I am going to wait for Snow Leopard that is supposed to be out first quarter of 09.
03 January 2009, 02:57 PM
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I have a white BT Homehub that its signal keeps dropping out and is really starting be a PITA. So today I went out and fought with the MK traffic and went into PC World and purchased a Netgear DG834N RangeMax Next Wireless N. Gets home and starts to connect it all up downstairs by the BT phone landline. The I go upstairs to my dads PC (wanted to install the software on his first) and I needed to connect the Netgear directly to the PC so it could configure itself. So that was not possible, so I take my rather heavy 24" imac down stairs and place it on the porch table and connect the netgear to the mac via ethernet cable. Puts the CD in and its not mac friendly. It was just find the instructions yourself from the CD rather than a wizard. I even tried playing around with the 'networking' feature in System preferences to no avail.
Now I never seem to get the right router without problems. I did a bit of research and found out that most routers are not mac friendly unless you are familiar with the network setting and what not which I am not.
Do I take the Netgear back and fight with the PC World sales guy to give me back my money or is there a solution. Why is nothing easy and why has no one made a wireless router that is bomb proof as I read often that somebody's router has blown up or stopped working for one reason or another that no one can explain or give a valid answer for.
So to the loverly members of ScoobyNet, can you please advice me on my best course of action.
Many thanks
Now I never seem to get the right router without problems. I did a bit of research and found out that most routers are not mac friendly unless you are familiar with the network setting and what not which I am not.
Do I take the Netgear back and fight with the PC World sales guy to give me back my money or is there a solution. Why is nothing easy and why has no one made a wireless router that is bomb proof as I read often that somebody's router has blown up or stopped working for one reason or another that no one can explain or give a valid answer for.
So to the loverly members of ScoobyNet, can you please advice me on my best course of action.
Many thanks
Reading the above it seems as though the problem is that you cannot setup the Netgear device and you were expecting the CD to have some kind of install wizard on it that would work from the mac. I don't think this is needed as most devices these days have a web interface from where you can configure everything.
The first thing we'll do is see if we can connect to the new router. We'll do this on the Mac, but you could do the same with a PC.
1) Take an ethernet cable and plug one end into the Mac, the other into the Netgear. Make sure the Netgear and Mac are powered on.
2) On the Mac, go into System Preferences, then Networking. Select the Built In Ethernet option and edit the settings. There should be an option saying how the address is obtained, it's possibly on DHCP, change it to "manual" and then enter the following information:
IP Address: 192.168.0.2
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Router/Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS: Leave blank.
Click Apply to apply the changes.
3) Open up your web browser, we'll try Safari, if that does not work, you'll want to use Firefox (hopefully you have it installed already). In the Address bar enter the following:
http://192.168.0.1/
It should ask for username and password, the information is as follows:
username: admin
password: password
This should hopefully get you into the router configuration screen. What we do next depends on what information you already know. If you know what the Homehub is using for connection details, then you should be able to work out what needs configuring and where. It's possible there may be a web based setup wizard, so you could use that if you wish.
Worst case, you'll need to get into the web interface of the Homehub and note down the connection information, then copy that into the Netgear.
The final step would be to plug the netgear into the phone line, power it up and see if things work.
03 January 2009, 06:20 PM
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Markus, thanks for that reply, however I took the router back to PC World this morning and got a full refund. Perhaps I was a little impatient in returning the router. I have done little bit of research on Mac Rumors and Apple discussion forums regarding setting up routers on Mac and kinda came to a deadend and slightly side tracked 
What to do now I don't know. So I am very sorry to have wasted your time as it looks to have been in vain.
Darren
What to do now I don't know. So I am very sorry to have wasted your time as it looks to have been in vain.
Darren
Sorry for the delay on replying to this thread.
Reading the above it seems as though the problem is that you cannot setup the Netgear device and you were expecting the CD to have some kind of install wizard on it that would work from the mac. I don't think this is needed as most devices these days have a web interface from where you can configure everything.
The first thing we'll do is see if we can connect to the new router. We'll do this on the Mac, but you could do the same with a PC.
1) Take an ethernet cable and plug one end into the Mac, the other into the Netgear. Make sure the Netgear and Mac are powered on.
2) On the Mac, go into System Preferences, then Networking. Select the Built In Ethernet option and edit the settings. There should be an option saying how the address is obtained, it's possibly on DHCP, change it to "manual" and then enter the following information:
IP Address: 192.168.0.2
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Router/Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS: Leave blank.
Click Apply to apply the changes.
3) Open up your web browser, we'll try Safari, if that does not work, you'll want to use Firefox (hopefully you have it installed already). In the Address bar enter the following:
http://192.168.0.1/
It should ask for username and password, the information is as follows:
username: admin
password: password
This should hopefully get you into the router configuration screen. What we do next depends on what information you already know. If you know what the Homehub is using for connection details, then you should be able to work out what needs configuring and where. It's possible there may be a web based setup wizard, so you could use that if you wish.
Worst case, you'll need to get into the web interface of the Homehub and note down the connection information, then copy that into the Netgear.
The final step would be to plug the netgear into the phone line, power it up and see if things work.
Reading the above it seems as though the problem is that you cannot setup the Netgear device and you were expecting the CD to have some kind of install wizard on it that would work from the mac. I don't think this is needed as most devices these days have a web interface from where you can configure everything.
The first thing we'll do is see if we can connect to the new router. We'll do this on the Mac, but you could do the same with a PC.
1) Take an ethernet cable and plug one end into the Mac, the other into the Netgear. Make sure the Netgear and Mac are powered on.
2) On the Mac, go into System Preferences, then Networking. Select the Built In Ethernet option and edit the settings. There should be an option saying how the address is obtained, it's possibly on DHCP, change it to "manual" and then enter the following information:
IP Address: 192.168.0.2
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Router/Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS: Leave blank.
Click Apply to apply the changes.
3) Open up your web browser, we'll try Safari, if that does not work, you'll want to use Firefox (hopefully you have it installed already). In the Address bar enter the following:
http://192.168.0.1/
It should ask for username and password, the information is as follows:
username: admin
password: password
This should hopefully get you into the router configuration screen. What we do next depends on what information you already know. If you know what the Homehub is using for connection details, then you should be able to work out what needs configuring and where. It's possible there may be a web based setup wizard, so you could use that if you wish.
Worst case, you'll need to get into the web interface of the Homehub and note down the connection information, then copy that into the Netgear.
The final step would be to plug the netgear into the phone line, power it up and see if things work.
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03 January 2009, 09:09 PM
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Basically most, if not all the routers you can buy today should have a web interface for configuration thus allowing any machine, Mac, PC or *nix, to be able to configure it, heck you might even be able to do it via an iPhone or other internet capable phone (depends on how cut down their browser is)
The actual problem with the home hub, well, is it that the wireless signal is dropping out, or is it that the actual internet connection drops out. If it's the wireless signal then you may want to go into the configuration and see if you can change the channel it's using as it's possible it might be conflicting with something else, maybe a neighbour has a similar setup and there's a clash (not sure if that is possible or not)
The actual problem with the home hub, well, is it that the wireless signal is dropping out, or is it that the actual internet connection drops out. If it's the wireless signal then you may want to go into the configuration and see if you can change the channel it's using as it's possible it might be conflicting with something else, maybe a neighbour has a similar setup and there's a clash (not sure if that is possible or not)
06 January 2009, 08:57 AM
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Last time I setp up a Netgear router (WPN824 - the one I'm using at the moment), it did require the software. The initial install required the pc to be connected directly to the router (not via a hub or wireless) and it would not respond to web browser stuff untill I had run the setup software from the cd (which was PC only). The setup wizard asked a load of questions about my connection settings etc, uploaded the information to the router, configured it, then from that point I could access the router admin pages from the web browser. Not before however...
I had to do the same with the woeful Belkin router I had (that lasted exactly 10 minutes before it broke!!). I didn't have to do it with my last Linksys though, so I guess it varies from router to router.
I had to do the same with the woeful Belkin router I had (that lasted exactly 10 minutes before it broke!!). I didn't have to do it with my last Linksys though, so I guess it varies from router to router.
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