Ok, first off, I love my PowerBook. Never before have I had a computer that was such a joy to use. It is not a perfect computer, but it has easily been my favorite.
One issue that has plagued my PowerBook since I purchased it 6-months ago has been connectivity issues with my wireless network. For some reason, my PowerBook will often be unable to reconnect to the wireless network after is has been sleeping. Things seem to be getting better though…
After making many posts on various Apple enthusiast forums and even on the official Apple support forums, I quickly learned that there were quite a few people out there with similar problems and that none of them had found an answer. I don’t know if I have found an answer, but the situations has improved drastically since I made the changes.
As you will notice in the title of this article, I own a PowerBook G4. Specifically, it is a 1.5GHz PowerBook G4 that was purchased in August/September ‘04. Also, my wireless network is powered by a D-Link DI-624 (Rev. C). So, anything I did might only work for those with similar setups.
Originally, I had thought that my problem was related to my use of WPA-PSK encryption. However, switching to WEP (128-bit) didn’t help, and there was no way I was going to leave the wireless network wide-open.
Another change I made was to change channels. I figured that the problem could be rooted in interference from phones, other electronic devices, or other wireless networks. I tried several channels, and none seemed to help. I finally landed on channel 10 (which is the default for the Apple AirPort basestations) and just left it there.
The change that seems to have helped the most has been to go into the router’s admin/setup and turn-off Super-G. I had never tried this prior, as I didn’t really understand what was meant by Super-G. I didn’t want to lose 802.11g support, and thought they were somehow linked. However, turning off Super-G support has improved connectivity. Since disabling this feature in the router sveral days ago, I have yet to have any difficulties connecting to the router. This, of course, is an ongoing experiment, and I will be sure to update this article should I find out any more information.
Yeah, Super-G is the retarded D-Link “better than 802.11g” extension to the offical specification. I haven’t turned it off on my router yet, since Dan actually owns a D-Link card, allowing him to get the slightly better data rate. But now that you mention that turning it off helped with your PowerBook — I’ve been having the same problem once or twice a week — I’m planning on disabling it.
Thanks for the tip, Colin!
Well, just to let you know, it has been quite a while and I have yet to have the wake from sleep problem again. It seems to have worked so far! You might just have to tell Dan that he has to live without Super-G from now on.