WIFIcard wont work with Apple Airport Extreme Base station

[sailrsandy]

I have been trying everything Ive read in these forums for weeks and been on the phone with Apple and Sony several times but still cant get the wireless connnections to work from my NX70 CLIE/WL100 to the Apple Airport Base station. Ive downloaded NetFront and Ive got it working in Starbucks on TMobile, but I cant get it to work at home. I am fairly technical and this is just plain frustrating.
If anyone can offer more help or opinions I would be grateful.
:confused:

[n2ifp]

Can you connect at all at home?
Is the preamble in the Airport selectable? (Sony only works with long preamble)
It's entirely possible the WL100 may not be compatible with the Airport.
I just listed some possibilities, as it can be tough to determine where the problem lies. It's encouraging that you can at least connect elsewhere. To me, it points to the Airport or your PC's setup. It took me three days to get mine to work with the Linksys.

[sailrsandy]

Thanks for your reply Larry. What is a preamble? The sony helpdesk tech mentioned that to me as a potential problem. Long and short something. Cant find any selectables in Airport Admin or any info on "preambles" on the Apple support site.

[n2ifp]

Originally posted by sailrsandy
Thanks for your reply Larry. What is a preamble? The sony helpdesk tech mentioned that to me as a potential problem. Long and short something. Cant find any selectables in Airport Admin or any info on "preambles" on the Apple support site.

I am not really sure what the preample is. I do know others who have tried their Clies on certain LAN systems at their work place have run into this issue. By changing the preamble to long, the Sony WiFi card now worked. On some PCMCIA card drivers, I have seen this setting, but not on the Clie. I am not familiar with the Airport base station, so I don't know what it has.

Now, does it connect at all to the Airport? I don't know how far your getting into your unit if at all. Need to look at some things first.

The WEP and SSID can prevent you from connecting, set your router to DHCP if it has it and the Clie with AUTO everything, Powersaveon: unchecked.

There were some posters who had Airport units, before the ClieSource database got trashed in January. 

The ones who use the Netgear MR814 seemed to have it easy to setup.

[herpalm]

It works with my airport but it is not the new airport extreme it is the model before it.

[sailrsandy]

Thanks for advice and replies. Have set Airport Base Station to DH** and automatic everything in CLIE, with Powersave off, Have disconnected 2.4 MGHTZ phone, shut off Microsoft Office XP )firewall problem?) for MAC, have shut down and restarted both MAC and Airport, have turned off WEP, have tried with both 80211b and 80211 b/g.
Have done everything I am so far aware of that I can do , and it still doesnt work.
In response to how far have I gotten....
When I creat a profile in the wireless network for my house and input all pc /Mac settings for IP, subnet, DNS etc. and then "connect" - I get connected but cant open Net Front and see the internet - so I think I am connected to the LAN but not the WAN.
Any other suggetions?
S

[n2ifp]

I do know that the Sony card will not work with the Linksys 54G.

I did not realize you had a MAC. Okay, if you can at least connect, then your WEP and SSID are probably fine.

Two things to steer your Clie towards the net.

The DNS addresses are that of your ISP in most cases.
The Gateway is the IP address of your router.
Subnet is usually 255.255.255.0

Windows XP comes with a firewall, but if enabled and not setup, it will block a wireless hotsync. Since your running a MAC and no firewall, that shouldn't be an issue.

I am at a disadvantage as I am not familiar with either Apple product, I am MAC challanged:D!

[herpalm]

The airport extreme is the new 54bps standard that does not work with the wifi card the old airport base station 11bps does work.

[n2ifp]

Originally posted by herpalm
The airport extreme is the new 54bps standard that does not work with the wifi card the old airport base station 11bps does work.

Thanks! That was what I was afraid of and why I had hinted at the possibility of such:).

[sailrsandy]

Thanks to everyone. I bought all equipment from J & R and they were very helpful and i got great discounts as well, but I guess its buyer beware when it comes to all the compatability and integration possibilities.

Question for all you helpful and smart people: If I go and buy an new wireless device to replace the Airport extreme 54 MBps unit and I want to use my MAC, my WIFI Sony CLIE card and my IBM Thinkpad to connect to that device then what works with all three devices ?
S

[herpalm]

I shop at frys and compusa and they sell both airport base stations, the regular one, not the extreme will work with all three, I have the same computers, ibook, nx70v, ibm thinkpad 600.

[Unregistered]

Apple = Mac :)

[Unregistered]

Fyi, Preamble refers to the length of a special Frame-Start pattern used to inform other stations that the air is busy. There are 2 kinds - long and short. The 1Mbps rate is only allowed to do Long. The others can do either. Doing Short-Preamble at higher rates (e.g. 11Mbps or optional(read that Texas Instruments) 22Mbps), can reduce the % overhead incurred by the WiFi protocol. Long, however, can help in busier air-environments.


So besides the above...
Larry (n2ifp), could you please fill me/us in on some of the specifics related to your Linksys setup.

I get my Clie to "connect" and can even download significant portions of a web-site. But then PDQ, my Linksys "locks-up".
I can't get anything further from it, and even my PC can't use it
anymore (indicates the link is down).
I have to power-cycle the AP to get it working again.

Thanks so much.
---Dave.

[dave_ruden]

Hmm, let's see if this shows me as registered this time.
Sorry, ...as described in my post above, I had to go reset my AP. Guess I got "logged-out". That previous post was mine.
---Dave R.

[n2ifp]

Originally posted by dave_ruden
Hmm, let's see if this shows me as registered this time.
Sorry, ...as described in my post above, I had to go reset my AP. Guess I got "logged-out". That previous post was mine.
---Dave R.

Hi Dave!

Thank you for the explaination on preamble and I bsaiclly get the picture. The Sony PEGA-WL100 card works only with long preamble.

Okay, I have a combination Ethernet wire/wireless LAN. I have the Linksys BEFSR41 router/switch with a Linksys WAP11 plugged in. There are 3 wired PC's and 5 other wireless devices, 2 of which are Clies. This is all tied into a cable modem. The router is set DHCP for the LAN and static for the WAN.

I need to keep my WAN static so the Clies will work reliably. Every once in a great while, nothing works, although I can access the WAP or router through my browser. The last time things quit, my ISP changed the IP address. Other times I have no clue except after I switch my WAN from static to dynamic and back again, everything starts working. I may not have a problem for weeks.

I don't know if this helps you any.

[sailrsandy]

Originally posted by herpalm
I shop at frys and compusa and they sell both airport base stations, the regular one, not the extreme will work with all three, I have the same computers, ibook, nx70v, ibm thinkpad 600.

herpalm/birds of a feather
Thanks very much for letting me know. I will see if I can exchange the one I have.
;)

[dave_ruden]

Hmm, ok this is a little confusing. Let me see if I've got this right...

You have a Static IP-Addr from your ISP (which is cable modem).
Mine is dynamic IP-Addr from a DSL service.

You've got your WiFi AP doing DHCP providing an internal, private
IP-Address to your local network stations, including the Clies (plural, wow!).
If this isn't right, well, that's how I've got mine.

Now if this is correct, what I don't seem to follow is why would
Static .vs. Dynamic IP assignment at your WAN router make a difference. I mean, you are doing the WiFi on the LAN, where your DHCP uses dynamic addresses anyway.

Any thoughts on this?
Thanks Larry.
---Dave.

[dave_ruden]

Btw,
In direction of Long vs Short preamble...
I've read articles describing studies done on WiFi network interaction with the TCP/IP based internet.
Their studies suggest that a shorter Frame-Fragmentation-Threshhold, and longer Retry-Limit-Counts cooperate better with TCP/IP networks.

If anyone has APs that give this degree of control (my Linksys doesn't), try playing around with it. I wonder if there's a real
performance differnece to be found

[n2ifp]

Originally posted by dave_ruden
Btw,
In direction of Long vs Short preamble...
I've read articles describing studies done on WiFi network interaction with the TCP/IP based internet.
Their studies suggest that a shorter Frame-Fragmentation-Threshhold, and longer Retry-Limit-Counts cooperate better with TCP/IP networks.

If anyone has APs that give this degree of control (my Linksys doesn't), try playing around with it. I wonder if there's a real
performance differnece to be found

My Linksys doesn't either, the Sony will only work on long preamble.

[n2ifp]

Originally posted by dave_ruden
Hmm, ok this is a little confusing. Let me see if I've got this right...

You have a Static IP-Addr from your ISP (which is cable modem).
Mine is dynamic IP-Addr from a DSL service.

You've got your WiFi AP doing DHCP providing an internal, private
IP-Address to your local network stations, including the Clies (plural, wow!).
If this isn't right, well, that's how I've got mine.

Now if this is correct, what I don't seem to follow is why would
Static .vs. Dynamic IP assignment at your WAN router make a difference. I mean, you are doing the WiFi on the LAN, where your DHCP uses dynamic addresses anyway.

Any thoughts on this?
Thanks Larry.
---Dave.

Hi Dave!

That's correct, it was the only way that the two Clies in my household would connect to the net reliably, most notibly the DNS addressing. The Clies had trouble finding those if I set it for dynamic. As to why, I have no clue, other than the primative Sony WiFi driver.

I set the LAN wireless local stations to static, so as not to clash with wired Ethernet and just left the router on DHCP.

[Unregistered]

Hi Larry,
I walked through lots of the WiFi related threads here last night,
particularly searching for my AP manufacturer (Linksys). That proved most fruitful.
One of your more detailed posts pionted me in the right direction, as you do again here...

***) Set Clie's DNS to manual enter my ISP's DNS addresses.
It doesn't seem to work well (as you point out) setting it
Auto.

That did it for me. My IP-Addr is still set to rely on my AP's DHCP, so that seems to work well.

Thanks for all the great detail. It can take a bit of time to find the particular piece of detail that you're missing, but its there :)

Happily net-browsing from my Clie.
---Dave R.

[n2ifp]

Hi Dave!

That's great news! Now you have joined the ranks of being a true Tecky:)!

If it works well, fine, each LAN setup can be just a little bit different. Mine was a combo of wire and wireless, so they may have had some impact.

It took me 3 days initially to get going myself. I have been busy bouncing around the different forums and feeling their pain:D!

In anycase enjoy and have fun!!!

BTW, your welcome and I appreciate the feedback!

[dave_ruden]

Well, you're doing a great service to us neophites.
This post is actually from my Clie. I can't believe how utterly cool it is to be able to browse at liesure without having to break open my laptop!

btw, a friend of mine is a ham-radio guy.
Name is: Chris Siegl. Maybe you've run into him.
We're all in NC.

Well, I guess this forum/thread isn't quite the right place for such unrelated comments :).

Later. ---Dave R.

[GenoG]

I want a powerbook!

[Del]

Originally posted by herpalm
The airport extreme is the new 54bps standard that does not work with the wifi card the old airport base station 11bps does work.

Strange the new airport extreme works perfect with my Clie with wl100. 802.11g is scalable and works with all 802.11 standards.

Unfortunately I can't help with the base station problem because I connected my NX through the 802.11g card in my G4.

[joemit]

"Unfortunately I can't help with the base station problem because I connected my NX through the 802.11g card in my G4."

Hi Del,

Could you please describe how you are connecting your NX through the G4?

Thanks, Joe

[n2ifp]

G4, is that some kind of MAC or power book?

Linksys flatout states their 54g is not compatible with the WL100.

[tektitan]

For those of you that are trying to get connected to the Airport Extreme base station with a Sony Wi-Fi card. The trick is that you have to use the base station in "B" mode only it will not connect in the compatibility mode