Another potential fix for Intel Mac + Airport station problems

If you're using an Intel Mac with any of A le's AirPort base statio , you might have noticed some 'le than stellar' performance after updating to 10.4.8, as well as wonky co ection problems that A le tried i uing a su ort doc for. As an owner of both a MacBook and an Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, I can personally vouch that A le's doc has a ways to go before it solves this most frustrating of wirele problems.

While troubleshooting this i ue over the weekend, I came acro a few new threads at A le's discu ion forums for AirPort and, more ecific to my setup, the AirPort Expre . In particular, this AirPort Expre -related thread contai some theories and potential solutio from other users in a similar boat. Being that it is now Wednesday, I'm ha y to say one of them seems to be working well for me so far, though your mileage may obviously vary. Here's a rundown of my personal setup and the remedy that's bringing some sanity back to my wirele world: typically, I roll with WPA2 Personal security, and since these sketchy co ection i ues began I've been playing with settings like Interference Robustne and adjusting my APE's (AirPort Expre ) cha el, etc., but to no avail.

As it tur out, users in these forums are begi ing to su ect wirele security (at least WPA, not sure about WEP, which seems to be making the ill-advised list these days anyway) as part of the problem, so I simply reset my station with no security. For the past three days, this setup has been working like a charm, though it's understandable if no security simply i 't an option for some users. To help keep our network to ourselves, I turned on 'Create a closed network' in the AirPort tab of the AirPort Admin Utility (that's A le- eak for "hide ID"), which simply meant I had to type in my network's name manually from the AirPort menubar item - but you should only have to do this once.

Again, YMMV, but there are a few potential solutio in A le's discu ion forums for these increasingly frustrating AirPort co ectivity i ues. Let's hope we don't have to keep jury-rigging our base statio for long, and A le can i ue a fix so the "it just works" reputation can actually a ly to these things again.