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[hw]

I am seeing the same exact thing at my company, and we have hundreds of the WBR-1310's deployed out to the field. I need a fix from one end or the other (Apple or D-Link) or we are going to be throwing away a lot of routers and switching brands! Unfortunately people dont have a lot of tolerance for this.

In my research, this seems to be a problem that is 10.5 and D-Link related, and I have seen this same problem happens on PC laptops as well (various HP laptops with XP or vista). Turning the wireless card off and turning it back always fixes it. Some people need to turn off/on their wireless card up to 4-5 times/day (myself included). Very frustrating.

I have tested my MacBook Pro with other wireless vendors (Linksys, Belkin, etc) and dont have any issues. I would be happy to help with any troubleshooting steps.

Thanks!

[jra3086]

I hear ya on that one. I thought D-Link was better than Linksys, but I've heard otherwise and am beginning to believe it. If Fatman can't help me out and Snow Leopard doesn't fix my probs, I'll be switching to Linksys.

[hw]

Yea, I really need to get to the bottom of this, we have been dealing with it for a few months as an annoyance. Our corporate office is scrapping the dlink wireless routers and going with an enterprise grade one. (Should have been done a long time ago, tough to manage)

We have about another 1000-1500 locations to deploy out to the field over the next year or two, and I know our stock of WBR-1310's is starting to run down. I dont want them to make another massive buy of these products if they have issues with certain people.

[hw]

WOW, I didnt know i was so vulgar to get stars through a word! Too Funny!

S-C-R-A-P-P-I-N-G is what I was trying to say.

[frostyarcade]

Well after changing some things I've found that resetting the router completely and using WPA (not WPA 2) solves the self assigned Ip address problem.  Yet I still get drops in connection.  As of now I have just been changing channels hoping it will help. Ive used iStumbler to avoid having the same channel as my neighbors.  I have a feeling this problem will only be solved completely if Dlink updates the firmware on this router and revision  .  Turning off the airport and back on is sooo annoying. It seems to happen right when you are trying to work on something important.

[Fatman]

That capture was still on the weird side, there is some function of OS X that is not being made clear to me.  The resolving action seems to bear no relation to the fix.

I am out of meaningful steps other than waiting on Snow Leopard.  Here is to hoping it fixes our issues.

[jra3086]

Shoot dang. Well, here's to hoping it works! Thanks for the help.

[hw]

There has to be an easier way to isolate and fix this issue. Can this issue get escalated??? I have 3 developers with MacBook Pros at the office, a few HP laptop users, and 2 different WBR-1310s. All of them have this issue, with the MacBook Pros having far more problems than the others. To put it in perspective, since got into the office this morning, I have had to turn off/on my airport card in my MBP 4 times. The guy next to me with the HP has not. Very inconsistent. 

[Fatman]

Here is the thing, or rather series of things.

There is no where to esaclate this issue to, the right people are already seeing it.  They have also failed so far to replicate it.  If you want TS contact TS, but know that you already have the attention of someone more useful.  They are, unlike this board, an official mode of contact with D-Link.

This problem is only present in OS X to my knowledge, I wouldn't expect they will see it on the HPs.  Even if they are running some hacked up OS X they wouldn't be nesccesarrily suspect as the problem could be at the hardware interaction level, and I doubt they are using the same cards.

We have a couple of generations of problems being discussed here, that bear only superficial relation to each other, I am working on jra3086's issue.  Others will need their own thread to get more than superficial notice by myself , and I don't guarantee it even then.  I know he is not the OP, but he is the one that any progress has been made with, and so he has surreptitiously hijacked this thread as far as I am concerned.

What I can say about jra3086's issue is that he is sending traffic out that appears to be normal from his side, and only renewing his ARP table fixes issues.

If the computer failed at a known interval (you would want to control against LAN traffic or take a few dozen captures to be sure of this) between ARP requests I could almost buy the PC falling off the WBRs ARP table and the WBR not requesting it back until it has ARP from that host.  In that case a gratuitous ARP from that host would prevent issue, but that does not sound possible according to the information I have so far.  This would also cause Linux clients to be suspect (Unix ARP handling is very consistent).

[hw]

Fatman:
Thanks for the update, I appreciate you clarifying things. Glad to hear that you work for the right group of people who can do something about it.

Most people here at corporate have gone back to wired connections since the wireless is so inconsistant and this affects Mac users far more than PC people. My MBP is still on wireless since I go to meetings and stuff during the day. We did replace the WBR-1310 once and also setup a second one and the problem is consistent on all of them. I have checked for channel interference, and that doesnt seem to be an issue. I am currently using one on a wide open channel, and it has these same issues. 

The HP model i can think of off the top of my head that had issues was a EliteBook 8730w running XP. I was copying files to that laptop and the wireless seemed to drop out. Turning off/on fixed the issue.

Like i said this morning, I had to turn off/on the wireless four times this morning. Since then it has been solid. It seems to be very sporadic.

I would be happy to do whatever it takes to isolate the problem, I have a spare macbook pro with 10.5.7 that I could set to sniff and download files, do pings, whatever. Also, let me know if you need anything out of the WBR-1310.

On a serious note, we have 950 locations open and just about all of them have this router. We have another 1000+ locations that are in the process of being opened and I dont know how many have this router this far. I really want to figure out what the issue is and get to the bottom of it. I dont really want to disclose who I work for on a public forum, but I would be happy to email or PM you the details.

Thanks!

[Fatman]

To be blunt HW, knowing who you work for would probably only lower my opinion of them, it sounds like this product is being used in a inappropriate fashion.

Home equipment (I would personally have preferred to put wireless, but apparently that opinion is considered draconian, if not somewhat arcane) should not be in a business environment at all in my opinion, and certainly not mass ordered by the thousands.

You OS X and Windows issues sound unrelated to me so far and I would approach them as separate issues, and even go as far as to cross troubleshoot them for the potential that the Windows issue applies in OS X.

If I was you I would push back through your D-Link Sales contact to get a hold of someone who can give you the personal attention large customers deserve.

[hw]

Fatman: Thanks for your honest opinion. I was not the one that made the decision to install these in our locations, but I can get us to change what we use going forward. In one sense, the device is being used in a manor consistent with the design. We have it connecting one desktop PC, a few network devices, and free wireless for customers hooked up to cable or DSL from a local provider. These WBR-1310 units are inexpensive, reliable and do a good job. Outside of this issue with Mac OS X, they have worked well for what we are doing.

As far as a business grade replacement for this model, do you have a recommendation? I went through the wizard on the site which recommended the DI-724GU, but that seems like overkill for what we need.

All that being said, I still have the same issue as the OP, my mac for whatever reason cant send data through to the dlink wireless a few times a day. A stop/start of airport fixes it. I brought in a belkin 802.11g wireless to test to make sure it isnt the environment. I have a enterprise grade one on order, should be here soon.

I still need to figure out what the problem is with OS X, as this affects my developers. I have replicated the problem on 3 different WBR-1310's so maybe it is something in the settings of the router. We have it setup this way, maybe this will help:

uplink to network on LAN port, nothing plugged into WAN port
DHCP on LAN turned off, external DHCP server
static IP assigned for router LAN address, WAN set to DHCP (nothing connected to it)
Auto Channel scan enabled
WPA-Personal Wireless Security
PSK-TKIP
Hardware B1, Firmware 2.02
Defaults for everything else.

In thinking about this, our stores are setup normal, WAN plugged into cable/dsl, devices plugged into LAN port. Maybe the issue is triggered when you run the WBR-1310 like an AP.

Thanks!

[Fatman]

Does dropping your ARP table resolve your issue?

[hw]

Bingo, that fixes it right away.

sudo -s
arp -d -a

Immediately after that stuff starts working again.

What else can I check for you??

[Fatman]

Then you appear to have the same problem I was already working on.

We have troubleshot that one as far as we can, the only fixes are OS functions that shouldn't have an effect regardless.  I am hoping Snow Leopard helps with his issue personally.