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I have a Linksys Wireless-N Home ADSL2+ router to which I connect my MacBook Pro. The thing is that the connection behaves strangely. Let me explain: from time to time, the internet connection times out (on daily basis, more than once a day); the laptop doesn’t disconnect from the router, but I just can’t connect to internet anymore. To solve this I either turn off and back on AirPort or switch to a different network and then back to mine. In both cases, the issue disappears when I switch back.

Why does this happen and how can I solve it?

Router: Linksys Wireless-N Home ADSL2+ (model WAG120N)
Laptop: MacBook Pro spring 2011
OS: 10.6.8
ISP: Libero (Italy—if it might be important in connection with the router model)

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    Three questions: 1) What wireless encryption mode are you using? 2) Are you sure you have proper DSL filters in place. 3) Are you positive you can still ping the router (or reach its web interface) when you can't reach the Internet?
    – David Schwartz
    Apr 19 '12 at 12:53
  • What is the channel setting?
    – Rebecca Dessonville
    Apr 19 '12 at 15:30
  • @DavidSchwartz 1) WPA2 Personal; 2) I don’t know what that is; 3) To be honest, I haven’t checked. (I’ll check and get back to you.)
    – Alex
    Apr 19 '12 at 15:36
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    @Dez Wide Channel: 9; Standard Channel: 11 2.462 GHz
    – Alex
    Apr 19 '12 at 15:37
  • @Alex k, just making sure you weren't using the auto setting since that can cause constant timeouts (personal experience)
    – Rebecca Dessonville
    Apr 19 '12 at 15:40
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It's possible that the Linksys WAG120N is occasionally screwing up group key rotation, and thus can't get ARP requests to your MacBook Pro, so after its ARP cache times out the entry for your MacBook Pro, it can't forward packets to you any more. To test this theory, the next time your MacBook Pro gets into this state, put another machine on your wireless network (or on a LAN port of the WAG120N) and have it ping the "all hosts" multicast address: 224.0.0.1. If your MacBook Pro responds, it's getting multicasts. If it doesn't, then it isn't. Also try pinging 224.0.0.1 from your MacBook Pro and see if anything else responds. It would be an interesting data point.

Make sure you have the latest firmware on your WAG120N. Consider adding a static ARP mapping on your WAG120N pointing to your MacBook Pro (you'd also need to assign your MacBook Pro a static IP address as well). Consider putting aftermarket/third-party/open-source firmware on your WAG120N in case the open source firmware is higher quality than what Linksys provides.

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  • It has the latest firmware version. (At list, the official one from Linksys—1.00.16.)
    – Alex
    Apr 22 '12 at 9:47
  • Also, it seems that this model doesn’t support DHCP reservation.
    – Alex
    Apr 22 '12 at 11:09

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