Anyway, it works fine over ethernet, but on the wireless network, only pinging seems to working, and nothing else.
jadeforrest: Can you think of any reason my Powerbook would lose the ability to do all network connectivity EXCEPT the ability to ping other servers (and be pinged as well). And only for the wireless connection -- ethernet is fine.
jadeforrest: I can ping, but no traceroute, http, ssh, imap, or smtp
markd2: do other machines on the wireless network work?
jadeforrest: yes
jadeforrest: It seems like if I'm able to ping, then it should be a software issue, right?
markd2: ping uses a lower level of TCP than the other protocols, so something somewhere isn't happy
markd2: (gee, that's real useful :-)
jadeforrest: I didn't know that, actually.
markd2: if I have weird networking stuff happen, I wave a dead chicken over it by changing my config, applying the change, the changing it back again
jadeforrest: I'll try that. :)
jadeforrest: I even have some thawing chicken I can wave over it!
markd2: at this consulting gig, sometimes their dhcp server (run on windows. sigh) just flakes out.
markd2: re-doing the config gets me a second try at a valid IP address
jadeforrest: I've renewed the DHCP lease, and it seems to renew pretty easily. And DNS is fine, I think, because I can ping mail.bread.com for example.
jadeforrest: Which is totally mystifying to me. I've never had a networking issue like that before.
markd2: anything interesting doing an ifconfig -a?
jadeforrest: I don't think so. I'll be back in a few minutes (it's downstairs)
jadeforrest: thanks!
cro: jadeforrest: It might be a path MTU issue. Ping packets are very small. Can you ping with larger packets?
*** cro has signed off (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
jadeforrest: Hmmm, I wonder if cro is on to something.
jadeforrest: If I ping the laptop (from another computer) I can ping at 64 bytes, and get 100% of the packets, but when I do 92 bytes, I get about 89% packet loss (for 56 packets)
markd2: the other computer is coming over the wireless too?
jadeforrest: yes
markd2: I'm baffled
jadeforrest: me too
Can anyone help? I'll post it for posterity if you do!
08:13 PM, 05 Jan 2004 by Jade Rubick Permalink
MTU Path description, describes how MTU Paths work, and why misconfigured servers can lead to weird results for their users.
by Jade Rubick on 01/06/04
In my /var/log/system.log file:
Also, when I try to deactivate and reactivate my airport:Jan 6 13:44:37 my-computer kernel: hotfiles_evict: err 1celocating file
Jan 6 13:44:38 my-computer configd[89]: updateAirportPersonality can't update Apple80211Monitor.plist: Lock required for this operation ... Jan 6 13:44:38 my-computer mach_init[2]: SEerver 0 in bootstrap d03 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd": exited as a result of signal 1 [pid 672]
by Jade Rubick on 01/06/04
I tried switching to another user, to see if it was something messed up in my user configuration files. When I logged in as another suer, I pulled up a web browser and went to http://www.google.com Most of the page came up, but the image did not. After that, anything on the web didn't seem to work. Now I pull open a terminal and try pinging ping www.apple.com 5% packet loss (for 35 packets) ping -s 80 www.apple.com 62% packet loss (for 35 packets) ping -s 90 www.apple.com 86% packet loss (for 37 packets) ping -s 100 www.apple.com 30% packet loss (varying line conditions?) ping -s 1400 www.apple.com 8% packet loss (92 packets!) ping -s 1500 www.apple.com ping: unknown host www.apple.com Very interesting, because the MTU is 1500, according to netstat -i So why am I having this problem (all the sudden!) on my Mac OS X laptop, and not on my OS 9 desktop computer, both of which are on the same wireless network?
by Jade Rubick on 01/06/04
The network is a wireless LAN, with the wireless AP serving as the gateway.
by Jade Rubick on 01/06/04
You might try searching and contacting http://macintouch.com/ I know lots of apple tech enthusiasts go there.
by Torben Brosten on 01/07/04
Did the slow wireless Mac G4 connection get resolved? If not, have you tried zapping the pram and reseting the wireless hub at the same time? I remember reading somewhere about some kind of authentication key that gets set and that some keys don't resolve as well as some others. I looked for a ref. for it, but no luck. May have been early wireless implementations only. --- My answer: strangely enough, a couple of days later, my wireless connection seems to work fine. I have no idea why.
by Jade Rubick on 01/21/04
In any case, I just wanted to sign up because I ran across your post about your network connection not working correctly in Panther. I had the same problem, and after quite a bit of troubleshooting, narrowed it down to an old copy of Netlock. (VPN software.) If you want to find out more, go to discussions.info.apple.com, and search for "Possible workaround for DHCP/Ethernet issue". In my case, I trashed /Library/StartupItems/Nleac. There's also a link in my post there to a MacOSXHints.com article about troubleshooting...
by Jade Rubick on 01/30/04