Macbook kicking other devices off the network.

[ljtechservices]

Interesting call i'm following up on tomorrow (Wednesday).
Small office network with a D-link wireless-N router.
Only 12 or so regular connections, 4 PC,s in a workgroup, 4 smart phones, a few tablets, one networked printer.
Running fine for the past 6 months since they moved to this office.

Last week one of the guys from a remote office brings in his Macbook pro. Most of the wireless connections immediately drop off the network and wont reconnect as soon as he connects wirelessly.
They rebooted the router and it's all okay, till he connected again a few days later when he was back in the office.
I originally thought that they were having issues with their access point. In their old office they replaced 4 in 3 years due to various issues mostly related to power. I thought maybe it was failing finally as it was the only piece of network equipment brought over from the old office.

did a little research and found people with similar problems. Most of it is related to internet sharing. So I hope that's it. I've just never seen it.

Anyone else ever seen this? I won't know OS version or anything else till the morning.

[brandont]

Are they able to reconnect the other devices once the MacBook is online?

Maybe it's this
Maximum Simultaneous Connections is a measure of how many connections (or sessions) that a router is capable of simultaneously supporting. This aspect of a router's performance is related to the robustness of its routing code as well as its available memory. It is not necessarily related to a router's maximum speed

According to http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/77-max-simul-conn that router may be set at 32 Maximum Simultaneous Connections (third router up from buttom at that link.

[Long Time Tech]

Could be almost anything a static IP on the Mac book that is the same as the router. Internet connection sharing on the Mac. A bad network card on the MAC. etc. I think you will have to dig in.

[ljtechservices]

Originally Posted by brandont

Are they able to reconnect the other devices once the MacBook is online?

According to http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwa...max-simul-conn that router may be set at 32 Maximum Simultaneous Connections (third router up from buttom at that link.

Everything connects after the router is rebooted. I will look for the router on the list though.

[ljtechservices]

Well the problem just seemed to go away.
Then again, the user hasn't brought that particular macbook to the office for a while.

after my initial call it was just one user. both her computer and her iphone would get kicked off. No one else.
As far as I could tell there were no dup IP's.

We came to the conclusion that if it did happen again we would get a new router. Sonicwall this time since they want to do some vpn access.

[YeOldeStonecat]

May be a firmware glitch, try updating the firmware. I see you state it's an "N" model, but it may be an older one. I've seen older routers get quirky after a few years and a new operating system gets put on the network. Lots of older models had issues when IP6 devices got added to a network..and a firmware update fixed the issue.

Although good to see you mention it will be replaced with a more proper business grade model. The Cisco RV220W is a good entry level biz grade model I've had good experiences with a budget clients that barely have the budget for better business grade models.

[ljtechservices]

thanks for the info on the Cisco. I'll add that to my list.