Peter Boctor

I just finished helping a family member across the country with their wireless network setup. Neither the local ISP or Netgear technical support were able to help.

Problem: An iMac plugged directly to a Netegear router via Ethernet connected to the Internet just fine, but a wireless connection from a MacBook didn’t work.

First we figured out that the router was a Netgear WPN824v3 and the devices we are trying to connect are an iMac, a MacBook and an iPhone.

The problem was that the MacBook was connected to the wireless network but wasn’t properly getting an IP address via DHCP.

We verified that plugging the Ethernet cable into the Macbook worked, so we knew that the Internet connection to the ISP worked fine, and the problem was only for wireless.

First we tried temporarily turning off all wireless security but that made no difference.

Next I found a simulation of the UI for that unit here. This made it a lot easier to see what options were available for that router.

We changed the default password for the router and enabled Remote Management. Now I could log in to the router and see the router’s actual settings.

The first thing I noticed was that the Mode for the wireless network was set to “Auto 108Mbps”. Did this router support 802.11n? And did it work with the built-in Airport card? A couple of Google searches turned up no answer.

So next I decided to try to get things working with just 802.11g.
First I set the Mode to “g and b” and set the Channel to “Auto”. That didn’t change anything. The MacBook could still connect to the wireless network, but not get an IP address.

Under Advanced/Wireless Settings I noticed an “108Mbps Settings” area. I checked “Disable Advanced 108Mbps Features” and un-checked “Enable eXtended Range(XR) Feature”

Success! The Macbook could now successfully get a DHCP IP address!

Before finishing, we made sure that the bottom of the router had a piece of paper with the router’s password and we disabled the router’s Remote Management feature and re-enabled the WPA2 password and re-verified that everything was still working as expected. We also made sure that the iPhone could also connect without any problems.

Happy Troubleshooting!