Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Upgrades Businesses Wireless (Apple) Apple Hardware

AirPort Software Updated to v3.4 78

Posted by pudge from the my-ware-is-firm dept.
iumacboy writes "Available now in your Software Update, Apple AirPort Software v3.4, which 'provides improved AirPort wireless networking software, and is recommended for all users with an AirPort Extreme and AirPort enabled computer or an AirPort Extreme base station.' New features include: 'improved antenna output control, enhanced logging from your base station which is compatible with syslog, and performance improvements for WPA security implementations.'" Apple also put up some AirPort Management Tools (a management utility for viewing logs and configurations, and a client monitor) but they quickly disappeared.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

AirPort Software Updated to v3.4 More

AirPort Software Updated to v3.4

Comments Filter:

  • Airport update (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @01:53PM (#8919295)
    Maybe I am just crazy, but ever since I did this update last night, my signal strenth on my Airport extreme card (in my 15in PB) seems to have dropped. I am getting 3/4 bars on an access point that is about 4 feet away

  • Warning! (Score:5, Informative)

    by awtbfb ( 586638 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @01:55PM (#8919322)
    You may not want to install this one just yet. Airport 3.4 has cut range considerably for some people. It's all over the Apple Discussion boards and Apple news sites.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @04:04PM (#8921129)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • This reminds me of a friend's rule of thumb for Apple SW updates: Always wait a few days before installing any new updates. Let others test them, because Apple can't think of everything. :-) I wonder, is there a way to know what got installed where and undo an install? I suppose you could back up your /System, /Application, and /Library directories before each update, but that seems extreme.

  • It lowered my signal (Score:4, Informative)

    by aclarke ( 307017 ) <spam@@@clarke...ca> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @01:56PM (#8919340) Homepage
    I seem to get 0-2 bars less of signal strength on average than I did before the update. For instance, now I don't get any signal out on the patio when I easily did before. I'd think this was likely coincidence except others on this MacRumors thread [macrumors.com] have noticed the same thing.

  • Link supplied in body is dead (Score:5, Informative)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @01:58PM (#8919354) Journal
    The link for Airport Management Tools doesn't work for me - I get Apple's version of 404.

    Right now the Airport Management Tools can be downloaded from the Airport Support Page [apple.com]. Look down the right column until you get to the section, Resources.

  • Reportedly killing range and disables MLDonkey (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fuzzle ( 590327 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @01:58PM (#8919359) Homepage Journal
    Over at the Ars Mac Achaia [arstechnica.com], there's a thread about the downsides, they include:
    • Airport 3.4 is incompatible with MLdonkey filesharing. If you run MlMac or MlDonkey, the airport will drop the DHCP lease and refuse to renew. Your mac will assign itself a worthless IP.
    • PowerPage [powerpage.org] is reporting that this morning's update is cutting airport range on Extreme clients by up to 60% (!! !!).

  • Range Issues, ignorance is bliss (Score:5, Funny)

    by dynamo ( 6127 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @02:42PM (#8919934) Journal
    I had the same signal strength until I read this comment thread, and I kid you not, I lost 25% strength the moment I finished the page. How could it know? Oh wait, it's back up to full now. No, now it's back to 75%. BEWARE.

  • Agreed on the range issue (Score:3, Informative)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @03:42PM (#8920802) Homepage Journal
    My Ti is 10 feet from the Extreme base station and I'm getting 60% on the bars after running the update.

    Test early, test often, test on all supported platforms.

  • There also seems to be an update to the Airport Extreme Base Station...

    apple.com [apple.com]

  • Obligitory... (Score:4, Funny)

    by leinerj ( 115797 ) <leinerj@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @04:47PM (#8921748) Homepage
    I installed the update and don't notice a differe
    [SIGNAL LOST]
    • I installed that one right after installing RealPlayBUFFERING....

    • Re:Obligitory... (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by anothy ( 83176 )
      WTF?!? no offence intended to parent - it had to be done, and someone was bound to (and it actually manages to be relevant this time) - but how in creation did this get moderated as "Informative"?

      i'm going over to meta-moderate right now just on the hopes of getting that mod.
      • Since its both funny and true (aka informative) , lots of people report signal weakness in meter.

        What comes to mind... Maybe signal was showing "wrong" before and fixed now?

  • Improved Calibration? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @08:06PM (#8923749)
    It could be that they've actually improved the calibration of the signal monitor. I had a lot of trouble with my PB's AP card with it losing signal (on macstumbler) but failing to notice and thus to reestablish the TCP connection when the signal returned, forcing me to restart AP on my machine. This was part of a bug report I submitted and corresponded with Apple about about a month ago.

    It turned out that there was also something wrong with my AP card, as my most annoying problems (silent dropping of connection) went away when I swapped it out for a friend's AP card. Getting a new one from Apple fixed things up nicely for me.

  • Problems in 802.11g only? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by raga ( 12555 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @09:45PM (#8924520)
    Signal strength seems fine for me.
    TiBook867 (10.3.3)+802.11b Airport card on
    (a) ABS(Snow) at home
    (b) Netgear at work
    (Both are 802.11b)

    Are there any 802.11b folks having a problem?

    cheers- raga

    • Re:Problems in 802.11g only? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Linksys 8702.11b router at home, netgear 802.11b at work. No problems. No signal strength difference.
    • I have a bomebuilt HostAP AP, and a 12" PB 867 with an Airport Extreme card (running in 802.11b mode, since thats why my HostAP AP box supports).

      My appartment is very small, and I usualy sit withing 6 feet of the AP. I have always had full signal strength everywhere in my apt..

      Now it consistently drops to 1 bar.. and I lose signal when I go into another room...

      This royally sucks..
      • There is talk about Apple changing the algorithm used to calculate / display the signal strength (without any actual degradation in the strength). That could be what you are experiencing. It is just not certain right now. See this post. [slashdot.org]

        cheers- raga

      • Re:Problems in 802.11g only? (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        <sarcasm>I agree totally with raga. Apple didn't screw things up, they actually improved performance of the Airport Extreme card.

        Perhaps your unique circumstances are because you're using a nonstandard access point? Try upgrading to Apple Hardware and see if that fixes the problem. If not, try buying two or three new Airport Extreme cards and see if they all behave the same way.</sarcasm>

        If buying more Apple hardware doesn't fix your problem, perhaps you should use something simpler, lik
  • A quick look at the Apple boards shows that this update is not working -- users should avoid it, Apple should retract it.

    Given the fact that Apple -- as the True Believer faction loves to rub in other OS users' faces -- has complete control over the hardware and doesn't have to cover all kinds of variants like Linux or Windows, these things simply should not happen. This is a sign of sloppy testing or bad quality control, just like the famous creaking left handrest on the iBook, the batter cover that is n

  • Another Report (Score:3, Informative)

    by theanonymousbrit ( 768697 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:22AM (#8926148)
    I have a PowerBook G4 and an Airport Extreme base station w/ a Dr. Bott Direct Antenna. Before I installed the update I was getting 3-4 bars of signal just one room away from it. Post-update, I'm getting one to two bars, if I'm lucky (though I've yet to totally lose network connectivity). I haven't tried the tutorial to uninstall the offending software (again, available here [apple.com]), though it looks like it would do the trick. Hopefully Apple will remedy the problem before I'm forced to take such drastic measures, since it's obviously quite a widespread issue.

  • going back (Score:2, Interesting)

    by papakis ( 765312 )
    I am using the airport extreme base station with my powerbook and a ibm laptop with a 'g' card. After the upgrade the ibm laptop was getting low signal!!!! I manually changed the channel from auto to 11 and got some performance imprvemen, not much. Is there a way to go back to 5.3? thanks
    • Lots of people are complaining about fewer bars, but nobody seems to have demonstrated worse connectivity. It's quite possible that signal strenght hasn't changed but just that they changed the way they measure signal strength.
      • There are 3, count them 3 (1, 2, 3) posts made before yours about people not being able to connect after the update in ares they could connect befre the update.

        You must be one of the mods that mod bombs every apple post I make.
        • You must be one of the mods that mod bombs every apple post I make.
          Uh. yeah. That's me. posting from AlBook and modbombing the apple fanatics. And yet - somehow posting to the same thread.

          If it makes you feel better, said AlBook hasn't had any of these signal strength problems - although I do have the !@#%$!@# problem where trying to print to a shared printer locks up the Airport card altogether.
  • OK, Wife and I have two laptops we use in the home network: iBook 60MHz, 256 MEG, 10.3.3 Airport 802.11b; pBook 867MHz, 640 MEG, 10.3.3, Airport Extreme (802.11g) and a 1st gen ABS 802.11b along with a Deskjet5800 with built in 802.11b.

    After the update, the iBook still works without a problem. iBook print jobs to the Deskjet still process. The PB has far lower "bars" and, when sending a print job to the Deskjet the printer drops all but the first page of the job.

    I had to reconfigure the Deskjet to ad hoc

  • Quick Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by raga ( 12555 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:13PM (#8932278)
    If you are having problems with the 3.4 update, revert back to 3.3.1. Here's a tutorial on how to do it. [mac.com]

    As best as I can determine, a combination of (one or more) of the following causes the problem:
    1) Airport Extreme network
    2) ABS extreme not updated to 3.4 (only the mac updated to 3.4)
    3) Using a network app such as Retrospect/LimeWare/MLdonkey etc.
    4) Apple has changed the algorithm to the signal strength display.

    It may be a good idea to hold off the upgrade till 3.4.x is released.

    Having said that, I should add that I did upgrade without any problems (couldn't wait to play with the new apps :). My setup does not have the issues listed above. YMMV.

    The new Airport Client Monitor is cool. It plots the signal and noise strengths, as well as the transmit rate (which I could also see on MenuMeter, but not as a plot over the last 60 seconds.) The Airport Management Utility seems to be a superset of the old Airport Admin Utility and would probably be most useful if you have more than one ABS to handing off roving clients to one another. It can also "see" all Rendezvous enabled devices.

    cheers- raga

  • Management tools (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Servo ( 9177 ) <dstringf@NospAM.tutanota.com> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @05:49PM (#8933901) Journal
    Those Airport Management Tools are exactly what I have been bitching about wanting ever since I bought my Airport Extreme Base Station. Less expensive WAP's allow you to see whats going on, so you'd think a nice high end piece from Apple would too.

  • For what it's worth (Score:2, Informative)

    by bXTr ( 123510 )
    After installing the update, my Ti800 rebooted and was fine. I closed the lid until the next day and had no connectivity. I ended up having to hard reset the ABS (dual-ethernet, not Extreme) and upload firmware via the LAN port. ABS settings had to be redone, but I got it back up. Docs for doing the above are here [apple.com].
  • I was having some real trouble getting decent reception last night and was trying various things with the rather useful client monitor open. The noise graph was exceeding the signal so I tried adding interference robustness (first on the AEBS and then the Extreme cards), which made little difference, so I took it off again and suddenly the noise level was driven right down. Something up with the default setting of this not being set/working correctly?

Slashdot Top Deals

E = MC ** 2 +- 3db

Close