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Hi,
Is there anybody out there who understands Macs, my 6 month old MacBook Pro is refusing to access the internet:(. It worked with the ethernet cable at the hotel but would not access the WiFi. Now I have started work and moved into an apartment and it won't work ar all. They have WiFi at the school and an ethernet cable in the apartment.

In the apartment the diagnostics bit says the internet is connected and says it has a IP address etc, but I cannot access a single web page. In the school they know nothing of Macs, this might apply to the country as a whole, but the computor guy cannot work out why my computor won't access anything:@.

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I don't have much experience with Macs but from the symptoms it sounds like you have connected and got an IP from the DHCP server but it hasn't given you the network's DNS servers that translate URLs to IP addresses. But if the tech at the school is scratching his head and he has hands-on with the Mac then it's going ot be hard to do it remotely.

The procedure to test things should be to use PING to ping various network IPs and URLs to see how far the connection goes. If you can't ping anything outside your laptop then it hasn't got a connection but if it can ping a server on the network then you have a connection. I would speak to the internet provider and get from them an IP on their network and try pinging that ... if you can then you have a connection - if not then you don't. You might just have to set up the LAN or WiFi connection with the appropriate DNS servers to get it to work :)

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Failing all of the above...It will make a beautiful Paperweight....:P

Regards Roger....Your helpful online Tech Buff.

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Thanks Chris,
Certainly at the apartment language would prevent such a discussion, otherwise my ignorance of the technology - ping???? is a problem.

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Ahh, yes well ... now my knowledge of Macs is going to let us down because I talk PC-speak. You will have all the necessary tools (like the ping program) on the Mac but I have no idea where it is.

Without being able to speak to the internet provider's help line it's going to be hard but all the info is out there on Google. If you are writing here I assume you have access to the Internet somewhere so just look around and try out the tips on sites like:

Dummies Guide

Apple Communities

MacBook Pro downloadable user's guide

etc.

You are using a MacBook Pro, which after a trip to WikiPedia seems to run the OS X 10 (or later) operating system. If you Google using the name of your internet provider (start with your home connection for instance) and the words "DNS server address" then you should find some discussions where people say what your DNS server addys are - you will probably need these addresses when you set up your connection. As I say, if you have connection but you can't see any URLs then it might be missing the DNS server numbers - they are specific to your provider.

Let us know how you get on :)

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Hi Chris,
Yes I have very limited access at the moment. Here is the result of my diagnotics check if it helps. The first data is what the computor tells me when I go to location for info about a connection. But something is wrong.


Location
Status = Connected

Ethernet is currently active and has the IP address 192.168.1.2


Configure IPv4 = Using DHCP
IP address = 192.168.1.2

Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0

Router = 192.168.1.1

DNS Server = 192.168.1.1

Search Domains = Home

So I pinged the IP address above

PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.055 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.052 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.055 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.051 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
cmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=0.051 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=0.056 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=0.074 ms

--- 192.168.1.2
ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.051/0.057/0.074/0.006 ms

Then I pinged other addresses using web names not IP adresses = not so good.

Ping has started…

PING 192.178.1.2 (192.178.1.2): 56 data bytes

Request timeout for icmp_seq 0

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2

Request timeout for icmp_seq 3

Request timeout for icmp_seq 4

Request timeout for icmp_seq 5

Request timeout for icmp_seq 6

Request timeout for icmp_seq 7

Request timeout for icmp_seq 8

--- 192.178.1.2
ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss


ping:cannot resolve www.yahoo.com: Unknown host

ping:cannot resolve www.google.com: Unknown host

ping:cannot resolve www.diptera.info: Unknown host


Lookup has started…

; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> www.yahoo.com/ +multiline +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +nostats +search
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached



Traceroute has started…

traceroute: unknown host www.yahoo.com


Whois has started…

whois: whois.internic.net: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

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Hi Chris,
Yes I have limited internet access - this is my 4th attempt to post this.
Below is the dtat my computor gives at 'location' and the results of pinging, 1st time the IP address given in location then other web sites.

Location
Status = Connected

Ethernet is currently active and has the IP address 192.168.1.2

Configure IPv4 = Using DHCP
IP address = 192.168.1.2

Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0

Router = 192.168.1.1

DNS Server = 192.168.1.1

Search Domains = Home


PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.055 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.052 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.055 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.051 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
cmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=0.051 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=0.056 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2:
icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=0.074 ms

--- 192.168.1.2
ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.051/0.057/0.074/0.006 ms

Ping has started…

PING 192.178.1.2 (192.178.1.2): 56 data bytes

Request timeout for icmp_seq 0

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2

Request timeout for icmp_seq 3

Request timeout for icmp_seq 4

Request timeout for icmp_seq 5

Request timeout for icmp_seq 6

Request timeout for icmp_seq 7

Request timeout for icmp_seq 8

--- 192.178.1.2
ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

ping:cannot resolve www.yahoo.com: Unknown host

ping:cannot resolve www.google.com: Unknown host

ping:cannot resolve www.diptera.info: Unknown host

Lookup has started…

; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> www.yahoo.com/ +multiline +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +nostats +search
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Traceroute has started…

traceroute: unknown host www.yahoo.com


Whois has started…

whois: whois.internic.net: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

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Hi Gordon - yes it all points to the fact that your DNS isn't configured correctly. Your network adaptor has been set to look at the router (192.168.1.1) for any DNS info but for some reason it hasn't got it - or the provider hasn't given it to it. So far you have only pinged Private, internal IP addresses and they all work - and the external URLs all fail. Now try pinging something like diptera.info using it's IP address (72.44.83.99) and see if you get a reply - if you do then you definitely have internet and no DNS.

The good news is that you just have to find the IP addresses of your internet provider by Googling (like "<insert providers name here> dns server address" and then put them into the network adaptor's settings/properties (replacing the 192.168.1.1 address in the DNS server list). :)

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Thanks Chris