Problem wiith Mi Fi Verizon Hot spot. & MAC

T

thataway

Active member
I have a Verizon MiFi 4G LTE hot spot, At my Aunt's house, I get 1-3 bars and excellent conneciton with my Mac book Air. At the RV, I get 4 bars, but it will not connect with the MAC. Message is "Connection timed out" I have rebooted the MAC and the hot spot.

So here I am at the RV typing on the I pad (A T &T)--which also is 5 bars/ and good connection directly with its wireless, as does the I phone A T & T.

Any thoughts from my MAC friends?
 
thataway":3u4ws6e3 said:
I have a Verizon MiFi 4G LTE hot spot, At my Aunt's house, I get 1-3 bars and excellent conneciton with my Mac book Air. At the RV, I get 4 bars, but it will not connect with the MAC. Message is "Connection timed out" I have rebooted the MAC and the hot spot.

So here I am at the RV typing on the I pad (A T &T)--which also is 5 bars/ and good connection directly with its wireless, as does the I phone A T & T.

Any thoughts from my MAC friends?
Click to expand...

Brent's suggestion on changing the MiFi's wifi channel is possible, as it may be conflicting with other hotspots in the RV park. However, most wifi hotspots scan for available free channels before making connections, so I'm guessing there may be more to this than that.

With your Mac --> MiFi --> Internet connection not working, there's obviously either a problem with the Mac or the MiFi. It's relatively easy to narrow things down since you have an iPad.

Fire up your MiFi, disable your data connection (AT&T) on your iPad, and connect your iPad via wireless to the MiFi.

If your iPad can surf via the MiFi, and your MacBook still can't - the problem is with your MacBook Air config. If neither device can surf - the problem is with the MiFi and/or Verizon connection.

Since your MacBook Air works fine with the MiFi elsewhere, my bet is on the MiFi's Verizon connection at your RV.
 
Brent, I don't know how to change the wireless settings on the "router". The MiFi is a receiver about the size of a small smart phone: about 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" x 1/2" thick....user contols--the back has access to a SIM card and battery, no switches.

I am using this with the I pad attached to the MiFi device, so it does work with the I pad.

As I noted, at the Aunt's house, the Mi Fi works fine (as it has many other places)

I don't know where the Cell tower is located--we are about 200 feet from the freeway. There is a 40 foot telephone pole in the adjacent perment mobile home secion of which the small RV section is locaated. This pole has 4 WiFi antennas on it. But none of the WiFi signal (2 and 5 m) are anywhere near as strong as my MiFi device. I thought about shielding the MiFi with foil, to cut down its reception--not sure why that would help....I have an antenna and cell phone Wilson Amp, but those are not activated.

I suspect that there is something I can do with the MAC IP settings ? Which might help?

Thanks,
 
Sorry At Work

Write down network settings on Mac and compare to mifi which can be accessed by using a specific ip and password and might be on device or in manual

I wish we could be this on the phone
 
thataway":3r2u5jy2 said:
I am using this with the I pad attached to the MiFi device, so it does work with the I pad.
Click to expand...

Earlier, you mentioned your iPad was AT&T. If so, just to be clear - when you say your iPad works with your MiFi, you don't know that for sure unless you disable your AT&T cellular data connection on your iPad. You may have done so, but you didn't mention you had.

If you don't disable your AT&T cellular data connection, and your MiFi is faulty - either because it can't connect to Verizon, or is not properly serving up wifi to clients like your iPad and Macbook - your iPad will fall back to the AT&T data connection to get online, even though you have told it to connect to your MiFi.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201299
 
maybe Verizon has a troubleshooting software to install.

ATand T did when I had trouble with DSL and it tested the modem and did various other items and displayed details on connections and found a slew of security items

very handy
 
I use a Verizon hotspot (happens to be a Pantech brand) pretty regularly with my Mac. Usually it is straightforward and works great. Then of course sometimes I'm in an area with a poor signal and it's not so great. But that's straightforward and obvious (no signal, or "1X" or maybe one bar of 3G). I can sometimes boost the latter type of signal with a Wilson cradle booster.

However occasionally I get a "fake" signal. That is, I'll get something like 3 bars of 3G, but.... it just doesn't work. Sometimes I'll get the same message of the connection timing out. I think (but don't know) that this is a signal problem, which is why I call it a "fake" signal. It's usually in an area where I don't expect a great signal - so this may not be the same issue.

For any other problems, I basically do what you have done: Turn Airport off and back on; turn the hotspot off and back on; re-start the computer. One of those generally fixed it.

One time I did have a genuine Verizon problem which was traced to the SIM card (they sent me a new one; problem solved). The way I figured out that it was the SIM card was to put the hotspot SIM card into an iPad (which had been working fine with its own SIM card). The problem then shifted to the iPad, so it was pretty obvious. However that was when the hotspot/SIM card were just a few weeks old, not after they'd be ticking along happily for months/years. At ay rate, it was an experiment something like DaNag described, (isolating the hotspot/SIM card) that enabled me to figure it out.
 
DaNag, Yes, I turned off the A T & T cellular on the I pad. I much prefer the mac book--and am using it now at my Aunt's house. Problem is that I don't want to cut into the "day working time"--and want to avoid being in the house as much as possible, because there is mold in the home…!!

I do have a "folio" case, with a keyboard--smaller than usual, but I can type on it. I have 10 Gig on the Mi Fi, Right now close to max date use on the the A T & T,( I use some of that data with the I phone when driving around areas where I have not been for over 20 years and trying to find stores etc..)

Not a "fake". We located the Cell tower, and it is 3 blocks away. I have a Verizon back up phone, and it works fine, at the RV.

Yes, there are many WI Fi signals which My Mac receives, at the RV--but an equal number at the home.

I don't see any which ID as being from the headquarters of the Mobile Home park which surrounds (on 3 sides) the RV section….but as I mentioned they do have 3 antennas on a pole probably over 40 feet high.

I'll try getting out of the RV park area, and see if that is an issue, with interference and their WiFi system.

Not a sim card problem, since it works fine at the house--as it is now!

Now if I just had brought the C Dory, then I could sit on it at night and use the computer.!
 
Bob, We had a Verizon MiFi that we used for many years with a Mac Book Pro with no problems. Over time it quit working well with the Mac. I had to go into the operating system occasionally and delete the passwords as the keychain became corrupted. Re-entering the password fixed the problem, but only for a while. I had a grandfathered unlimited account that I wanted to keep, so I put up with a lot from Verizon. If the signal was not strong the MiFi wouldn't connect. Verizon eventually changed the cell coverage at our home, and it was never that great where we winter in Texas. I dropped the Verizon account because they would not replace the MiFi.

How old is your MiFi and how old is the Mac Book? Google the problem. There is a lot of talk online about the problem in the Apple Forums, and explanations of how to go into the password keychain to delete corrupt passwords.
 
When we were still using a Mifi card, we had an issue at one RV resort... turned out to be interference with their signals and our Mifi being on the same channel. Only place we encountered this, but it happened each time we stayed there. The local Verizon store was familiar with people having problems at that park.

We have been using our phone as the hot spot since 2009, and haven't had an issue with that, even at the same resort.
 
Still no solution--talked to Verion "techinical" people at the store---that was a joke.

I have just decided to use the i pad, which has a folio keyboard. I cann;t type as fast, and make more typo's. But it works fine, and fast with the i pad (and i phone, at the RV park). I save using the Mac book Air for the house, where it also works fine.

MiFi is 3 years old (the Verizon store says they will not update it, because I bought it--and not their responsibility. The baack book Air is 2 years old, but running the latest software. It works fine elsewhere, with zero issues.

I could not find the exact problem. I might try asking on the forums. Thanks again.
 
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