Macbook Air problems with Motorola cable modem (Surfboard 6580) - solved

I've just solved a pesky problem with our Motorola cable modem (Surfboard SBG6580). For a month now, my Macbook Air's internet connection was giving me grief. The main symptom was the very slow loading of pages like Google. The browser kept telling me that it was still "Resolving hostname," which was puzzling because our internet provider actually uses Google DNS.

The problem is an incompatibility between the firewall of the Motorola cable modem (DOCSIS 3.0 specifications) and the Macbook Air's built-in firewall. To solve it, you just turn off either firewall (that is, either turn off your Macbook's firewall or your cable modem's firewall).

Caution though. Turning off the firewall on your cable modem may result to attacks from the internet. So you have to understand what's happening. Simply put, a firewall is a "shield" that makes it hard for external computers (ie., hackers) from getting inside your home network. You have two main options:

• Option A. Turn off your Macbook Air's firewall. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > click the lock icon (lower left corner) > enter your password > click Turn Off Firewall. (Read Caveat, below.)
• Option B. Turn off your Motorola cable modem's firewall. Login to your cable modem's admin page. You typically do this by opening your browser and typing the IP address of your cable modem (usually 192.168.0.1) at the URL box. Then type your admin username and password. Click Firewall on top of the page and choose "Off" in the dropdown labeled IPv4 Firewall Protection. Some also recommend unchecking IP Flood Detection, but it's up to you to do some tests whether this helps or not (I'm still testing mine as of this writing. So far my tests indicate that leaving it checked does not slow down my connection). Check the Motorola SB6580 User Guide here for more details. (Read Caveat, below.)

Option A. Turn off your Macbook Air's firewall.

Option B. Turn off your cable modem's firewall.

CAVEAT

Caveat for Option A. Turning off your Macbook's firewall makes your files and system vulnerable when you connect to another network (eg, in an internet cafe).

Caveat for Option B. Turning off the firewall on your cable modem will make all computers and devices vulnerable to external attackers.

Until Motorola or the DOCSIS specifications solve the conflict, this solution will have to do for me. Hope this solved your problem, too.

* * *

Behind the scenes. I nearly gave up on solving this problem since the real solution (that obscure Apple forum entry) didn't turn up in the usual searches. The initial keywords I used ("problems with Motorola 6580) led me to the wrong track that led me to the wild goose chase of checking signal strength and fixing cable connections.

What finally gave me a breakthrough was the realization that the other network users (mostly Macbooks and a Windows machine) weren't experiencing the slowdown. This led me to a new track and restarted by searching for "Problems with Macbook Air and Motorola 6580" that finally led me to the solution from an obscure entry in the Apple community forums.

This just goes to show that I need to constantly reexamine my assumptions. And that perseverance pays off, eventually. After surfing the internet and reading bulletin boards, I thought the problem was a weak signal coming from the cable provider OR a problem with the cabling. A long process of elimination with some experimenting eventually led me to a solution hidden in

Back to Firefox for Mac (or Firefox vs. Safari)

Okay, I got frustrated with Safari, so I switched to Firefox. Here's why.

Gmail just got slower and slower in Safari as Google added more features to it. Since I use Gmail heavily, I needed to solve this problem. I found a solution here but in the course of looking for a workaround, I started using FF again and the FF habit came back.

Anyway. I was a heavy FF user (something carried over from my Windoze days), testing the Safari waters slowly. When Safari 3 came out, I was impressed. Safari loaded faster than FF.

However, I noticed that in the long run, Safari slowed down in some websites I used heavily (like the BBC website), while FF performed well.

So now I'm waiting for Safari to catch up. I like Safari because it has better bookmarking features, allows private browsing and has generally a simpler and easier to use interface. But if it continues to drag my surfing down, then FF is just a click away.

Fixing Slow Gmail in Safari, Mac OSX

At times, Gmail has been taking the longest time to send my mail messages. It does not matter whether the mail has a heavy file with it or a short note. It just slows down. And this occurs both in Safari and Firefox. 

After doing some googling, I found this fix. Apparently, the slowness is happening because of Gmail 2.0's interface. Solution? Just use the old Gmail 1.0 interface by typing this link instead: https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1

So if you're having a slow Gmail connection on your Mac, try this!

Character Palette Problems

Here's a Mac annoyance. Two annoyances, in fact. I solved 1.5 of these annoyances, and this is the topic for this blog.

Annoyance 1. In Windows, there's a Character applet that allows you to view the keystrokes needed to produce special characters like Dingbats or Webdings. In Mac, I have not yet found the equivalent. Mac has Font Book, which is far superior to what Windows has, but it took a bit of exploring to get what I needed.

Annoyance 2. Playing with Font Book brought out the Character Palette display. After attempting to do something on it, the app froze on my screen, blocking the view. A restart failed to cure the problem and worst, Character Palette would appear and disappear whenever I clicked the Spotlight icon (blue circle on the upper right corner). Whenever I tried clicking on the erring app, it disappeared! Then when I clicked Spotlight again, it would show up briefly and then hide again!

Trying to "kill" the process was not useful either, because the app changed its process number every time it appeared. Activity Monitor also could not freeze the slippery app to give me time to Force Quit it. Here's how I solved it, finally.

I did some googling, and found a couple of solutions. What worked for me was to restart in Safe Mode, by pressing the Shift key as the Macbook booted. In restart, I clicked the Spotlight icon to reproduce the problem. The elusive Character Palette showed up, but this time, it stayed! So I clicked Cmd-Q to quit it and it worked.

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Readings:
Twenty steps to help diagnose and fix system problems

Printer Problems, Solved

As part of an effort to troubleshoot our slow LAN and internet connection, Val (our CTO and head geek) decided to isolate the problem by bringing his router. After a few minutes of waiting, we got our network back and it was noticeably faster. Even Gmail, which used to freeze for a few seconds, was now going smoothly.

There was only one problem: I could not connect to our office printer again. I was getting the NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL and NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE again. Troubleshooting the printer connection problem was a tedious but welcome break from the office grind. It helped me understand the problem better than the first time. Here are the solutions.


Unlike the first time I encountered the problem, there were now more resources on the web to deal with the error. The solution is to tweak the URL that is used to connect to the Windows printer, so that it follows this format: smb://YOURDOMAIN;login:password@SERVER/PATHTOPRINTER

Apple specifies that you use a valid login and password (ie, it is a valid username and password in the Windows PC that is sharing the printer). Some users over the web report that a fake username and password will work, but I suspect that this is because in their environment, the Windows computer is sharing the printer to Everyone.

Some of the websites I visited told me to option-click the "More printers" button in Mac's Printer Setup Utility. Some said to option-click "Add printers". Neither worked for me. I used my CUPS (C Unix Printing System) webpage instead, which is administered via a web browser connecting to http://localhost:631/. In CUPS, I clicked the Printers tab > Modify printer button and stepped through the setup all over again until I reached the part where it prompted me for the URL. And I entered the long URL.

Valuable Readings:

Manually Reconfiguring the Printer URL (Apple Website)
Read the thread from MacOSX Hints
Apple's Explanation of the Error

Faulty Software Upgrade

After allowing Mac's auto-update utility to install OS 10.4.10, I started to encounter problems with some of my applications, especially those based on Rossetta. (Rossetta is the "bridge" that allows Intel Macs to run software built for the PowerPC Macs). Applications that used to run now failed to launch. This post will summarize what I did to solve the problem.

Symptoms of the problem. Here's a specific case. I was using DropBook to create ebooks so I could read them from my mobile phone. After the upgrade, DropBook failed to launch. When I double-clicked on the icon, it displayed the expected behavior of a launching application (the zooming action), but then nothing else happened. DropBook did not come out of the screen, nor would its icon show up on the Dock.

I did two days worth of web trawling and experimentation. Some sites recommended cleaning my application caches -- I used Onyx to do this. Some sites said to try isolating the problem by loggin in to a different account and testing (this would indicate whether the problem lay in my specific user profile only). Unfortunately, none of these solved the problem.

What finally solved the problem was an advice to just download the Combo Updater and reinstall it. Using the automated path (Click Apple icon > Software Update) would fail because the tool would only report that I had already installed the latest version.

So I went to the Apple website, downloaded the DMG file of the update, and reinstalled it. Then I waited as the Mac restarted and crossed my fingers. It turned out that this solved the problem! Whew!

Additional Readings:

• MacFixit article on the problems of 10.4.10
  
• On what to do when an application won't launch
• Firmware update problems
  

Service Packs and Updates

In Windows, updating was a nightmare and Microsoft made sure they emphasized the danger. For instance, when I updated to Windows XP SP2, I got copious warning messages that amounted to saying, "Look, you've got a shitty OS so now you need to patch it with this here patch. But we're not really sure how this patch might affect your existing set up so be sure to back up whatever needs backing up." It took ages for XP to upgrade itself to service pack 2 and if I remember correctly, I had to reboot three times just to get Windows back in shape.


In another instance, when Windows auto-updater asked me install new security patches, Microsoft refused to send me those patches unless I loaded this "little thing" called Genuine Windows Advantage (GWA) software. The software checked whether my Windows was licensed -- which took 2 more centuries to run. And after it was absolutely sure that I wasn't stealing money from Bill's gazillions, it finally installed the small security patch, which took 30 minutes. Then my machine started getting noticeably slower and I found out later that the little GWA was spying on my machine and sending back info to Microsoft. Auto-updater also kept bugging me to connect to the Microsoft website.

In contrast, I have been receiving regular updates on my MacBook through the internet. I have upgraded to the latest OSX, including security patches and updates to my bundled applications.

Today I automatically received a firmware update for my MacBook. It had about three sentences that said I needed to reboot and that the notebook might make some noises-- but don't worry, just let it run. I let it run, expecting a longish wait. The restart was quick and painless.

Maybe I'm being unfair. After all, my old machine wasn't Core Duo. Still, I didn't get lots of warning messages. Nor did Apple ask me to prove that my Mac OSX was fake.