Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Wi-Fi internet using a KPN Experia Box

Apple just released its latest version of Mac OS X called Mountain Lion. They improved a few things so I had to have it, especially at the price they sell it for. I know there’s not much in there I will use, but still.

As with the previous version, I could install the whole thing by going to the appstore and selecting the update there. After waiting a bit for the download to complete, the install went down without a hitch and soon I was running Mac OS X Mountain Lion and happily browsing away on the internet. Or so I thought….

Update: It works now

It seems that Apple finally fixed the issue with the KPN experia box. Be sure to update your mac to the latest greatest and you should be able to connect without any problems!

The troublesome relation with the KPN Experia Box

It has happened before and it happened this time too. The KPN Experia Box I got at home is giving me trouble whenever I want something serious from it. A few years back it was all about a failing VPN connection because the box was doing the wrong things. And now it’s giving me trouble again.

As soon as I finished installing the new OS update on my Mac I had no internet connectivity. I was able to get into my KPN Experia Box and share files with my Windows machine, but other than that, nothing, zero. The symptoms are not really obvious. You will see that the wi-fi connection is there, you will get an ip-address and the correct DNS settings, but despite all that you cannot access any websites.

So I figured, maybe it’s my wi-fi settings that have gone wrong. I reset them completely, I gave my network a different SSID and password, just to be sure and expected it to work. But no such luck today.

As it happens I have a new Experia Box since a few days, so it might be that it was faulty. So a reset of the box be a good idea aswell. But again, no succes.

All the time I still had internet connectivity on my Windows PC, so there must be something in the combination of having wi-fi a Mac and a KPN Experia Box. I know it’s blasphemy to have a Windows PC and Mac on one desk, but it should work right?

Getting a working solution

After fiddling around with the settings a bit, I figured out what the solution to my problem was. You can configure the wireless settings of a KPN Experia Box in a number of ways. The default is usually good, but in this case it isn’t. Apparantly, the combination of B+G+N wireless isn’t working for the latest update of Mac OS X. So here’s the settings I used for my wireless.

Please note: This combination works for my box, so no guarantuees it works for your box!

Final thoughts

To me the whole thing seems really broken and I’m not sure who is to blame. Is it Apple for bringing out a crappy OS update when it comes to support for different Wi-Fi configurations? They did break it before in various ways and also for me, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it again. Or maybe it is KPN with their weird modems that sometimes seem to respond wacky when  you want some serious network configuration like VPN connections or a properly secured Wi-Fi channel.

At this point I don’t know and frankly I don’t care. The settings above seem to work, so I’m moving right along to more fun matters