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'Another device on the network ...' puzzling behaviour of the wifi

Avatar Mark Ford
Last evening both my iMac and iPod Touch failed to connect to the wifi saying that I was using the wrong password.
I turned things off and on again but no progress. I didn't put the password in again and I went to bed thinking 'It will all be OK in the morning'.
However - same problem this am.

I put the wifi password into the Touch. It worked.
The iMac displayed a small window saying 'Another device on the network is using your computer's IP address.....'.

The fan icon for AirPort in the menu bar showed I had a signal & so it proved. I didn't need to re-enter the password. All seems OK now.

I can tell myself that it was just one of those things .. or I can tell myself quite a sinister story about it.

Can anyone put me out of my misery please?

Re: 'Another device on the network ...' puzzling behaviour of the wifi

Avatar Mick Burrell
Difficult to be precise but my guess is that for some reason, there was a glitch in the wireless transmission from your router. If so, I don't see that it would necessarily release all the IP addresses it had given out. Therefore when the iMac tried to connect, it already had an IP address, one which the router knew it had given out. The router would see it as a new machine using an address it had already assigned. Had you gone to System Preferences>Network and clicked on "Renew Lease" that would probably have worked, so would restarting the iMac. I guess the iPod gets turned off between uses and so its restart would get it a new IP address from the router and hence no "clash".

But I could be wrong ;-)
 
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