My mac mini running 10.6.2 OS X self assign's itself an Ip instead of connecting right away to my network. Thus, can't access Internet till I correct it. Any advice mac friends?

Do you have it set to connect with DHCP? Pic

yes, I believe I do.

Yes… Hi John! ...and resetting the lease seems to help

Do you know how to zap the PRAM? Do that and see if it resets anything “stuck” in your config.

I have reset the Pram I believe once on my G4 not on this computer. don’t remember how. Since my G4 seemed to be working well on the network I used migration assistant to copy over my network preferences- but I fear that made it worse. So then I went to network prefs and tried to redo the network setup from scratch. That seemed to make it better but it will still often come up disconnected from the network and when I go to network prefs it makes me go rest my cable modem and router before it connects. That seems to work and now it seems to be running acceptably once I do that. But it is a pain to keep doing that. BTW- this is a new computer, I’ve had it less than a month. The network is a G network by the way, with all other computers being G devices and this being the only N capable device- I don’t know if that matters.

G is backwards compatible with N. So no that shouldn’t be an issue.

PRAM zap is Apple-Opt-P-R on startup. I usually hold it down till it chimes at least 3 times before allowing it to boot to the OS.

Do you have to have Wifi? Wired is always better.

Gotta be wifi. I’m pretty far from where my cable comes in… it’s be too long to run a wire. Any risks with zapping the P-RAM thanks!

No risks, it just resets some stuff that may help.

What is the address that is supposed to be assigned from your router? 192.168.0.x or 192.168.1.x? Or some other addressing schema?

You can assign a static IP address based on what the router is giving out via DHCP and then that will tell you if you have a routing issue or a local issue.

192.168.1.X – how do I set up a static IP on the router. I do suspect there may be some problem in it going to get its IP because sometimes it doesn’t get an IP when I turn it on and Network Utility tells me to go reset the router. Then it works. I think part of the problem may be when it keeps going to get a new IP when I turn it on. I could be way off- I don’t know much about networking.

It actually seems like a similar problem that I had when I used to start up my laptop out of range and it wouldn’t get an IP and then I would come back in range and it couldn’t get an Ip for whatever reason (possibly that it was occupied by another computer on the network?). I got a range extender and I haven’t had that problem since- but my new mac, which is always located in range is now giving me problems.