Airport extreme keeps dropping connection and its driving me crazy

This problem is happening on my setup too.

I have an Extreme Base Station and an Express, connected through WDS, and only the Extreme has ethernet connected (to the DHCP router). The Express keeps being deauthorized by the base station every 2 minutes, thus making the Base Station oscilate between blinking orange and green.

The logs show the same messages as above.

Tks!

This might be a little premature to post this, but I made the recommended change on the IPv6 setting that I found on MacGeekBlog to 'Local Link Only,' in *Manual Setup -> Advanced -> IPv6 -> Local-link only*

_ http://www.macgeekblog.com/blog/archive/2008/01/09/airport-extreme-802-11n-drops -connections.html_

I had been dropping both wired and wireless connections 10x a day, and since the change the log shows only one disconnect that was at 7:45 this morning before I turned the machine on. My son & I spent most of last evening playing Call of Duty 4 online on the PS3 and had no dropped connections at all.

This might not be the perfect fix, but it certainly put a decent amount the flame out of this fire.

If you're having this issue, try making this change and post a week later with your results... I'll do the same.

I thought I was the only one! Green light stays on and my wireless and wired clients are disconnected. I haven't bothered to wait it out to see what happens, but power-cycling the router clears it up.

We've been having this problem for a few weeks now.

The airport connection seems to drop on random moments.
Then comes back after a certain amount of time.

Connecting with a network cable while the airport network is dropped works just fine.

Ok, so it was indeed a premature post. My Airport is still dropping the internet connection randomly and often.

Both mine and a friends computer in separate houses on separate Airport Extremes +(his cable-modem, mine DSL-modem)+ are still dropping internet connection just as frequently, but the downtime on each instance seems to be less. I guess the Airport takes less time to reset when IPv6 isn't enabled.

I had thought this was an issue with the refurb Airport I had gotten late last year, so instead of spending 4 hours with tech support trying to diagnose it, I just bought a new one, fully thinking this was an issue with only my unit and I'd be able to send back the refurb once it was determined that it was the isse.

My new Gigabit Airport Extreme sits on top the previous brick shaped version, but acts exactly the same, so this isn't an issue with the hardware of this unit individually, but either the hardware of all Airport Extremes or more likely, something to do with the firmware that we currently have running.

*Apple, please get on fixing this.* We've done all we can here and I'm spending 3x the time uploading client pages to my website because I have to keep re-mirroring 4gb uploads because of all of the dropped connections.

I bought an Airport Extreme (7.2.1) about a month ago and have had the "dropping out" problem for most of that time. I was having to restart the router/cable modem as much as 5-6 times a day. I've been monitoring this and other sites and tried everything short of reinstalling Leopard. About 3 days ago I followed advice I found on another another forum and haven't had a problem since. Here's what I did:

Open Airport Utility, and choose manual settings.
Next, choose "Advanced" from the choices on the top.
Next click on the IPv6 button.
Finally, set the "IPv6 Mode" to "Link-Local Only" (the other choices are tunnel and node).
Restart your Mac and the Airport/modem, and hopefully, like me, you're problem will be solved. Good luck.

I'm having the same problem and it's driving me crazy.

Hard-wired into the modem, I'm fine. I can configure, get the DNS info but my connection drops every 2-10 minutes.

WILL SOMEONE FROM APPLE PLEASE HELP US!!!

In a minute, I'm going to return the AEBS and get a couple really long cat 5 cables.

Thanks!

It works for me. My AEBS was dropping, but now it works ok. I didn't try burst transfers yet. In a few weeks I'm gonna post others results.

sethj:

There are two problems people are having in this long discussion:

1. wireless network connectivity problems with the MacBook. This seems to be a very commonly posted problem in this forum, the MacBook forum, and the Leopard discussion forum. I don't think anyone in these discussion forums has a satisfactory solution to the problem - my impression is that there is a fundamental software and/or hardware problem in the design of this particular Mac model. Best advice I can offer is that people in this situation phone Apple product support and complain there directly, since Apple employees rarely respond directly in these discussion forums.

2. wireless connectivity problems of a general nature not involving the MacBook. The most common cause for this is radio interference from other sources of 2.4GHz signals (like portable phones and microwave ovens) and neighboring wireless networks. Sometimes these problems can be resolved by experimenting with manually changing the channel the Base Station (or wireless router) transmits on to find a mostly clear channel.

I agree that there are (at least) two problems that may be confounded.

(1) Loss of connectivity at the client. In this case, hardware or software issues cause the client to drop connectivity even though other clients are still have connectivity through the same access point.
(1a) Signal is too weak. (distance, people or other signal absorbing material between AP and client)
(1b) Signal is too noisy (other access points, microwaves, 2.4GHz phones, etc., multipath issues (reflections))
(1c) Other signal-related problems
(1d) IP problems (for instance, someone else uses the same IP, or a refresh of your DHCP-supplied IP address fails)
[Henry B.'s #1 mentions "MacBook" but I suspect he doesn't mean to distinguish between an iBook, MacBook, or MacBook Pro]

(2) Loss of connectivity at the access point (AP). This can be broken down into at least
(2a) AP signal disappears (ie, the radio shuts off)
(2b) AP loses connectivity to the WAN.

If you only have one client and one AP it is hard to distinguish these two cases.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have any number of clients and APs to work with. I'm currently investigating (2a) for my site. Previously, I've had problems with (1c) where the signal shown by Internet Connect would bounce around (sometimes to very low or 0), but the signal shown by iStumbler stayed constant. (No, I didn't find a solution. I believe it to be a s/w or firmware issue but I'm stuck with what Apple supplies. It does seem to be less significant when the signal strength is high (an access point for every room?))

I have just started having these problems and have begun to wonder if it was an OS issue. I don't have any problems with my old PowerBook running Tiger and I didn't start having problems with my MacBookPro until I upgraded to Leopard. Now the dropping is driving me crazy. What is really frustrates me is that when my MacBook gets dropped, my iPhone and PowerBook are still connected. This is just one of many quirky issues I'm having since upgrading to Leopard, I'm beginning to wonder if I need to go back to Tiger.

Some of you guys are just not paying attention. this is not a wireless issue. People are losing BOTH wired AND wireless connectivity, simultaneously. IN my house, we have an AEBS with both wireless and wired connections. They all drop a lot, several times a day, and they all go down simultaneously.

So this is not about tweaking channels or putzing around with the radios or looking for interference. It's a problem with how the base station actually processes network connections of all kinds. With so many here making it clear that WIRED connections are also problematic, I'd think we could narrow the problems down considerably. It isn't the radio. It's the underlying interaction of the router with the network.

I wish I knew more, but continually snooping around with the wireless as though its a signal issue is a mistake and won't solve the real problem. Somehow, these base stations have a problem keeping a continuous, smooth set of connections. Is it a DHCP problem? Is it some kind of handshaking or authentication issue? I don't know but it's not just the radio.

I doubt is an OS issue. In my house we have everything from Wintel desktop machines through old iBooks running Tiger up to my MacBook Pro on 10.5.2. We've got them wireless as well as wired.

When the AEBS poops out, they all go down. Together. Unified cries of frustration and rage all over the house.

It isn't the radio. It isn't the OS. The AEBS has a problem managing network connections. That's what we have to focus on.

I have my APEBS status set to display in the menu bar. When connected, the "connect time" also displays. I noticed recently that the "connect time" display will disappear and then a few seconds later, reappear. My assumption is that this "disappearance" is actually a "dropped connection". At the same time, when going to a webpage, after several seconds I will get the message that the server could not be found but when I hit the "refresh" key, the page appears. I have a 6 Mb/s DSL connection. I have been using www.speedtest.net to check my internet connection speed. Using APEBS, I was getting 932 kb/s download and 48 kb/s upload. When I took out the APEBS and connected directly through the DSL modem, the speed jumped to 4388 kb/s download and 408 kb/s upload (not the 6 Mb/s that I'm paying for but a big improvement). I think this problem started right around the OS update to 10.5.2 but I'm not sure. It appears clear that the speed and dropped connection problem is related to the either the APEBS or the AP card in the MBP or the software that runs one or both of them.

Glad to know I'm not the only one with a problem here. I'm REALLY ticked off. I will use my AEBS for quite sometime but when I stop using it and go back to my computer to use again the connection is gone. The only way I've been able to get it back is to power cycle it. This also makes it difficult to check the logs, because I can't connect to it until after I power cycle. Hope something comes up on this. I might just stop in the Apple store and see if they've heard anything. Good luck to all.