Airport extreme keeps dropping connection and its driving me crazy

I'm having the same problem. It started when I upgraded my DSL service. The old service used the DSL modem as the router, and I never had a problem. With the new, I use the Airport Extreme as the router with the new service, and I have to do the "pull the plug" every few days. I doesn't seem to matter how much or how little I use the wireless connection.

It's not DHCP. I tried that at first, but went back to the old router's hardcoded IP addresses (10.0.0.x). I've noticed that when the router dies, I can still access any of my local networked machines by using it's IP address.

So unless radio interference problems can somehow cascade into the Internet interface/bridge, this has nothing to do with wireless. Maybe it's just time to stop trying to use the Airport as a router and buy one that actually works. (Which is too bad, as the built in router was one of the reasons I bought this stupid thing.)

I think this is related to the MBP and possibly 10.5.2. I have just tested my connection speeds on my APEBS on my iMac 10.4..11 and PowerBook G4 10.5.1 and all had reasonable good connection speeds (using speedtest.net). I'm Jupiter, FL and I tested to Jacksonville, FL, Portland, ME, Colorado Springs, CO and San Jose, CA. The download/upload speeds on the iMac were 2836/386; 2801/401; 2577/362; 2474/398. The download/upload speeds on the PowerBook were 1827/365; 1326/406; 1557/319; 872/399.

Compare those to the MBP 10.5.2 2111/45; 1124/46; 930/125; 533/7

You can see a real problem with the upload speed (which is why I keep getting the "Safari can't find server" message).

Now compare these speeds to these when I take out the APEBS and hook the MBP directly to the DSL modem (Westel 6100). 1147/382; 6134/413; 5005/388; 4388/498

Vast improvements in both the download and the upload speeds.

I'm now using my iMac because the MBP is not usable with the internet with the APEBS Wi-Fi (slower than the old dial-up)

Try changing the broadcast channel: Go to the Airport extreme configuration program. Click on the 'manual' settings or something like that. Instead of automatically selecting the channel you can choose up to approximately 10-15 other channels. Just try take one far away from your current channel (or try all).

Hope that this wil help you.

just to add my experience to the void:

24 hours ago, my AEBS began to lose its internet connection every 15-20 minutes. The AEBS is able to recover, and the outages only last 30-40 seconds, but they are total; all devices lose network connectivity, hard wired and wireless. I called my ISP twice, they did all the usual resets, and they confirmed my cable modem is not losing its connection, it is a problem with the AEBS.

xbox360, appletv, g5 tower, all are plugged into the AEBS (a macbook and xp laptop access the wifi)and all lose functionality when I lose my connection. This is infuriating, and now I have to hunt down a replacement router instead of relaxing on the weekend.

itunes 7.6.1 is the only recent update I have done. I have already tried resetting my AEBS to factory specs, reset everything etc etc etc....

I just returned from NYC and while there helped a friend switch to Mac. Unfortunately we bought an AEBS and tried to replace his Linksys wireless router. Total disaster. The AEBS wouldn't work properly for more than two minutes at a time. Had to switch back to the Linksys. Neither of us is a wireless technical expert and don't intend to become one. We expect the device to work out of the box as advertised. This did not give me or my friend a good impression of Apple wireless n technology. Apparently this problem has persisted for months with no help from Apple. I am advising all my friends not to buy Time Capsule now either, but wait to see if it has the same problems as the currently selling AEBS. This is a huge black eye for Apple.

Lawson - I'm sorry but you are wrong. Most of the people, including the original post, are having the problem with the wireless connection dropping only and just a couple here are losing both wireless and wired. So lets focus on the wireless problems which seem to be pervasive, including with me.

I just tried two suggestions posted here - 1. changing the IPv6 in airport utility / manual setup / advanced to "link-local only" from tunnel mode, and 2. also in manual mode / wireless / radio mode set to 802.11n 5 ghz. (previously i had a laptop in the office that only had g capabilities and never reset this setting when i got my new macbook pro.) Will post later if this seemed to solve the problem. So far so good but its only been an hour or so.

Problem I was having: would notice signal strength drop even though only 20 feet from APExtreme, and frequent drops from wireless network.

Well add me to the ranks of the befuddled here. Out of nowhere last week my Airport Extreme base station started droppping connections every few minutes. It is pretty close to my main computer so it shouldn't be an issue of range. Even so, I have noticed an interesting behavior where I have been wired in to the base station with an ethernet cable and I will still be disconnected from the airport disk that I have mounted at the same interval. I can infer from this that at least part of the problem is not related to the wireless signal, and that it shouldn't be a factor of the WAN and my cable broadband router. I say "shouldn't" here because I wonder if glitches in the WAN connection are able to cascade into the LAN and cause problems...

In thinking about the different factors that may have caused this, I can't help but wonder if my recent installation of Miro (an internet video player) has played a role, since I've become aware that it uses the BitTorrent protocols to distribute content and my ISP (Comcast) has been exposed as acively interfering with users who use BitTorrent (google "comcast bittorrent sandvine") by periodically resetting their connections.

It is also disgraceful that no representative from Apple has attempted to address this thread and that users are left to make general guesses about the voodoo they're experiencing. I realize that many of these problems may have unique causes, but there should at least some high-level diagnostic tool that people could use to discover the events that trigger a drop in service, at the minimum there should be an in-depth support document that covers the interpretation of the base station log output.

I got so frustrated with my AEBS, that I put it back in its box and went back to using a pair of old Linksys WRT54GS routers I have. They don't do 801.11A or 802.11N-draft, but at least they work predictably.

It is frustrating becuase the AEBS is a cool product, but I've had it a year now, and it still feels like a beta demo product that should have bee given out to a small batch of testets.

OK, now that's off my chest... Try taking a look at the AEBS's log file in Airport Admin utility. It sounds like something is making the AEBS do a reset every few minutes. You can probably tell from the log if a reset took place because you'll see it re-initializing its DHCP server, etc. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the USB port. I gave up on using the remote disk feature, as it wasn't compatible with the USB drive I have. My experience was the AEBS seemed pretty solid as far as not rebooting or droppig the connection - but then I don't have anything plugged into the USB port.

My main reason for ditching the AEBS was bugs in the windows version of the Airport utility and the fact that PPTP VPN pass-through doesn't work right on the AEBS - but it does on the WRT54GS - and I need PPTP to get on my network at work.

I guess I paid a $179 idiot tax when I bought the AEBS. I think I'll stick with Linksys for the future until I start hearing better things about the AEBS. It'll be interesting to see how Apple does with the new Time Capsule product.

Bill

I started having the same issues when I added an iPod Touch to the network. Then connections started dropping everywhere.

What I did to solve this was just to say to heck with it and abandon my "Home" settings in the Network Prefs panel. I created a new set. I then reset the AE and applied the settings from my backup. I turned on the Airport in the computer and it discovered the AE just fine. I just clicked on the network that the AE had created and joined it. Everything has worked fine ever since.

Griff

A few days ago, I joined this Airport nightmare. It affects everything (video games, Apple TV, computers, etc), so obviously Im crippled here. I guess I'll call Apple Care, but has anyone else called them and gotten any info? Seems like all the troubleshooting is being done here only.

The only thing I can think of that I changed in my setup around the time that this problem began is I turned on "Enable NAT Port Mapping Protocol." I turned it back off and SO FAR (a few hours anyway) I haven't had a drop out. Normally I would get a couple at least in an hour.

Hopefully this isnt the ONLY way around it (IF the workaround works), because I need to use NAT.

*UPDATE: Nevermind the NAT settings, it finally dropped out again. So I pushed it up yet another channel. Almost at the end of my channel options though, and I doubt it will help, based on what I've read here. Sorry for the premature post.

This REALLY needs to be fixed.

FYI, Im using the Airport Extreme base station (the one after the "Snow" model). I have tried 80211.g only and b/g.

****INTERESTING NOTE ******
This same thing now happens to me while using my Airport Express. Just noticed this (I use it for 802.11b only for Sony PSP access). Not sure if they both happen at same time though. This just makes it even more mind-boggling to me.

Message was edited by: Frozo

I started having this problem several weeks ago. The AEBS just dropping out for seconds at a time multiple times during the day. As a result our AppleTV kept losing it's connection and I constantly have to re-enter the network password to reset it up.

A week ago it got so bad that I finally did a factory reset on the AEBS. Since then, everything seemed to be going fine. Until my daughter returned home from college. She has a Windows XP laptop. She could no longer connection to our wireless network. After some playing around I realized that when I first set her up I had to remove the "automatic" channel assignment option and set it up with a channel assignment under 10 so her older laptop could access the network. Once I did that she got online easily.

But with one hour the wireless network started dropping the connection again. This after over a week with no problems. Last night I changed the channel assignment from 8 to 9 to see if that made a difference. So far the network hasn't dropped yet. But we are not yet at peak usage until my son logs on.

I wanted to pass on this information in case it's another clue it what's going on.

BTW--when the AEBS drops out it impacts both our wireless and wired connections.

Has anyone discovered a solution to this issue? It has begun to happen to me as well and it is quite frustrating.

Are people having these problems with other (non AEBS) wireless routers too? I have a D-Link Router and the signal keeps dropping (cant even finish this post without the signal dropping once) and it is driving me crazy! Is anyone else having this problem?