Airport extreme keeps dropping connection and its driving me crazy

I have the same problem (the signal dropoff) that has just started on my macbook. I had the same problem with my iMac G5 about 8 months ago. I am presently using a third party USB wireless adapter to get on the internet. I hope that this helps a little bit.

I used to have an Airport Base Station. I have actually gone through 3 of them. All of them kept dropping connections. So, I thought I'd try a different router. I bought a Buffalo router and it rarely drops the connection. Actually, I had the dropping connection problem in my previous home. In January I moved to another home. I've used the Buffalo router in the new home only. It has never dropped the connection once. I do believe I had some sort of interference that dropped the routers connections in my previous home.

For my Airport Extreme (802.11g) I may have found the answer to both the unstable signal issue where the computer loses its connection and to the loss of communication of the airport utility with the base station. Since I believe that nobody here has mentioned the following, I suggest one try these steps. Turn off the airport connection in the menu bar and exit the airport utility. Then threw out the preference files for these. Upon re-opening these thus far, I now have a strong and stable signal, which was not the case for many weeks. The preferences are located as follows:
Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/System configuration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
User name/Library/Preferences/com.apple.airport.airportutility.plist

I had tried a lot of the other suggestions people have made, and those did not work for me. I hope this helps you.

I bought a MacBook for my wife last October 2007. At the same time we bought an Airport Extreme. My hope was that it would enable an ethernet connection to my G4 and a wireless connection to the MacBook. From day one we've experienced dropped connections.

Plugged directly into our D-Link DSL-320T modem both computers connect without a hitch. But that's not practical because we can only use one at a time. As a result the MacBook is barely used; and my name is mud.

My first post regarding our internet connection problems can be found at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1365188&tstart=0. Nobody came up with an answer.

I've spent days trawling the internet seeking enlightenment - but have found none.

In February I purchased an iMac. With this dropped connections persisted. But it did enable me to make use of Apple Care (in all the years since I'd bought and maintained IIci's and subsequent machines for work I'd not needed it). Apple Care UK listened and passed me up the support ladder to European HQ in Belgium. We worked together over two days, changing settings, doing tests, checking for interference, etc., etc., and got nowhere. Eventually they agreed to exchange Airport Extreme. The new one arrived last week. All software is up to date. We still have dropped connections.

Today I've checked my (Apple Care tuned) settings again, and again, have tried variations, have disabled all my Widgets, have rebooted, and have written pages more notes. When I started up today connection lasted just 2 minutes before being dropped. It gradually improved until it was hanging on for 9 minutes. Now it's down to 30 seconds.

I'm sure you're following this thread at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino. Do please indicate that you're on the case. There must be more to iLife than this.

+My network preferences are open and the colours are changing faster than traffic lights. As soon as Airport changes to green I'll post this.+

Good try Sean. I threw out my preferences and connection improved to 56 seconds.

If I understand your comment, you are dropping the signal at about 56 seconds. I believe you may have other issues, and since our units are different (mine is 802.11 g, and yours a newer one 802.11n), what worked for me by disposing of preferences may not work with your system. However, here are some other things besides the disposal of preferences that I have done, which possibly might help you. Current setup conditions:
1. All widgets were disposed
2. Turned off interference robustness
3. Set maximum rate at 11 Mbps (probably too slow for a person with 802.11n)
4. Transmit power at 100%
5. WPA group key timeout 1 hour
6. Wireless security WPA/WPA2 (needed WPA for connecting my less secure Dell desktop)
7. Radio mode set to 802.11g only
8. Channel 3 (had tried other channels with less success, and this gives strong signals with all my computers)
9. Limited access to specified MAC addresses of each of my computers

Maybe there is something in these conditions that might help your connection issues.

Everybody,

this problem stops when you change the channel from automatic to a fix one...

this problem stops when changing the channel from automatic to a fix one...

I don't care how many times you say it, it just isn't true 😉 Well, maybe it is for you, but tons of us here have tried EVERY channel with no improvement.

That is true for me. And I cannot tell you how relieved I am to find out I am not the only one experiencing this. It is driving me completely mad.

That's not my experience. But I'll try it again.

You might find this interesting: The one widget I've enabled again is Airport Radar. Apple Care pointed me to it (see http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/airportradar.html). At one time yesterday I was using channel 6 (automatic). Connection dropping accelerated after a while so I used it to see who else was on line locally and discovered another channel 6 user had started up. Not good. At the time my selecting another channel manually didn't improve connection dropping - so I gave up for the day.

Currently my Plan A is to persevere with sorting what increasingly seems to be an Airport Extreme problem. Plan B is to beg, borrow or steal a different make of wireless hub, router, whatever, to see what happens. Has anybody else tried this?

+You may see that my Apple ID has changed a little. I was Geofffc but ran into a password problem+.

ans same here.... A P P L E EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
WAKE UP!!!!!!!
This thread is among the largest with folks that AIRPORT drops the signal now and then.
I even bought a new router but it is the darn airport in the macbook that is f*d
up..

Also check out the freeware, APGrapher. It'll find all the the networks in your areaand disclose the channel in use. It will also help with find the best unit location, by showing noise level and other important items.

I am also having issues. We've been working fine for years up until the Airport Utility update to 5.3.1

Now my flatmate (HP Laptops Windows XP) can't connect wirelessly or wired at all unless you completely remove all settings and add them again (everytime he starts up his laptop).
And everytime I open up my laptop I either have to turn the MB airport off then on again, which works 9 times out of 10, reset the AEBS, reset the AEBS & Cable Modem, or failing ALL that wait a few hours till it decides to connect.

I've tried all the suggestions in this post to no avail, now I think I'm just going to go out and buy a new wireless router unless Apple come up with the goods and fix this! What I really want to do is roll back the Airport Utility update and see if this fixes it, but nobody seems to know how!

GRRRR

Everything was brilliant until last night when I updated Airport via Software Update. HOW DO I UNDO THIS UPDATE?? Is it possible?