Airport Extreme (802.11n) - Connection drops (no auto-reset)

I thought the same and set my WPA timeout to 30 days, it still dropped out. So far (touch wood) the IPv6 thing seems to be doing the do for me.

Well, I think I tried just about everything - downgraded to 7.2 (so the AEBS restarts instead of freezing), switched IPv6 to link-local, disabled wireless altogether (ruling out any 802.11n/g, interference, WEP/WPA issues), disabled IPv6 on every machine, even changed from ADSL to cable (coincidentally) - none of it fixed the problem.

I've just installed a cheap Netgear wireless router and everything works flawlessly, which I find extremely sad. Now I have to decide whether I should take back the AEBS and go through the effort of explaining the problem and all the steps I'd taken to make sure I didn't screw something up, and then probably get a replacement one that exhibits the same problem, or just hold onto it in the hopes that Apple release a firmware fix. The Netgear "just works", which is all I really care about right now.

After a week of working fine, my AEBS started doing the same as most of you. Green light on but no network. It does it 3 to 6 times a day for the last 3 days.

I'll return it today (I believe I'm in the 14 days window) and stick with my AExpress that has been working well for the last 4 years.

I had the same green-light, no-wan-every-five-minutes problem whilst running in b/g compatibility mode (my mini doesn't have n), but immediately after switching to n-only 5ghz, it began working flawlessly and has been for a couple of days.

I'm not sure this is a solution to anyone else's problem or possibly even an indication of a 2.4ghz spectrum issue, but it's worth a try.

I had the problem running it in "n". I returned it today. My old and trusty AExpress works well. I'll buy it again when/if they fix this problem.

Ok, Day 2....and now instead of freezing...it just restarted 3 times since the morning....god what is up with this ting...well i prefer the restarting than the mysterious disappearances, at least i dun have to walk down a million times a day

While the wireless reception was fine, my network connectivity on both wired and wireless clients would drop 100% until the base station was rebooted. This would occur after a few hours of use and did not seem to be related to any programs running (that I could isolate) or OS as both Windows and 10.4 & 10.5 computers were affected. After reading this thread and doing my own extensive troubleshooting with version 7.2.1 it appears as if the IPV6 Mode was the cause of all my woes. I set it to "Link-local only" and it's been working without issue for the last several days. I'm using the gigabit ethernet version of the AirPort Extreme in a WDS setup with an AirPort Express. I hope this helps others.

Switching IPv6 to "link-local only" seems to do the trick here. Been online for a couple days without any disconnects.

Jason Yauman wrote:
Anybody at Apple have any info on this? Sounds like this is developing as an issue. Anyone put this into bug reporter, yet?

It's not developing as an issue. It's been that way already for several long months, ever since this update was released. All that time I've been waiting for Apple to release a fix. And waited. And waited. And waited. And am still waiting. Funny how they know there are a lot of people out here who spent their hard earned cash on their wi-fi, but they haven't done anything about it.

Personally, I feel that wi-fi is definitely not one of Apple's strengths. The best thing they could possibly do would be to give up making wi-fi completely. Seriously, preceding this problem is a long list of bad Airport Extreme updates, each one bringing **** into the live of a different group of people.

Never again.

Darnit! I hoped this IPv6 thing would fix my "drop all the time issue"... it looked promising at first but now I'm back to the same old thing I'm getting used to... a few minutes of internet, then a drop for a few minutes, then internet, then a five minute union break... rinse... repeat...

On the plus side, it's great having a 50' Cat V cable stretched across my kitchen just so I can have internet on my laptop :0(

C'mon Apple...this is just silly...

*Hey there !*

Engineers in Cupertino... do you read this forum ??

Please,
*STOP PLAYNG WITH YOUR iGadget, iPhone, iSomething... AND HELP US TO DO SOME SERIOUS WORKS WITH OURS FAULTY Airport Extreme !!*

Aaargh !

Me too me too me too. Recently switched from Windows and it is very disappointing to see this kind of problem on the Apple side of things.

Since I switched to n-only 5 GHZ my Airport Extreme has been up continuously. I've tried almost everything people have suggested, including IPV6 local link only but nothing else has worked.

Would a simple acknowledgment that a problem exists be too much to ask for Apple?

Incredible. This thread is nearly two months old and it's still going strong. This problem is a lot older than that and other older threads attest to that fact.

Would a simple acknowledgment that a problem exists be
too much to ask for Apple?

If they haven't fixed it in several months, I strongly suspect this problem is not even on their radar. I don't believe anyone is on the case and I don't believe they have any intention whatsoever of expending the effort to fix a bug that affects a 'mere' several thousand people.

Does anyone even want it fixed? Based on my experience with Airport Extreme updates, the next one will be even worse. In the last couple of days, I've revisited each of the updates. Strangely, going back in time has the effect of progressively fixing the bugs. LOL.

Reminds me of that old joke:

Q: "How do you give a country and western song a happy ending?"
A: "Play it backwards"

Have you tried setting Airport Extreme to a single channel? I haven't noticed a dropout since I selected a single channel.

Spent months trying everything under the sun. The list of things I've tried are:

1) Changing every conceivable setting available after having researched each of them

2) Trying the various mysterious boot-up key combinations (as directed by Apple) that reset aspects of the computer.

3) Soft and hard resets of the Airport Extreme

4) Deleting all stored wireless networks from the system prefs.

5) Deleting preference files from the hard disk.

6) Done most of the above using different mac computers.

7) Many more...

Incidentally, the people posting in this thread have several different problems. The 7.2.1 update in particular is a disaster zone, though none of the updates have worked satisfactorily.