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

I have seen a few questions here about the Airport Extreme doing auto-restarts, but mine is just dropping off. It varies between only hours after the last reset to 1-2 days, but each time the Airport stops passing all traffic. I have the status light set to show traffic, and sometimes it's just a solid green and others it's actually off (no light). In either case the Airport stops passing traffic and I am not able to see it with the Airport utility. If I unplug it and plug it back in it works again. Any one else have this problem?

PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Nov 6, 2007 6:57 AM

Reply
578 replies

Feb 29, 2008 5:19 PM in response to Sweejak

After installing and running transmission I am downloading solid for about 10 hours so far. Azureus will kill my AEBS (saucer) within minutes at this point, but Transmission does not appear to cause a problem. It may yet cause a problem, but it is clearly doing better with Transmission than Azureus. While your mileage may vary, if you have not tried Transmission it worth a look-see.

Feb 29, 2008 5:41 PM in response to Bud Kuenzli

I was running azereus, and suffered from the total lockup of the AEBS. I even returned the first one and got a new one. Within minutes of starting Azereus on the new base station, it locked up completely. I unplugged it and plugged it back in, I started using transmission in preference to Azereus. I haven't had to restart the basestation since, that was about 4 weeks ago.

Feb 29, 2008 6:44 PM in response to GalinMD

It's now been almost 3 months since I reported the same problem, downgrading to 7.2 fixed it COMPLETELY.

I have not had to touch the unit since then.

It is a firmware issue, end of story.

---

Just to bring back some history on this:

- It crashed with my PC laptop running XP
- It crashed with my PC Desktop running Vista 64.
- It crashed with my Mac laptop before and after Leopard.
- It crashed with my iPod Touch
- It crashed with my G5 Tower before and after Leopard.
- It crashed with my Mac Mini before and after Leopard.
- It crashed with my Nintendo DS
- It crashed with my Nintendo Wii

So please toss out all those wild goose chases about it being related to Leopard or some other silly application software. Some things may aggravate the problem and make it crash QUICKER, but as you can see from above, it would crash for any bloody reason.

Now ALL of those devices are running PERFECT since I downgraded to 7.2, and YES I use Acquisition, Transmission and Azureus (on PC and Mac).

So people, go downgrade to 7.2, surf happily and wait and see if Apple EVER fixes this... I have two more brand new units sitting in boxes waiting for this firmware issue to be fixed... if not, onto eBay they go.

Cheers

Feb 29, 2008 7:08 PM in response to Jason Yauman

Via answers.com

"As of September 24, 2007, there are a huge number of reports on the Apple Support Forum about problems with the USB port and printer/USB drive access (Internet remains fine)[citation needed]. The problem started in mid-August with the firmware 7.2 and above. Apple has still to acknowledge the issue and release a fix.

Symptoms:
User cannot print (computer looks for printer but never to be found). The printer does not show in the AirPort Utility
Cannot connect to USB drive. The Drive is visible in AirPort Disk Menu and in the AirPort Utility but trying to connect gives an error "password or user incorrect".
Turn on/off, disconnect/reconnect the drive and/or printer does not solve the issue. The only way to print and access the drive is to restart the AirPort Extreme. Some people using the first-generation AirPort Extreme (no Gigabit) have reported success to solve the issue by reverting to firmware earlier than 7.2 (which is impossible for the Gigabit model that can only use firmware 7.2 and later).

Several users also have noticed that the issue seems to only be occurring with Mac computers and not Windows machines, if the option to join the Windows workgroup is checked.

There is also a problem with NAT-PMP (Apple's equivalent to uPNP) with the latest 7.2.1 firmware, port forwarding is totally broken using NAT-PMP. A workaround is to downgrade to an earlier firmware, but this is not possible for the latest Gigabit ethernet-versions."

Via Powerpage.org:
-Downgrade firmware on Base station (For AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Stations): Open AirPort Utility, select your Base Station, then select "Base Station" from the menu bar, click "Upload Firmware" and from the "Upload Firmware" menu, select "7.2" then click "OK" to downgrade the firmware.

Mar 2, 2008 9:25 AM in response to PoetArtist

Most of the posts here are from AE 802.11n base station folks and it sounds like downgrading firmware will help many of them, but given the fact that Azureus + AE (g version, saucer) also will freeze the Airport unit, it's not -just- a firmware issue. I have no moved to Transmission and am having no problems so from my perspective this is an azureus problem and I've solved my issue by moving to Transmission (unless that too kills my Airport but so far, so good). Good luck, and if your problem does involve Azureus, try Transmission instead.

Mar 2, 2008 5:31 PM in response to timgfoley

Downgrading did not work with with me. I downgraded to 7.2 and it was back to crashing within 2 weeks, then every day after that. The worst part is that the base station wasn't even recognized by the airport utility, so I could reset it until it decided to make itself available again.

But, I finally solved the problem. I bought a Belkin N1 Vision. It works like a dream so far and costs $50 less. But I did have to put it into protected mode because there are a lot of wireless devises in my apartment building.

I don't think I'll ever go back to the Apple Extreme. It's trash.

Mar 3, 2008 6:02 PM in response to GalinMD

Azureus KILLS AIRPORT EXTREMES!!

I bought an Airport Extreme one week ago and 2 days ago I downloaded and installed Azureus. After 2 downloads, my airport started dying every 12 hours or so, no signal. I would have to unplug power cable and replug to reboot.

I had no problems at all until I installed that software.

Mar 5, 2008 7:51 AM in response to GalinMD

Well, mine was working after my last post. The downgrade to 7.2 helped me.

Let me preface this, I don't have any P2P installed on any of my machines.

This weekend, I decided to try to use the airport disk feature that was one of my big reasons for buying this thing. I guess that was a mistake.

Last night, I was on my Dell laptop when it began kicking it off right and left. After looking at the logs, I configured syslogging to my iMac to try to capture some printable data as evidence of the garbage they are producing. I woke up this morning to no connection. Basically, it is connected and happy as can be according to Airport utility, but I can't ping anything, can't connect to anything. Rebooting results in a couple of minutes of slow browsing of some sites, and then it drops again. It's barely warm to the touch. I'm plugged into my 802.11b Microsoft branded, 10 year old cheap wireless access point just so I can work from home as I intended to today.

So now I am back to square one. In the past week I have:

Configured Desktop sharing and retired my old VNC client on my iMac
Configured syslogging to my Mac
Plugged in my server to it once again to attempt to utilize it like I can with any other working piece of hardware
Attempted to use Airport Disk, which is a sorry implementation at best it seems.

Apparently one of these decided to cause this thing to throw a fit.

Way to go Apple, way to go.

Mar 12, 2008 6:51 AM in response to GalinMD

So, it looks like there is a new update to the AirPort software (not sure if it comes with new firmware for the AirPort Extreme base station). Personally, I'm too afraid to try it. After downgrading to 7.2 and setting the IPv6 to Link-Local I've been really stable! Of course my cable provider had me down for the last week, but that's not Apple's fault...finally.

Anyone out there have success with the update? does it help?

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Recap: I have a PowerMac G5 (wired), PowerBook G4 (wireless) & MacBook (wireless). Problem mostly with PowerMac G5 as the wireless computers are not left on at night when the outages usually occur.

Mar 12, 2008 10:00 AM in response to GalinMD

Hello all,

Since this thread is going nowhere, I propose a new strategy.

I'm having the same problems as everyone else. Tried all the "fixes" bla bla bla....

I'm starting to think that this problem is dependent on the modem. The reason I think this is because when my internet goes down, I do a hard reset of the airport extreme and nothing works. (Sometimes no SSID signal, can't connect to the router at all)

Also, to get my connection up and running again, I decided to plug in my older Airport Express (with airtunes). alas, I get the same problem. This makes me wonder if it's my modem.

I'm using a Speedstream 5360 ADSL modem. Don't know the firmware version and not sure if I can even update the firmware. I connect using PPPoe

Please post your modem and lets see if we can find something common among them.

Thanks

Mar 12, 2008 11:19 AM in response to codyporche

First of let me go ahead a mention that the new software update did not include any new firmware. I was hoping for some as well, but mabye we'll get it soon....

I wanted to kinda check back in and let everyone know how things are going on my end. Last time I posted I had mention a few modifications I had made to the DHCP settings and that after a week had not expierenced any drop-outs.

Well now its at least a month later and I'm happy to report ZERO drops and ZERO connection issues. Which is quite a change from 3-7 drops per day. My connection speeds have been more than fast enough for the internet and printing has worked flawlessly. I would suggest that if you are still having issues and have not tried the "fix" that has worked for me, give it a shot. Heck, you got nothing to loose at this point, right?

As for the current topic..I have a toshiba cable modem. I cant remeber the model # right now. I have had the same modem with and without the dropout issues. I have also moved regions...California to Nebraska and had the problem follow me. So that is also 2 cable providers (Comcast and Cox).

Dan

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

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