Airport Utility can't find Time Capsule but wireless is fine

Oh my goodness, thank you. **** firewall. my life suddenly got 10x easier.

I went on a troubleshooting journey recently and wanted to share my experience.
There may be a nugget or two of information that you benefit from.

I was having trouble with 3 things:
1. *Time Capsule* was not visible to Airport Utility
2. iPhone 1Password could not authenticate for sync'ing
3. iPhone Remote app' could not see my shared iTunes library

Each of these issues have their own discussion threads in multiple forums in which much gnashing of teeth goes on, and accusations of unfit hardware and software abound.

The source of the problem revolved around two things:
1. Firewalls
2. Bonjour networking

Solution
If you are having one or more of these problems, there is a sure fire solution - perform an Archive and Install of the OS. It's time consuming, and you don't learn anything from it, but it fixes the problem.

If you're like me and are not content to just fix the problem, but want to learn from it so as not to be doomed to repeat it, then read on.

Background
My primary concern was reestablishing Airport Utility's visibility of the Time Capsule. (Interestingly, while Airport Utility could not see the Time Capsule, it could still access it by entering the IP address and password via File/Configure Other...)
No matter how many times I restarted or reset the Time Capsule, it would not show up. I even restored the default settings, and manually set it all up again from scratch. No joy.

My Power Mac (connected via ethernet) was the one having the problem, so I took to testing it with other computers. I tested the connection with a MacBook Pro running OS 10.4.11; a PowerBook running 10.5.6; and an iBook running 10.5.6. All three immediately saw the Time Capsule both wired and wirelessly! I knew then there was nothing wrong with the unit (which I was beginning to wonder about after reading all the posts on this issue), and that the problem was unique to my system.

After installing a new OS; applying all the updates; confirming that the problems were all gone; and making a fresh backup of what I knew to be a good, stable, working system, I wanted to understand the underlying cause of the problem, so I purposely set out to reproduce them.

Firewalls
It all started with my discontent over the Leopard firewall. It's vague, limiting, opaque, and doesn't accurately reflect what's really going on under the hood. In troubleshooting why 1Password on the iPhone could not authenticate with 1Password on my Mac, I was watching the network traffic in the firewall log. Even though I had the Leopard (10.5.6) firewall set to Allow all incoming connections, I could see that TCP connections from 1Password were being denied. VVTF?

I decided to install WaterRoof, which provides an interface to IPFW, the Mac OS X built-in kernel-level IP firewall that Tiger used. I'm sure WaterRoof is a fine utility, but it's not for novices. I hadn't set out to go down that road of educating myself on the nuances of OS-level firewall management, so I let the WaterRoof Configuration Wizard build a set of rules that I could save to a startup configuration, and then installed a startup script, and restarted.

Sure enough, this configuration reproduced 2 out of 3 of the problems 1) iPhone 1Password could not authenticate for sync'ing, and 2) iPhone Remote app' could not see my shared iTunes library. I wasn't really comfortable with WaterRoof, so I flushed all the rules and pipes; uninstalled the startup script; and restarted. Things were back to normal.

*Bonjour networking*
While watching the traffic in the firewall log, I was struck by how "chatty" the mDNSResponder (Bonjour) was. I wasn't using Bonjour (or so I thought), and recalled seeing an article on how to turn off (not just hide) Bonjour with the following command in Terminal:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Sure enough, Bonjour went quiet, +and with it went the connections to all three things+ - the Time Capsule, 1Password, and iTunes! And as an added bonus, the first indication that Bonjour had all these hidden dependencies was that it immediately killed another favorite tool - WorkStrip.

Clearly, turning off Bonjour was not such a hot idea, so I turned it back on with the following command:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Conclusion
If you are having problems reaching your Time Capsule; your 1Password database; or your remote iTunes library, it may be that the firewall or Bonjour network settings have been fiddled with (as was my case) or are somehow corrupted. A quick fix may be to use the launchctl command to make sure the mDNSResponder is responding. If all else fails, Archive and Install the OS, and you'll be right as rain again.

Bill Swagerty, 02-26-2009

I had the same problem where I could not locate my Time Capsule (using airport or connected to it via ethernet) after using it to extend a wireless network from a Linksys router. I also tried every solution offered until I stumbled across my own:

1. Log onto the Linksys Basic Setup page (192.168.1.1)
2. Change wireless encryption from WPA Personal to WPA2 Personal.

After that the Time Capsule showed up in shared places and it started backing up.

Thanks, yes, reset did the trick!

Try resetting your Time Capsule. I did this without loosing any contents from my backups. Here is the link that explains how to do this and also explains what you DO lose when resetting it:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1300

Glenn,

I had just this problem and your second suggested solution fixed it for me.

Thanks,

Wylie