Brandnew AE loses and re-establishes internet-connection quite often

Question

Brandnew AE loses and re-establishes internet-connection quite often

Hi.

My more than four years old but always perfectly working Airport Express died two weeks ago and I bought a new one. This new one behaves strange:

When opening a bunch of tabs at a time in Safari, in most cases airport disconnects from the internet and reconnects immediately. Many pages won't be loaded like this completely.
AE also seems to disconnect at higher download speeds and coincidental down- and uploads.

For Internet access the AE is connected to a DSL modem via ethernet-cable.

The problems don't occur when connecting my computer (PB G4) dirctly with a cable to the modem.

It does not depend on the signal strentgh my PB shows.

With my girl's iBook the same issues.

Same problem with Safari, Firefox, Cyberduck and more.

I tried out everything:

- new user account
- firewalls off
- internet sharing off
- many, many different settings in the airport utility app
- threw away all unnecessary network configurations
- plugged out the phone's base station standing nearby

What is the problem?

Help! Can't resume no down/uploads bigger than a few megabytes.

thanks and cheers!

david

Powerbook G4 12", Mac OS X (10.4.11), Airport Extreme card, Airport Express station

Posted on Oct 16, 2008 12:08 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Oct 17, 2008 8:16 AM in response to David Tschoepe

How sure are you that it is the AE "disconnecting from the Internet" rather than your mac disconnecting from the AE? Both problems seem to be quite common, but you really need to distinguish between them before you try to diagnose them. Get both your mac and your girl's connected simultaneously and set one of them off pinging the other, then try some uploads or downloads and, when the connection to the internet fails, check if the ping is still working.

Unfortunately, quite a lot of Airport users (myself included) are experiencing problems of this type and there doesn't seem to be any good solution. In my case, turning off the Airport in my Mac and using an external USB wifi adaptor seems to have fixed it, but the fact that you were working up till the time your old Airport failed seems to indicate that the problem is more likely with the new Airport.

Is the new Airport an 'n' version? Some people have reported that forcing the new 802.11n devices into "b/g" mode can solve their connection problems - though it didn't do me much good!

Sorry to not be more constructive - it's a common complaint, I'm afraid...

Martin

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 18, 2008 6:15 AM in response to Martin Bradford

Thanks for your reply! I don't know, what it exactly means "to ping" our computers, but I can imagine. I tried another test: I streamed some musik (from my HD) with airtunes to my hifi and provoqued the abovementioned internet interruption. There was no pause in the stream. Musik kept on playing.
So my mac seems be connected with my AE all the time. Right? Or could a buffered signal "survive" a disruption?

btw - the new AE is an "n"-version, but the airport extreme inside my mac does only support b- or g- standard, so the AE has always beeb set to "b/g" mode.

Cheers!

david

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 18, 2008 12:42 PM in response to David Tschoepe

Well, any buffering would not protect against a break of more than a few seconds, so I would guess that the problem is between the airport and the internet. I'm afraid that I can't offer any advice on that one - I don't use my airport in that configuration, so don't have any experience of it. I do seem to recall there being some suggestion that having IP v6 enabled can cause that type of problem - search these forums for references to IPV6 or IP6,,,

Martin

Reply

Answer 4

Oct 28, 2008 1:39 PM in response to Martin Bradford

Problem solved!

The DSL modem was just too old for the new AE!!! (hum..three years...)

I have tried everything else and they even replaced the AE. Maybe it had another misfunction but my problem continued with this new one.

Today I bought a second hand but new and never used modem for seven dollars. Many people buy wifi-routers with onboard modem and can't get rid of the modem delivered by the provider.

Don't ask me what the difference between the old and the new one is - except of the items names they look the same.

I hope, this finding will help others not to puzzle that long.

Thanks for replies! Cheers!

david

Reply