Airport Extreme not working after firmware update

In my case it's not just a matter of changing a channel. Even with all default settings on the AEBS and turning wireless OFF my throughput via ethernet is 1/3 of what it is if I connect to my cable modem directly. I don't have the option of rolling back firmware as I purchased the new dual radio AEBS.

I tried every channel I have available, 1 - 11 plus auto. I am getting the timeout on all of them. What I can't understand is why the iPhone, iTouch and non-Apple WiFi devices all work perfectly. The MacBook and two different iMac's fail. It just doesn't make any sense.

I notice that the computers are Mac's are trying to use WPA2 where as all the rest of the WiFi enabled devices are using WPA (not sure what the iPhone / iTouch are using). Any way to force the Mac's to use WPA only. Unfortunate that the Airport doesn't have a WPA only setting.

Another who backed out the Firmware update to 7.3.2. My ethernet connected iMac and iPod Touch connected fine after the update, but the one wireless iMac and my old iBook refused to connect (Connection Timeout each time). I tried changing to WPA/WPA2, removing security, changing passwords, deleting keychain entries, deleting stored networks, editing networks, everything I could think of. No dice. Finally, after reading this thread, I reverted the firmware and voilá! all is well.

This is killing me, network is up and down all the time since the update. Another post says it's wireless phone interference, surely not. Apple please fix soon!

Mine was angry after the updates as well, though not to the extent of some of yours. It was losing internet connectivity intermittently — felt like my DSL modem was losing the signal, with sudden bursts of connectivity, then nothing for several seconds, over and over. I had no trouble connecting to it, but my network is totally open and unencrypted, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Goldendoodle's solution worked for me. I'd already unchecked "Allow Setup over WAN" but after I unchecked "Allow SNMP" everything was back to normal.

I spent four hours on the phone with tech support.. Tier 3, Tier 2, Tier 1. Bottom line, the only thing that worked was reverting to 7.3.2. During the process, one tech told me that the latest firmware update killed about 1% of the Airport Extremes. 'Kill' wasn't the word he used, but the meaning was the same. After getting things running again I asked what I am supposed to do the next time a firmware upgrade is provided. He said it is always a good idea to install the latest firmware. Draw your own conclusions. For now, I'm not touching anything!

Thanks for posting this, I think it solved the problem I was having.

I had trouble after the latest update with connection dropoff, which sometimes fixed itself after a couple minutes, and sometimes needed me to rejoin manually or even rebuild the network. Tonight the AEBS went down hard, and it took several hard resets and power cycling to even get it to show in the Airport Utility. Once I did, and got the config to load, I changed the options as described here and everything has come back nicely. So far, so good. Many thanks.

Thanks. Guess i'll go back to Linksys or some other router brand. Apple's stuff looks great but the Airport software is causing problems for me since 7.3.1.

Yes the whole thing is really disappointing. The only reason why I bought a AEBS, which is more expensive, and includes less features than many routers out there, was because I would have less compatibility issues with my apple laptops/iphones.

I assume part of the problems could be in the airport software client. If this can't communicate with the apple router reliably, I can't image the number of problems it would have trying to communicate with a different brand router. But then again... maybe not.

Now, talking about going a different route, I've been looking at SIMULTANEOUS-dual-band routers, there are three or four out there, I just haven't seen enough reviews to decide which one is good. Perhaps they are still too new.

Hi,

I had the exact same issue, guess I did not pay too much attention to the "update" window, since I was messing around with the setup forever, doing hard resets for a while, until I realized the firmware had been changed.

Reverting to 7.3.2 (which took 2 min) resolved the problem was (Yoda voice)

Problems with 7.4.1 included:
- unresponsiveness
- no (green) "Successful" after changing settings
- status light on TC went from green, to yellow, to blinking yellow, to no light whatsoever
- network invisible (hard reset necessary)
- sluggish performance for the time that it did work ⚠
- "forgot" setting
- adding Airport Express to network screwed-up all setting (hard reset necessary, unplug (soft reset) did not work)

Firmware blitzed my network, and after a couple frustrating hours resetting my base station and such, I finally switched the channel to "1" from automatic. Voila, worked again. I'm with rnmkr61... try it, you might like it.

I'm getting tired of fixing this freakin' thing. It happens almost all the time when Apple sends down an update. I'm regretting buying my AEBS and AExpress. I did not have this issue when I was using Lynksis/D-Link before.

I simply won't update in the future, as printer and hdd work great with osx/win/linux with 7.3.1 and I don't want to waste time anymore.

Same here. Airport Extreme started messing up my network after firmware update last Friday (March 13). Had it set up as part of a WDS network together with one Time Capsule and one Airport Express. Internet connection kept dropping. Needed frequent soft resets (unplugging from power source) to make it work again. Reconfiguring the whole network helped, but only temporary. Internet connection started to drop again after a few hours, the Extreme "reporting a problem" AGAIN.

Finally gave up and removed the Airport Extreme, replacing it by a second Time Capsule. Radical solution, I know, but I had to get work done and the idea to go back to the previous firmware didn´t occur to me.

Apple released something that clearly doesn´t work, and this cost a lot of people a lot of time and money. Annoying.