Airport Extreme dropping connection

from what i can tell the problem occurs immediately after:

Nov 05 07:27:27 Severity:5 Connection accepted from [fe80::3615:9eff:fe34:745e%bridge0]:51815.

Nov 05 07:27:29 Severity:5 Connection accepted from [fe80::3615:9eff:fe34:745e%bridge0]:51816.

Nov 05 07:27:29 Severity:5 Connection accepted from [fe80::3615:9eff:fe34:745e%bridge0]:51817.

as seen in the log of the extreme base station. my understanding is that this is ipv6. i disabled ipv6 in the base station settings, but it didn't seem to help.

let's keep this thread going until we find an answer!

Hi all,

I've just experienced my first wireless issues, as today I purchased a 4th Generation 2TB Time Capsule. A couple of points that might interest you;

I was using the 5 Ghz channel and it kept dropping out after an hour or so. My Time Capsule logs showed the following message;

Jul 31 21:11:17 Severity:5 Radar detected on channel 100

Jul 31 21:11:17 Severity:5 Switching to channel 132

This was when the conection dropped and didn't reconnect, causing my (initial, and huge) backup to fail.

Channel 100 is apparently a radar channel;

The mid band channels ( 52-64) and the higher and upper band channels ( less than 149) are known as DFS channels. When a wireless device picks one of these channels to operate it is expected to check for radar signal's ( for 60 seconds) and then pick the channel if no radar is detected. Else it moves to another channel. If this second channel is also a DFS channel, then the AP takes longer to come up.

Channels 36-48 don't have this issue. Which is why picking a channel in this range works. You will find that if you test in a shielded environment the upper channels will also work fine.

It appears you live in a area where radar signals are present, hence you see this issue.

So from this I'd deduce that it is a problem with the channel your AEBS is currently using suddenly becomes 'unuseable' due to noise. The bug could reside in the hardware's ability to switch to a useable channel.

So I guess the bug is in the AEBS/TC ability to reconnect to a less noisy channel.

I'm currently backing up with an Ethernet cable, which isn't a problem, and I understand the limitations of wireless - you cannot control the environment it's operating in. I am also going to experiment with the 'lower' channels and turn off the Automatic setting and see what happens.

Jamie.

I would like to throw my hat into the ring and say I'm also having this problem.

It's specific to my ThinkPad T400 laptop and only to the Airport Extreme. I get about 3% packet loss when I do a continous ping from the command line.

ping -t 10.0.1.1

In real life, the base station is all but usless to me. My VPN connections drop, remote desktops hang, streaming media jitters, and any other real time data is uselessly delayed.

And from there, I'm sorry to say the MacBook, iPad, and three iPhones in the house do not have this consistent issue. The ThinkPad connects to other wifi vendor's gear without a hiccup - Cisco, HP, Linksys, Netgear, etc - no problem. I've kept a Linksys 802.11abg around just for this laptop, but it seems a little crazy that it's specific to this laptop and basestation.

I had this issue with one computer. I use an Airport Extreme wireless router and have a few computers connected to it. Only one had an issue. I did the following and it stopped the shenanigans with dropping the connection.

I set m DHCP Lease to 24 hours.

I turned off my Guest Network

Set my IPv6 to Host and to configure Automatically

I've just started having this problem. I've had the airport express for a few months without issue, but the last two weeks it's been dropping once or twice a day, usually around the same times (evening or late night). I'm not very technical so forgive me if this is a stupid question, but could it be overloaded somehow?

I have a MacBook air, Apple TV and iPad and connection is lost all three. The light on the express will be a solid green and the MBA will indicate I should have a full wireless connection, yet when I try to get to Google it will load for several minutes before finally giving up. Is there a setting I can change or a rain dance I can perform?

+1 for me, but my problem appears FIXED...

I installed my first AEBS online last week. The AEBS is connected to my ISP (Surewest), and I have both wired and wireless devices connected. I experienced dropped connections that occurred within 5 mins up to 4 hours apart. When disconnects occur, my local network continued to function normally (I could move data between devices), but my connection to the external Internet was dead. The AEBS reported normal status (no apparent indication of any problem). The only way to get things working again was to do a hard reset on the AEBS.

My previous router (Netgear), worked much better. With it, my VPN and Internet streams would quit from time to time. But no reset of the router was ever necessary. I just always assumed this was normal for these types of connections.

Apple support was unable to identify any issues with my router or config. My ISP initially reported no issues with my data connection. However, after further monitoring, and contact with them at the exact time a disconnect occurred, they identified an IP conflict in their network with my IP address. They corrected it - things got better, but disconnects still occurred. After some more investigation, they found a second IP conflict on their network. Since correcting the second conflict, I have been online for 36+ hours with no issues. Surewest did a super job working this issue - their tech were top notch.

My takeaways:

1) AEBS does not deal well with this type of fault. It essentially freezes the external connection - and does not realize it has done this. There are apparently no retrys or automatic recovery routines. I feel this is a design defect with AEBS. At the very least, the router should realize that it is disconnected, and report an error. In the best case, it should automatically recover. Having said that, the severity of the problem forced me to work with my ISP to find the real cause - I would not have even considered escalation if the AEBS performed similar to the Netgear.

2) Your ISP can, in fact, have problems on their network. Network problems are notoriously difficult to trace. If you suspect such a problem - it is critical that you work directly with empowered techs - and have a way to reach them immediately when a problem occurs.

This is not the issue I am experiencing. I get drops on one computer ONLY. No others have issues. It is back now and very frustrating. I have tried assigning an IP, DHCP, nothing seems to work for this unit. I have switched routers, switched network cards. the one constant is the computer.

Hi to all dropouts!

I have just joined discussions group so very much a novice. I have been experiencing the same dropouts on time capsule from imac using airport but not one using ethernet. My problems began when I started using time machine for automatic back-ups. Have switched back-ups to manual only. Problem appears to have ceased.

Could it be that time machine is somehow the cause of the problem.

I'll “DROP” my base station into the ring also. I am currently using OS10.5.8 on all of my MACs but one which is using 10.6. My AEBS has been spotty for about 3 months now and can figure out why it comes and goes. My family has a lot of MAC devices using the system but the only thing that was added recently has been an Ipad. It's catch-as-catch-can with the internet at my house currently. Has anyone found a solution to this issue yet? BTW, I've had my AEBS for years and have had few problems till recently. -Lost Latrey

I took out the Airport Express and Airport Base station as the NAT & DHCP device and switched it to bridge mode (I have tried both devices and they fail in two different locations with different networks and service provider). Both locations have 13+ wireless networks within range so I am guessing it is interference as well.

I'm experience similar issues: AEBS running 7.6.1, set to WPA2 Personal, no Internet connection issues, all wifi devices in house (PC, 2 Macs, Rokus, iPads, iPod Touches, and 1 iPhone) work great -- but my iPhone 4 (AT&T) will drop wifi connections and a lot of times completely refuse to reconnect at all, sometimes to the point of not even seeing the AEBS in the wifi list.

A snippet from the log:

These 4 lines get repeated ad nauseum. My iPhone 4 has zero wifi problems on any routers at work, in public, other homes -- nowhere else. I'd tried deleting the wifi from the iPhone 4 and restarting, changing the key, nothing worked. Even wiped the iPhone 4 without a restore and still had the problem. The weird part is some days it never works, some days it works all the time, and some days it's up and down.

I followed your suggestion for setting IPv6 to Host and Automatically, deleted the wifi from memory, and the phone's working now after not working all morning. I'll run with it and see how long it stays this way -- but this is the first time anything's fixed it! Can't thank you enough for the tip!

EDIT: Scratch that -- no sooner than I post this, it disconnected with the "Unable to join" error. Back to the drawing board.

Same problem with frequent PPPoE disconnects; It never happens when computer plugged directly into the dsl modem (which is in bridge mode).

It started spontaneously 3 weeks ago -while I was on vacation, so no configuration changes on my end.

One hypothesis I have is that it could be an IPv6 issue, as this is a carrier factor (nationwide rollouts have been happening over past few years, same timeframe as the reported issue) that would affect different users in different markets at different times with no warning.

If anyone has an open support ticket with engineering at Apple, perhaps you could pass this hypothesis along.

I am writing this with my fingers crossed........but it seems I have solved my dropping internet connection by simply replacing the phone cord from the modem to the wall. After weeks or more of fighting this, constantly re-booting both my router and airport extreme, this seems almost too simple to believe, but further reading has brought up the fact that a bad phone cord can cause a syncing problem. It even seems faster. I hope this helps someone out there.

Here's my issue:

1. I recently plugged in an HP printer and scanner into the Airport Extreme using an ethernet cable.

2. My MacBook was dropping the internet connection, so I deleted the printer/scanner, reinstalled the software, rebooted, repaired permissions, rebooted and my MacBook is fine.

3. My roommate's iMac is dropping the internet connection and sometimes our network doesn't even appear as on the list of available networks. She repaired permissions and rebooted the iMac. Everything seemed fine but today her internet dropped again. I will instruct her to delete the printer/scanner and then reinstall the software then repair permissions.

4. Our Extremem using automatic channel selection and there's an Express connected to the network for Airplay.

Any possible solutions? This is strange because mine is fine but her iMac is not.

Thank you.

Have had this problem for a while and finally solved it. The Keychain access app had many duplicates of my airport passwords from previous times. Clearing them all on both computers solved the problem after I discovered that my Apple TV was not being affected so decided the problem was in the two iMacs and not the Airport Extreme.