Location Services never works on AirPort Extreme Router

Thanks for putting in the effort to get me traceroute details.

It tells me the issue is nothing to do with routing issues. Both Express and Extreme are giving near enough to identical results.

Maps as an App in your Mac and location service for the airports are two different things. I think you are mistakenly conflating the two. Maps works in a Mac without using Airport router at all.

We have long known about problems with location concerning Airport routers. It has never been entirely clear how that mechanism works. And I have never seen any description of it. As Bob says.. it is so variable you can relocate your airport and it can still use the old location for months.. or it might take a few days.

There is almost nothing you can actually adjust.. Apple made the setup of the airport routers highly automated. If you go back to earlier 5.6.1 utility there are settings you can change.. like time server and location.

To check the effect I take a screenshot from the logs.. yeap.. the old Airport Utility actually has logs.

Now I change the location to US

NOTE: There is no way to set a different time server or set time manually.

And take another snap from the logs after the TC reboots.

Notice carefully what happened. For a few moments.. it shifted the time zone to US.. Time and date went back to Dec 18.

That lasted for two log entries.. then it automatically reconnected to the time server and changed back to my location.. regardless of settings.

Maps on the computer, after changing the privacy settings was able to locate me correctly to pretty much my exact area.. this cannot be done by the Airport as i am using Asus main router and directly connected to it.

So.. the only thing left is the Extreme is somehow blocking the port required. It would be great if you could install 5.6.1 airport utility.. so you can get logs out of the airport. This is possible but not so great since High Sierra. However the PC windows version works.

Make sure the IPv6 settings are identical in the Express and Extreme.. that is under the Internet options tab.

It is possible IPv6 is getting itself mixed up in this.

I am not sure of the cause. Clearly Apple support cannot figure it out, other than blame the ISP which you have proven is not the case because the Express works.

Let me ask some more basic questions.

What is the main router in the network? Do you have a pure modem and when you swap Airports you are configuring them both as main router, ie DHCP and NAT. Or has ISP given you a modem router combined? Then your airports would be in bridge unless you are showing a double NAT error.

With Express connected does it always take 10 days to get location service to start working?

With whatever Airport you have connected now, open terminal and run a traceroute to iCloud.com.

When you swap airports try the traceroute command again and see if you are getting anything different.

Post the details and we might make some progress but don't be too hopeful.

I am wondering if anyone uses the AirPort Extreme

Yes, currently and for the last 4+ years, I have been using two AirPort Extremes. The first is set up as the main DHCP and NAT router for the network and the second operates in Bridge Mode connected to the first via a wired Ethernet cable connection.

....and if location services have worked fine

Have not ever had any problems with any devices using Location Services, so more work will be needed if you want to try to get things working on the AirPort Extreme.....assuming it is not defective.

Is it true that there is a Apple database that holds locations of routers generated by having local iPhones connected to those routers?

No. Location Services on the AirPorts is tied to a location database that Apple keeps.....not to any iPhone or other device that might be connecting to the AirPort. I have proven this to myself because I was without my iPhone or iPad for a few months and changed the location of the AirPort router and was connecting only using a PC for some time. The AirPort "learned" its new location in a few weeks.

iPhones are a lot more important to Apple than AirPort routers are, so the iPhones will learn their new location quickly when you move them. I've seen it take 3-4 weeks for an AirPort router to learn its new location.

If you originally set up an AirPort at one location and then move the AirPort to another location across town or the state or country, it may also take 3-4 weeks for the AirPort to "learn" its new location, since the AirPorts are low priority as far as location updates.

Based on the Information that you have provided, I suspect that you have a defective AirPort Extreme if you have already tried resetting it back to factory default settings and then set it up again from scratch. As a last resort, maybe rolling back the firmware on the AirPort to the previous version might help if you have the weeks to experiment.

If you can get the AirPort Express to learn its new location in 10 days, you are very lucky. It took 2-3 weeks for my Express to learn its new location when I was traveling recently.