Is my Airport Extreme Time Capsule Dying?
I have a 3 TB 802.11ac Airport Extreme Time Capsule. It's actually my second (the first succumbed to the Sonoma County October 8, 2017 firestorm, so I know definitively that I purchased it in Oct 2017).
For the past year or so, it occasionally drops its connection to the internet.
I have my LAN extended to an Airport Express (final version). Devices on the WiFi LAN include 2 MacBook Pros, an iMac, two iPhones, 2 iPads, a Brother monochrome laser printer, an Apple TV 4K, a Phillips Hue Bridge, a Nest Guard Hub security module, a Nest Smart thermostat, and a Scansnap iX500 document scanner.
The Airport Extreme sits atop my entertainment credenza cabinet, coupled to my cable modem (DOCSIS 3.0 Arris with no embedded router) by a Cat5e cable. ISP is fiber to home from Spectrum, 100 Mbits/sec download.
Irregularly, Safari stops loading pages, Mail.app shows alert triangles for all my mailboxes, and Airport Utility shows an amber virtual LED below the globe avatar labeled "internet." When this happens, I power cycle the Airport Extreme, and usually the WAN connection is restored. On one occasion, Airport Utility showed NO color for the WAN virtual LED and could not find either my main or extending router, and on that occasion my ISP had to perform a remote reset of the cable modem AND I did the power cycling of the Airport Extreme.
I've used iStumbler to review the status of my network. The first, with my laptop about 10 feet from my Extreme provides the following data, while the network is working, with my laptop getting its signal from JSR Home 5GHz.: The Extreme is NOT 5.9 meters away. The estimate of a 2.4 meter distance for the 2.4 GHz radio is much more accurate. I typically ask my laptop to connect using the 5 GHz radio because I achieve download speeds (as reported by speedtest.net as well as by seat-of-the pants impressions when downloading large files like movies) that match or exceed the 100 Mbits/sec that I'm paying for.
Sometimes I'll work at a desk in an upstairs office, where I have the Express configured in Extender mode. At that distance, the signal from JSRHome 5 GHz is MUCH weaker, but when it's good enough, the Speedtest.net results are similar; i.e., download speeds remain much better with the laptop connected via the Extreme rather than via the extender device:
Because I lose internet connection erratically even when my laptop is PHYSICALLY close to my Extreme router (and because this wasn't a problem in my previous home), I'm wondering if the Extreme is the cause of the problem. One other symptom is stuttering of streamed content via my AppleTV 4K to my OLED 4K smart TV and sometimes inability to receive that content at all, even though my ISP tells me there are no issues with the WAN or content providers at the time I'm not receiving the content uninterrupted.
I've read posts elsewhere that suggest moving the airport devices to non-busy channels (at least 4 other neighborhood SSIDs are on channel 6) but there are also devices on 1 and 11, and I don't think that's relevant anyway when my extreme is on channel 132.
I've also read that I'd be better off using more contemporary networking hardware; e.g., WiFi 6 and/or Mesh Network with 802.11ac where the communications between the two routers can use one channel for backhaul.
As you may see from the way I've described this, I'm at or beyond the limits of my understanding of how all this works, but there are three questions relevant:
- Do I have enough information to know that there's a problem with my Airport Extreme?
- If nothing I've said incriminates the Extreme, is there anything I could do to make the setup more reliable? If that includes designating specific channels to use, do the Extreme and Express need to be on the same channel?
- If replacing the extreme, does anyone have suggestions regarding what equipment I should purchase? (The only WiFi 6 devices I have at the moment are iOS iPhones, but I hate to invest in equipment that's nearing the downslope of its longevity arc).
I'm renting the home we're in and do not have the opportunity to use wired Ethernet when I'm working in my upstairs office. I can do so when I'm in my living room, but that would mean draping the patch cable across the floor, which would not make my wife happy, and MIGHT make my dog hungry. I suppose that if no diagnosis is possible now, I could connect the laptop directly to the Extreme with a patch cable (my laptop is a 2019 16" MacBook Pro, and I have the necessary dongle and patch cable) to see if that restores connectivity without a router power cycling.
Any other suggestions or links to resources would be greatly appreciated.
MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 10.15