iOS14 Wi-Fi calling crashing Wi-Fi on 5th gen Airport Extremes

Opened a case with Apple Support this evening. We spent almost 2 hours troubleshooting. They had me restart my cable modem, router, and access points, then reboot phone and re-enable Wi-Fi calling (it was off), to get a new and clean connection all the way through. I then was instructed to make a call. Less than 5 minutes in the Wi-Fi started glitching (wouldn’t pass data as I was monitoring from other devices on the Wi-Fi), the call then failed, and 2 access points disappeared from my network. Their hardwired Ethernet ports kept working, but they wouldn’t restart a Wi-Fi network until I unplugged them and plugged them back in.

Apple has screen shots of what I’m seeing on my iPhone and in the Airport Utility, and of the lights on the Airport Extremes. The tech has now set me up for a call with their escalations team tomorrow morning. Will report back after the call.

I spoke to a senior tech this morning for about 30 minutes. They are now going to have me schedule another call with support and an engineer (maybe later today but probably tomorrow) and while I'm on the phone with them, they want to wait until I experience the issue. Then, after I restart the network, they can then send an on-demand log request to my iPhone to capture the logs and try to identify the problem. They could have had me do this while on today's call, but I can't keep crashing our wifi while my son is taking online classes. <sigh>

Since this doesn't feel like it is going to be a quick fix, and since I need reliable internet and wifi calling, I've gone ahead and ordered a 3 node mesh system, just in case I have to make a quick switch.

Quick update. I was able to repeat the issue and call Apple. A senior tech captured diagnostics from my iPhone and asked a handful of additional questions about my setup and what I’ve tried. They are sending everything to engineering, and they scheduled an update call with me for tomorrow at 10am PT. The senior tech seemed pretty concerned about this issue.

Separately, I have a guest network on a separate vlan that uses 2 Airport Express devices as its APs. These have 7.8.1 on them. I tried to reproduce the issue, but so far it has not occurred on that network. I made 3 10-minute calls (2 outbound and 1 inbound) and the guest Wi-Fi stayed up. So...7.8.1 might not be the issue. It just happens to be the last version for gen 5 Extremes which are having the issue.

I’ll be curious to see what happens Sunday when I get back to my primary residence as the main Wi-Fi there has 3 6th gen Extremes and 3 Expresses (6 APs total). The guest network there is identical to here - 2 Expresses on their own vlan.

I have a lot of investment in this gear and wasn’t thrilled when Apple got out of the AP business. It’s also made it hard for me to decide what to replace it all with as it ages - especially with Wi-Fi 6 becoming mainstream soon.

Thank you. I have 6 of the 6th gen Airport Extremes at another location and I have not noticed the issue yet there, but I’m also not sure anyone has made any Wi-Fi calls from iOS14 devices as there are land lines and cell service at that location. I’ll be back there next week and can test.

I have turned Wi-Fi calling off and on with iPhone reboots in between. And I’ve rebooted the airports multiple times. Problem keeps recurring. I’ve also linked this post to a similar discussion occurring here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios14-wifi-calling-on-iphone-xs-max-crashing-airport-extreme-base-station.2254905/?post=28926565#post-28926565

As this issue did not occur in any variant of iOS13 with these same access points, I’m sure it is related to iOS14.

Not sure how to cross post - when I created this post I marked the device with the issue as an iPhone and the related device as the AirPort Extreme.

thanks!

Good to know. Thanks. My son’s iPhone 11 on iOS14 triggered this issue again last night during a FaceTime call. So at least for now these call apps are a way to cause the issue so Apple can collect diagnostics.

I am suspicious though, that more is going on. Last night, before going to sleep, I checked airport utility and all looked fine. This morning, one access point is offline. I did get a wrong number call that rang my phone (I didn’t answer), so maybe that was it.

Some others have reported this issue being triggered by the Apple Remote app. I haven’t tried that, though I do have AppleTVs. Maybe today?

I know Apple is following this discussion as they asked some questions in our last call, so hopefully they can repeat this in their labs.

However, my patience for the frequency of this issue locking my Wi-Fi is running thin. If Apple doesn’t have any good answers today and my new mesh APs arrive as expected, I may just have to swap and see if that resolves the issue. Annoying as these Extremes have been so good and I’m amazed iOS14 can crash a network. And I feel like I’m spending a lot of money to let them off the hook (assuming the issue is indeed resolved with new gear).

But we are in a mountainous area in California with no regular cell service that is undergoing regular red flag wildfire warnings. I need reliable Wi-Fi to receive calls and SMS alert messages from the warning systems. This is a safety issue for us. Never mind that we also need Wi-Fi reliable for my work and our son’s online classes.