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Level 1

5 points

Airport Extreme drops connection to two computers

The setup is as follow:
1 x OS X Server connected to
1 x Airport Extreme Router which is connected to by
8 x iMacs/Macbooks

For the majority of machines connected wirelessly there is no issue, however two machines drop out almost every two hours, this is especially frustrating as it takes about half an hour or so for them to come back onto the network.

Here are the logs from the Airport in one such dropout, which lasted much shorter than the usual ones. The affected machine is "00:1e:c2:c3:3b:90"

"Jan 10 12:15:50 Severity:5 Associated with station 00:25:00:41:ed:c2
Jan 10 12:15:50 Severity:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant 00:25:00:41:ed:c2
Jan 10 12:19:31 Severity:5 Disassociated with station 00:1e:c2:c3:3b:90
Jan 10 12:19:32 Severity:5 Rotated TKIP group key.
Jan 10 12:19:48 Severity:5 Associated with station 00:1e:c2:c3:3b:90
Jan 10 12:19:48 Severity:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant 00:1e:c2:c3:3b:90
Jan 10 12:24:25 Severity:5 Disassociated with station 00:1e:c2:c3:3b:90
Jan 10 12:24:27 Severity:5 Rotated TKIP group key.
Jan 10 12:24:28 Severity:5 Associated with station 00:1e:c2:c3:3b:90
Jan 10 12:24:28 Severity:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant 00:1e:c2:c3:3b:90"

I've been all over forums about apple and its airport issues, however there doesn't seem to be a fix around, does anyone here have any ideas?

Cheers

Server/MacbookPro/iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Jan 9, 2011 7:52 PM

29 replies

BigMacG4

Level 1

0 points

Apr 14, 2011 1:08 PM in response to dochin

One of our consultants has 7.4.2 in his list, in Airport Utility - any idea where it is on the drive so I can share it?

dalpha

Level 1

0 points

Apr 15, 2011 12:51 PM in response to waargarbl

I downgraded the firmware to 7.4.2 and i thought i worked at first. But still there's problems. For me everything started as i upgraded to OS 10.6.7.

Apr 15 21:40:50 Allvarsgrad:5 Associated with station e0:f8:47:99:e3:66
Apr 15 21:40:50 Allvarsgrad:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant e0:f8:47:99:e3:66
Apr 15 21:41:03 Allvarsgrad:5 Disassociated with station e0:f8:47:99:e3:66
Apr 15 21:41:03 Allvarsgrad:5 Rotated CCMP group key.
Apr 15 21:47:25 Allvarsgrad:5 Associated with station e0:f8:47:99:e3:66
Apr 15 21:47:25 Allvarsgrad:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant e0:f8:47:99:e3:66
Apr 15 21:47:56 Allvarsgrad:5 Disassociated with station e0:f8:47:99:e3:66
Apr 15 21:47:58 Allvarsgrad:5 Rotated CCMP group key.

Searching this forum i realized that many people has this problem since upgrading.

Any suggestions?

tivoboy

Level 1

15 points

Apr 15, 2011 1:21 PM in response to dochin

So, will a downgrade to 7.5.1 repair this? Anyone care to elaborate the specifics?

dalpha

Level 1

0 points

Apr 15, 2011 1:40 PM in response to waargarbl

I downgraded to 7.4.2 cause it was the only option i had in Airport Tools. After zappin' the PRAM it seems to be more stable. Haven't got any disassociations since then. But i had one flickering in the signal over the last 30 minutes. I get back if the problem persists.

I really wish that Apple fix this. At least tell us that they're aware of the problem.

tivoboy

Level 1

15 points

Apr 15, 2011 2:02 PM in response to dalpha

Where is airport tools?

dalpha

Level 1

0 points

Apr 15, 2011 2:18 PM in response to tivoboy

I run a swedish edition of mac os x. Maybe it's called Airport Utility on a english version. It's the one you find in Program -> Utilitites folder.

tivoboy

Level 1

15 points

Apr 15, 2011 2:39 PM in response to dalpha

Ah yes, I figured that was it but I hadn't found the downgrade utility. If I right click on the time capsule, I can upload a new FW, and 7.4.2 is LISTED there, so it must be resident on the computer or the TC. Anyone know where to find the 7.5.1 mentioned here?

Apr 30, 2011 5:17 PM in response to waargarbl

Seems my Airport drops connection while I'm transferring large files from my Mac to my unRAID server. Is there any configuration to be done to the Airport so that it can handle continuous file transfers? It must be "choking" somehow on the data.

nbiotech

Level 1

0 points

May 17, 2011 7:14 AM in response to waargarbl

Same problem here with the WPA2-Enterprise Re-Key. I set the re-key to 3 hours, however all my OSX clients, and iOS clients re-key every hour....? This makes me believe its a problem with OSX and iOS itself.

On the OSX kernel.log, these entries appear
May 11 14:38:14 mbpro kernel[0]: Auth result for: 10:9a:dd:88:cd:56 MAC AUTH succeeded
May 11 14:38:14 mbpro kernel[0]: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1
May 11 14:38:18: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
May 11 14:38:18 mbpro kernel[0]: utun_ctl_connect: creating interface utun0
The associated Airport Extreme Logs
May 11 14:38:03 Severity:5 Rotated CCMP group key.
May 11 14:38:07 Severity:5 Deauthenticating with station 60:33:4b:29:88:d3 (reserved 2).
May 11 14:38:07 Severity:5 Disassociated with station 60:33:4b:29:88:d3
May 11 14:38:07 Severity:5 Rotated CCMP group key.
May 11 14:38:16 Severity:5 Associated with station 60:33:4b:29:88:d3
May 11 14:38:16 Severity:4 Authenticating station 60:33:4b:29:88:d3 to RADIUS.
May 11 14:38:16 Severity:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant 60:33:4b:29:88:d3
May 11 14:38:17 Severity:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant 60:33:4b:29:88:d3

We have one Windows 7 laptop, that has no issue and does not even re-authenticate to radius (no radius log entries) which makes me believe that the airport extreme is working fine, and puts more emphasis on a bug within OSX / iOS.

We have 2 airport extremes, one running 7.5.2 and one running 7.5.1 (different buildings) and both are experiencing the problem.

BulaRae

Level 1

24 points

May 17, 2011 7:59 AM in response to nbiotech

I'm having the same problem since late March and updating to 10.6.7. It's infuriating. I have spent countless hours searching and researching, troubleshooting and pulling my hair out. This has got to be some sort of bug. Where is the fix, Apple?

nbiotech

Level 1

0 points

May 17, 2011 10:02 AM in response to waargarbl

Everyone should go submit the bug here - http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I have a macbook pro, 10.6.4 laptop that seems to be working and not disconnecting. Might just be the latest 10.6.7 update. I'll update everyone regarding the 10.6.4 laptop when I have more time connected to the network

RscottS

Level 1

0 points

Oct 16, 2011 5:51 PM in response to waargarbl

Same problem. I have had to reconnect to wifi 5 times just to post this (honeslty I got sick of updating that number as I typed this). I took the router back to Apple and they got me a referbished DOA one (litterally it wouldn't not power on). They gave me my old one back and told me they would order another one. Yes it is under Apple Care.

I'm sad Apple has not responded on this thread with a fix. Giving me new hardware will fix my issue (as soon as they figure out how to order one that is not broken), but failing to look into this is causing the flaky wifi is causing them loss of reputation.

Time Machine as router

2 iPhone4's

1 iPad2

1 iPad1

2 MacBook Air

1 iMac

3 Win7 boxes

2 Apple TV's

1 Mac Mini Server

The logs just fill up with:

Oct 16 20:28:03 Severity:5 Disassociated with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86

Oct 16 20:28:04 Severity:5 Associated with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86

Oct 16 20:28:08 Severity:5 Deauthenticating with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86 (reserved 2).

Oct 16 20:28:08 Severity:5 Disassociated with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86

Oct 16 20:28:08 Severity:5 Associated with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86

Oct 16 20:28:08 Severity:5 Associated with station 00:1a:e9:b2:a4:c9

Oct 16 20:28:08 Severity:5 Installed unicast CCMP key for supplicant 00:1a:e9:b2:a4:c9

Oct 16 20:28:08 Severity:5 Deauthenticating with station 00:1a:e9:b2:a4:c9 (reserved 2).

Oct 16 20:28:09 Severity:5 Disassociated with station 00:1a:e9:b2:a4:c9

Oct 16 20:28:12 Severity:5 Deauthenticating with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86 (reserved 2).

Oct 16 20:28:12 Severity:5 Disassociated with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86

Oct 16 20:28:12 Severity:5 Associated with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86

Oct 16 20:28:16 Severity:5 Deauthenticating with station 00:16:ea:7a:75:86 (reserved 2).

AndyO58

Level 1

8 points

Mar 20, 2012 5:48 AM in response to waargarbl

We are running v 7.6.1 and we are having numerous drop off issues inside of a mixed network of PC's and Macs. Log error messages are consistent with what has been posted here and we see drops on both the Macs and the windows units.

Dec 17, 2012 6:58 PM in response to AndyO58

Not to be a Mac-party-pooper, but I have noticed extreme speed degradation out of one of my Extremes (have 3 plus a Timecapsule) so I checked the wireless log and noticed a number of similar messages - all with today date, seconds apart. Even more concerning is that I don't recognize the MAC ID of the device it's continually associating and disassociating with. My Extremes are all on 7.6.1.

Airport Extreme drops connection to two computers