Airport Express dropping off network

I would like to share my experience concerning an issue with my brand new Apple Airport Express 802.11n (AE).

I use the AE solely to stream music to my stereo over my home wifi network. Base station (and router to the Internet) is a Linksys WRT120N wireless router. The AE is merely a client on the network. It is a mixed mode network (auto config). Network security is WPA2 personal. AE gets its IP and router settings via DHCP.

The problem was that occasionally I could not connect to Airtunes using iTunes. In that case I would also not be able to see the AE in the Airport Express Utility. Restarting the AE (unplugging it and plugging it in again) would solve the problem. The problem occurred when I had stopped listening to music for a while and tried to put some music back on.

Searching the Internet I found a blog entry about a problem with AEs dropping off networks and that it could have something to do with DHCP. (http://vowe.net/archives/005911.html)

I tried different setting and finally made some changes to my WRT120N that solved the problem for me. The solution:

I drastically reduced the DHCP client lease time (from 1h to 5 min.) for the DHCP server on the WRT120N base station. From that on the AE always could be accessed. 🙂

With the new settings it happened two times that iTunes froze trying to connect to Airtunes. But after restarting iTunes Airtunes worked just fine.

Hope this info can be of some use.