Airport Express 802.11g disappears

Same here: I use the AE 802.11g v6.3 to join network TC 802.11n v7.5.2. It does join and works well, but after a day or so, it disappears. When restarted, same thing happens.

The good news:

I think it's not your AE *.11g that caused the problem.

The bad news:

Unfortunately up to now, there is no solution shown either in google nor at Apple.

Take a look at Google with "airtunes drops..", "disappear from airport utility" or "Joined BSS". That will fire up thousands of people with the same problem since 2005. I have the problem since 2008 starting with iTunes 7.x and a 811.g AE)

And, (not) surprisingly NO solution from Apple so far.

I've actual equipment here and got similar issues for years now, but still no solution.

My setup:

MB early 2008 with 10.6.8; MBP mid 2011 with 10.6.8; 1 WinXPPro SP3 Machine; 1 AEBS 5th Gen as router with 7.5.2; 4 AE n-capable with 7.5.2.

All together in a 5GHz - *.11n wireless network, no WDS.

• 3 AE hooked up to speakers in different rooms.
• 1 AE hooked up to WD TV Live with an Ethernet cable to stream video to my TV-Set.
• All units have pretty good signal (270 to 450 MBit/s)

Every once in while airtunes play to one or more of the AE will stop while iTunes continue the stream for a while and then saying "there are no speakers available"

Same happened to the WD TV when streaming Video and got the message "no network available"

I've noticed that at the same time ALL network units disappear from the airport utility as well as from the network monitor of the Windows machine.

This occurs randomly after a few minutes or some hours.

Till now I could not found any clear pattern for this behaviour.

What I found while circling around the problem is:

• When the Airtunes stream stops, all the units disappear from airport utility.
• The Internet connection or networking between my other machines will not be affected. Means, all other running network tasks still works seamlessly and smooth.

I've read countless postings about the problem and found that a lot of people have the same problem but there where no helpful solutions. Some blame the router, some the AE, some iTunes and others there microwave oven. Some had setup a complete wired network and experience the same problems.

What meanwhile seems clear to me:

• It's not a bandwidth problem.
  According to activity monitor and another metering program, streaming music needs between 250 and 300 KB/s and streaming a video needs between 1.7 and 2 MB/s
• It's not a wireless problem, as I've tested the AE hardwired to the router.
• It's not a compatibility problem with the router, as my router is Apple 5th Gen.
• It's not a problem with rival WIFI networks, as there are only 2 other wifi networks in the neighbourhood working in the 2.4 GHz band while mine is only 5 GHz
• It's not a "update to last ..." problem, as all my equipment, OS-X, Windows, drivers, FW, is up to date.
• It's not a "downgrade AE firmware to x.x.x problem, as I've done that without success.

What I found so far, checking the logs from one of the affected AE's is:

Aug 25 12:45:01 Severity: 5 Disconnected from network.

Aug 25 12:45:20 Severity: 4 AirTunes idle timeout after 30 seconds with no data.

Aug 25 12:45:20 Severity: 4 AirTunes stream from 10.0.1.3 stopped.

Aug 25 12:46:17 Severity: 5 Joined BSS b8:c7:5d:05:38:1e

Aug 25 12:46:17 Severity: 5 Installed unicast CCMP key for authenticator b8:c7:5d:05:38:1e

Aug 25 12:46:22 Severity: 5 Internet configuration leased [IPv4] -- host <10.0.1.4/255.255.255.0> gateway <10.0.1.1> dns <10.0.1.1> wins <> lease <86400> domain <>

Aug 25 12:48:06 Severity: 4 AirTunes stream from 10.0.1.3 started.

Aug 25 12:48:06 Severity: 3 AirTunes time sync receive error: -6722

Aug 25 12:57:58 Severity: 5 Connection accepted from [::ffff:10.0.1.3]:56350.

The Airtunes dropout and dissapearing from airport utility most happens shortly after:

• time sync with...
• internet configuration leased ...
• AirTunes time sync receive error: -6722
• Installed unicast CCMP key for ...

But there is not pattern indicating that always the same message correspondents with the dropout of airplay.

What is suspicious is, that the AE leases internet config (IP) not according to router settings. The leasetime for the IP's in the router is set to 3 Days, but the AE seems to ask quite more often for a new IP.

The only workaround to start streaming again (up to now) is:

Deactivate AirPort connection from either one of the computers and reactivate some seconds later, suddenly all units reappear in the airport utility and I'm able to restart streaming with airtunes.

I hope this will help you until there is a clear solution.

Apple, we desparately need a solution asap.

Uncle D wrote:

Same here: I use the AE 802.11g v6.3 to join network TC 802.11n v7.5.2. It does join and works well, but after a day or so, it disappears. When restarted, same thing happens.

Good News for Time Capsule or AP-Extreme users.

After weeks of cirkling around the problem I'v fond the evil and fixed it.

To make a long story short:

• On the Host /source of your stream) delete all obsolete wireless networks from the List in System Settings / Network / Airport / Options, including your own ones.
• Disable GUEST NETWORK in the Extreme.
• Reboot the Host (source of your stream)
• Join your preferred wireless network again

Since that, no more dropouts in Airstream!!

Since that, no more dropouts while streaming Video.

As the majority of wireless users never make use of the "Guest Network" feature, theres no reason to have it switched ON.

Hope this will work for you too.

Cheers - Lupunus

I love the guest user, is this the only way?

TheSmokeMonster wrote:

I love the guest user, is this the only way?

I would love it too as I often have guests in my house. It was also one reason to buy the AP-Extreme instead of a different access point of the same price.

But on monitoring the wireless the first thing I found was that the Guest Network constantly swap between 2.4GHz and 5GHz band and there was a time correlation between that swap and the drop out.

After I shut it off the drop outs had a major decrease.

Eventually there is a configuration that allow to use it without influencing the stations in the regular wireless but I made no attempt to find out till now.

Cheers - Lupunus

NVM I got it working with a guest user.

TheSmokeMonster wrote:

NVM I got it working with a guest user.

Very interesting ... what are your settings in the Extreme / Mac aside of switching on the Guest Network?

Did your media streams stay stable?

I'm connecting my A express to a time capsule so I can share a printer it's connected to. I also have a third party app set up for airprint for my iphone4.

I just went through and reset everything to the right settings and I noticed that my timecapsule had reset the Admin/main wifi connection to the default but kept my guest account and wasn't set to create wifi. I redid what I had done before so it would create a wifi signal and then i setup the airport express to join that network. It used to cut out after one print job but I can still see both the TC and the AExp in the airport utility as well as the signal sent by the app I'm using on my iphone 4.

There was this setting for WAN where it gave me the option to set it to refresh from 1 hour, to 1 month, year so on. I remember playing around with that howerver, I can't find it and I don't remember if I had changed it to a longer setting of time.

I was basically tinkering around making sure everything was connected correctly since it's all wireless and it's now working. It has been up for about half a day without it disappearing on me.

I may be using it differently then you since I'm not using it to send a wireless signal but to attach itself to one already being made by the time capsule and then to share the printer it is connected to. I've turned off Airplay since a number of people talk about how airplay seems to be something that, while used, gets disconnected and I don't need it, so I turned it off completely.

There are a number of things I did but these are the ones that sort of stick out as the things I was trying to accomplish and some of the settings I came across during the whole process. I hope this helps.

products:

Airport Express 802.11g

Time Capsule 802.11n (4th Generation)

Epson 1280

latest firmware (to date) for all

Just to maybe help others:

my setup: 3rd party router/DSL-modem from Deutsche Telekom. It hosts a n-network. Old Airport Extreme (without dual-w-lan-function!) connected via ethernet creating it's own second network: g-network. Connected to this g-network is the Airport Express (which is too old to be n-capable => 2 different W-lan to be able to use it for streaming music but still being able to use high-speed internet on my computer) to stream music from itunes to attached speakers. iTunes is located on an old Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo, which is connected to the faster n-network via Airport. Sounds weird but this actually works!

Or it at least worked until today, when the streaming first got interrupted like being scratched and then eventually stopping completely. This was related to the Express no longer being visible in the Airport Utilities menu and the speakers not being available anymore via iTunes Airplay menu. The Airport Express nonetheless still showed a green light! Sometimes before I already had the same issue (not that severe though), but at that time just turning the Macbooks Airport off and on again was enough to have it work again for several hours/days. But today it became unbearable always dropping again after one or two minutes. Only restarting the Express would then help, but in the end after one minute or sth like that it dropped again.

After trying so many different things (iStumbler for connection scans, channel switches, all that stuff you could change in the airport utitlities options, etc...) I was short before going completely nuts. Then I stumbled onto this thread and tried Iupunus sollution (thank you so much!!!).

With the only difference being presented in my weird configuration that results out of old hardware listed above, so no guest-networking or anything had anything to do with it (old Extreme doesn't feature that). I just deleted all the saved networks listed in the network properties and then restarted the macbook. et voila: it works again, at least for the last hour or so. Fingers crossed it won't start dropping again, but so far it looks like this really helped with the issue at hand.

So if you encounter a similar problem just try Iupunus solution, might work wonders!

(I'm sorry for my bad English, it's not my "mother's tongue"...)

cheers,

ldf

For the AP-Extreme / AP-Express / TimeCapsule users ...

There is a new Firmware for the devices available.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1471

This update for all 802.11n AirPort Express, 802.11n AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule models provides fixes for the following:

• An issue with performance on overlapping wireless networks
• An issue with AirPlay audio streaming
• An issue with configuring multiple entries for DNS servers

And, not surprisingly, the Guest Network of the Extreme / TC is a overlapping wireless network.

Lupunus

just sth to add to this:

In my several attempts to solve the issue I had already installed the update for my Extreme (for my old Express there is no update) and it didn't help. I even had the slight feeling it made things worse. But eventually your other suggestion deleting the saved W-lans worked. Maybe it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't updated the Extreme in the meanwhile. I don't know...

I was about to drop my old airport express 802.11g in the garbage when i found this easy procedure that solved the issue:

1. Unplug your AE

2. Reset your router

3. Plug your AE

May sound too easy but i was encountering the same problems listed above.

I thought it was due to itunes 10.5.

I've tryed resetting my AE g to factory many times and it didn't help.

My configuration is 2 AE n with last firmware, 1 AE g, 3rd party wireless router, iMac running Leopard with itunes 10.5, 1 ATV2.

Hope this helps.

I forgot to tell you not just to reset your router but to switch it off and on before replugging your airport express.

Ciao

Edit: After 2 days i'm back to the initial problem.

It connects when reset but then it suddenly disappears from the network.