Upgrade to 7.6 broke my network

Hey,

I am definately not a Tech person, but ? keep reading up on OSX 10.6 and Peripherals, and would have called Applecare ..but seems this has been ongoing.I stumbled upon it my accident

our 4th generation Airport Extreme is set to Q 30 days and was aware around 11/13/11

today the light flashed amber but We were online. Airport utility is at 5.5.3. I opened up the utility and adjusted some settings (channels), multicast rate, DHCP lease time , and x2 save data and the second time (without updating firmware from 7.5.3 to 7.6 on screen the light changed to green and verified that by looking at the Airport extreme in another room, we are all (except one

800mHz iMac wireless, that one is via ethernet . Not sure if I was lucky (or did anything but the settings I changed (will see in 30 days I guess ) * I am sure puzzled at the amount of posts on this firmware update, I usually wait on most updates (OSX, Safari, ITunes) especially the OSX 10.6.x updates as I use Music gear that some rely on Mac drivers that are compatible with the particular operating system and .x etc and some can take awhile, others not so long, Companies like Apogee which is a Mac only product and ? MOTU (which was ? Mac only) and RME was also Mac only before going cross platform , I "think" they may get a bit of heads up or beta testing (I am not sure on that ) but others get really frustrated (no names mentioned) but a lot were security updates and those You need to make hard decisions or if You have the luxary of extra dollars , have two Macs, one not touching the web (other than getting downloads and ? if the same can be done on one and put on the other (I am not in that fortunate group (But actually I am, I own a fine computer and have some nice basic music gear, no delusions of going on tour or owing a 1959 Gibson Les Paul 🙂 but for every one

Mac user or PC user I hope this gets settled quick, Miss You Steve Jobs !😟😢

diamondblues

😕 ➕ 😠 😮 😟

I've experienced the same problems (networks drops every 5 min with PPPoE connexion, very very slow internet connection...) after the update to 7.6

After spending 1 day on it with my internet provider, the Japanese telecoms, and Apple, here is the solution (then you'll get a fantastic connexion and network and speed) :

- Once you're on 7.6,

- Disconnect all LAN cable from your Time Capasule or Airport base station except the cable to your modem

- Disconnect all your other aimac express base stations on the network

- reset your Time Capsule or Airport base station (using the physical reset button on the backside)

- connect wirelessly from your mac to your newly reseted base staton or time capsule

- proceed to setup of the base station or time capsule from your mac

- wait for restart

Once this is done, your internet connection will not drop anymore and be very good. Your internal network too.

If you have several airmac express base station, then you'll plug it one by one and setup one by one (to join, extend your main network).

And ONLY when all of this is done, you'll connect other Mac or LAN HUB to your base station / Time capsule.

In my case, the fact that I had a LAN HUB (connected with several devices : synology server / PLC sub network, other Macs ...) + other airmac Express connected to the Time Capsule was the source of the trouble and made impossible to have a "clean setup" avec the 7.6.

I even tried to downgrade to the previous firmware but didn't change anything....

Thanks Martin for the heads up. Although i am not using a time capsule, i am actualy using a hub from behind which I made the firmware upload. To avoid anymore upset family members I will try definitely your way in the weekend when everybody is out. Let you know the result. For now I have stable network, but on the cost of fixed IP adresses.

Somehow I'm glad to see I am not alone with such problems.

My Airport Extreme 5th gen stopped pulling an IP from my cable modem from the 10th of nov (the release date of FW7.6). Before it worked for months without any problem at all.

My setup: Motorola surfboard cable modmen --> AE which shares one IP --> NAS over eth, MBP and 2 PCs over WLAN

I tought it would be wise to upgrade after the AE failed, so I did. Even without internet connection, the AE did the upgrade which should mean it already downloaded it somewhere before I told it to upgarde.

After the upgrade same problem, no internet connection and no DNS servers available.

I connected my MBP and PC directly to the cable modem -> OK

I resetted the whole setup and hooked the AE again. Airport utility gave the same warnings, found a AE with problems, no internet and DNS servers.

Then I configured the AE in bridge mode, to share the IP he should get from the modem over WLAN -> OK??

So I got it working, but not in the mode I wanted it to work as my NAS is not accessible in this way.

In order to be 100% sure to blame the modem or AE, I hooked up the AE in router mode (share 1 IP) at my fathers place and father in laws place, who both have the same ISP but other versions of the cable modem ->OK

As it works at their place, I tested again at my place in router mode -> still not OK

Then contacted tech support of the ISP to check if the modem is OK and they told me the modem works fine as they could see I was still able to pull IPs out of the modem in bridge mode.

They asked me to hook up the AE again in router mode to check what could be wrong.

They told me the AE does a DHCP request, the cable modem answers, but then the AE does an other request, over and over again, without giving the modem the right answer to proceed the DHCP.

I really tried every possible way to solve it: downgrade to 7.5.2, upgrade again to 7.6, owngrade to 7.5.2, upgrade again to 7.6, hard reset of the AE, factory reset of the AE, rebuilding the network from scratch, replacing cabled, ... to much time has been waisted

Bottom line:

The ISP says their modem works fine.

Apple store told me the AE works fine as it works on the other modems.

At the moment I use the AE in bridge mode, so no NAS and with only 2 devices at the same time as the modem can only give 2 IPs. I guess I have to wait for next FW update?

Could somebody please assist me on this. Every forum talks about going into the Airport Utility and selecting Version to downgrade to 7.5.2. When I select that on any of my four devices, all I see are 7.6 or Other. If I select Other, then I need a firmware image. But I am unable to find that image anywhere - I thought I had, but I was wrong!

My questions are

Why don't I see the option to downgrade to 7.5.2?

Where can i find a useable firmware image?

I'd really appreciate some advice on this. One of my units is constantly reporting errors and going offline, for no apparent reason. A restart fixes it, until the next time. I never had this on 7.5.2.

I'm following the advice of so many others here and "downgrading" my AX firmware to 7.5 for now.

I recently installed a new wireless router which was absolutely necessary - as I was losing my internet conneciton for all my devices and shortly after that I installed the new 7.6 firmware for the AX. Nothing but trouble since that time.

I noticed that the time between failures seemed to decrease. Initially, my only resolution was to unplug the device from the wall and let AU find it again for me. The "working time" of the AX went from days to hours to, just this morning, 3 minutes, before it would lose it's connection and stop streaming audio from iTunes.

There are too many possible smoking guns and reverting to an old, yet working, version of the firmware is as good a solution as I could see. I'm letting iTunes play now and at 10 minutes into the experiment, all is well. We've got 3+ days of music cued up so if it persists for that long it will outlast every BBQ I've every had on the back patio - which suits me fine.

I'd be interested to hear if there are any other success stories since reverting to 7.5.

Yes. My success story was that after ruining my network with 7.6 (which made all Airport devices and most of my network devices unstable and/or unresponsive), I did the following:

1. Took all devices (2 1st Gen Time Capsules, and a 4th Gen Airport Extreme) back to 7.5.2
2. Unplugged every single network device in my house (Slingbox, 2 DirecTV DVR's, 10 Sonos ZonePlayers, 2 AppleTV's, an Enphase Envoy to track the solar energy production on my roof, and a few other devices)
3. Reset all of 3 Airport devices one at a time, waiting until I had green lights on Airport Utility, and then
4. Rebooted each network device one at a time.

Within about 30 minutes all devices had rejoined the network and everything has been stable ever since.

Good to hear! I dislike all the advice relating to signal interference - especially since I bought into that explanation initially by moving my entire home office around so that I could have a "more clear" pathway from the router to the AX in the family room (less than 75 feet away) and then placed the AX on an extension cord away from the wall.

I believe that the hardware is more robust than that and can deal with electromagnetic interference from stero speakers or speaker wire given that one of the intended uses is to stream audio.

An hour into the playlist and all is well!

Here's an update...

I have been trying to perform the downgrade "update" from my iMac, using the 5.5.3 Airport Utility. It steadfastly refused to give me any options in the drop-down box other than 7.6 and Other on each of the devices.

It occurred to me that I had the Airport Utility (also 5.5.3) on the kids' old WinXP laptop so I should try that instead. Sure enough it offered the whole range of 8 or 9 historical firmwares for my 1st gen AE, not quite so many for my 3rd gen AE, and 7.5.x for my two 4th gen AEs.

Needless to say that worked fine. I subsequently grabbed the kids' very old PowerBook G4 that also has the 5.5.3 Airport Utility installed. Again, that offered me all the same range of firmwares to choose from that the Windows laptop did.

After several days of Googling and tearing my hair out, I've finally managed to revert to 7.5.2, and so far the network seems more stable.

I still have no idea why my iMac will not let me choose anything other than 7.6, while other machines do. One of the many mysteries of working with Apple devices I guess!

Never mind - the connection was lost or iTunes decided to quit.

I suspect that iTunes shares some of the responsibility here but I don't know in what way.

Very frustrating!

Just adding a me too to the thread. My Time Capsule (2nd Gen) won't consistently hold a PPPoE connection when running 7.6. Seems to be worse when the unit is under load, for instance backing up from one or more computers while attempting to stream from Netflix at the same time. Once disconnected the unit wil reconnect sporadically before eventually establishing and holding a connection for an extended period of time. This behaviour occurs daily and typically lasts for 1 hour.

Downgrading the 7.5.2 addresses the issue for me.

Actualy I am running now for the last 4 days smooth again on my local netwrk (with a DSL modem, TP-link router and 3 airport expresses hardwired throughout the house. Clients consists of 4 macbook (pro's), HP printer, MAC Pro and 2 i-pad 2's) with the 7.5.2. Although I said before I would try again this weekend when the family was out, to ge back to 7.6 by the method of Martinrousseau, but I am very reluctant now.

For those struggling to reinstall the firmware to 7.5.2 and have an i-pad or i-phone, goto the appstore and download for free the iarport utility. It shows the setup and status of your local (apple) network devices. Clicking on the airport you will find an option to update the firmware. It will give you a list of older options to go back to.

Same. 7.5.2 seems to be fine so far.

Thanks for the tip about the Airport app. It works as well, so every other device I've tried works apart from my big expensive iMac (running 10.7.2). Got me stumped!

Same issue here: network entirely Apple, updated to 7.6 and got inconsistent ability to join the network, in particular with the Intel based Apple TV.

So started to debug from the Apple TV, lost half a day and finally reverted tho 7.5.2. Now everything is as before, not perfect but kind of works.

I had similar problems with other updates in the past and can't believe that I swallowed the higher Time Capsule cost (twice!) to ensure I had good interoperability with my Apple kit. It's just rubbish, it's like they ring-fenced all inept Dev, QA, PM in one team and told them to work on AirPort.

It's ok to ruin my network once but this is the third time! Come on!

I have a network with an Apple Extreme Base Station extended by an Airport Express. I managed to fix the problem on the Apple Extreme Base Station by doing the following:

1. disconnecting everything including the internet cable and then

2. resetting the Base Station as I powered it on.

The network works perfectly now with only the Base Station. When I try to extend the network by adding the Airport Express and again reset as I power it on, the network collapses and I again start having problems with network dropping. I hope this helps.