"No DNS servers" and "Internet connection" problems with Comcast?

I have tried everything you said and got excited when that green light was finally on on the airport extreme. But it drops out every 30 seconds or so and alternates between flashing amber and solid green...What else can I do?

Everything was working fine by the way it my problems all started when I tried to do an update on the extreme and my express. Then everything just didn't work.

Any advice would be much appreciated

I have had the "no DNS Servers" and "No Internet connection" messages exactly as described in the original post since shortly after updating to firmware version 7.6.4. Oddly enough, this started about a week after running the firmware update. First both wireless and wired connections went down. After calling the ISP to reset the modem, the wired connection came back, but only if I went direct from the computer to the modem via ethernet and skipped the airport. Once I moved the modem and airport to another room with another cable connectionf rom outside, the wired connection through the airport worked and the MacPro was able to get internet. But the wireles still did not function.

After trying many different suggested solutions over the past week, I thought I would share what worked for me. I have very little knowledge in this area, so I am afraid I can't share any insight beyond the steps and the order I took them. The important thing to me is that they worked, and I hope that if someone else has the same trouble, they might be helpful.

I have an Airort Extreme base station. It is attached to a Mac Pro 2010 running OS X 10.7.5 via ethernet. The wireless clients are 3 iPhones and a Roku.

1. Downgrade firmware to 7.6.1 by option-clicking on "7.6.4" in the Airport Utility and selecting 7.6.1 instead. This did NOT solve the connection problem. It appeared to have no impact at all.

2. In Airport utility, I went to Base Station and chose "Restore Default Settings". When the wizard asked for the modem to be reset, I called my ISP (Comcast) and had them reset the modem from their end. I have a Motorola 6141. It took cosiderably longer to reset than the 15 seconds the phone tree told me it would take, but after about 60 seconds, alll modem lights were back on.

3. After reset, I created a new name for the Airport and a new network with a name and password that I had not previously used. About 2 minutes later, everythign was up and running.

Had very similar problems, worked on this for multiple hours, even had a representative from Time Warner cable in NC come to the house. After he replaced a few rusty connectors outside the house and checked the signal strengths, he came to the conclusion that "the router was bad" and "those things look expensive" (things being a $99 Airport Express circa 2012).

Using a Motorola Surfboard and an Airport Express.

Again, I tried the numerous solutions and waiting periods as well as the dance of "plug this in, in this order".

Then I stumbled upon a post refering to this as a DNS problem. As the saying goes, 'it's always the last place you look', I moved into the AE's DNS settings, changed them to OpenDNS's Family Shield (we've used these in the past, I'm sure Google DNS or similar would work as well), applied the settings to the AE (AE rebooted), and viola, back up and running.

I did notice that it took a minute or two for our connection speeds to get back up to normal. Ran a speed test or two and after a few minutes our speeds were back to where they should be.

CoastRedwood's solution worked for me. Thank you!!!

It might be helpful to others if I give a few details of my situation (I also have very little technical knowlege in this area):

I have an Airport Time Capsule router, and my ISP is Comcast. To avoid rental fees from the Comcast combined modem/router, I bought my own Arris WMB760 modem. After setting up the Arris modem, my ipad and my iphone could no longer connect to my home wifi, but my macbook pro could. Of course, the ipad and iphone worked fine on other networks (starbucks, uni, etc).

The puzzling thing was that my ipad and iphone showed no error message on the wi-fi settings screen, they just showed the little grey wheel spinning instead of the blue check mark next to my home network.

Here's what I did first, that did NOT work:

1. Call Comcast and have them reset my modem.

2. Call Comcast and have them update my firmware.

3. Unplug my Airport Time Capsule unit and my modem Arris modem.

4. Reset network setting on iPhone and iPad (settings > general > reset > reset network settings)

5. Change wireless security setting from WPA2 Personal to WPA/WPA2 Personal

I then opened the Airport Utility program on my mbp, and the status lights in the main window under the big internet and time capsule icons were both green (so no amber lights anywhere). But when I clicked on the big time capsule icon it showed two error messages: "No DSN Servers" and "Internet Connection". Internet on my mbp worked fine, only the ipad and iphone had trouble connecting.

Here is what DID work:

1. Open Airport Utility program on macbook

2. Go to upper menubar item base station > restore default settings

3. Go through guided restore steps, make sure to change name of network and change network password

4. After restore complete, connect wireless devices to new network, (and then also forget the old network, which still showed up as a list item).

No idea what the problem was, don't really care, main thing is that my devices work now. And only 4 hours wasted! Hope this saves someone some time someday...

So this is great as a one time fix and all, but this happens to me like once a month, every month. Is there any more permanent solution or do I constantly have to deal with this annoyance because that would majorly suck

I was trying to Reconnect a previously connected AE that dropped due to possible Comcast or modem (Surfboard) issues. Here's what worked: After resetting the AE (from back pinpoint), in Airport Utility click on "other wifi devices". Your AE that was previously connected should show up now in the drop-down menu. Choose it and then AE Utility takes over and tells you what to do next, such as the right time to reboot your modem. You should get a green light on AE and all will be well. 🙂

also i have this problems can you help me?

also i have this problems

I too suffered from the Airport Extreme dual status error problem reported by the Airport Utility, i.e. Internet Connection and No DNS Servers.

I started with fully working network with 3 Airport Express (since I love the audio out feature), a ZyXEL cable modem, and comcast service. I wanted to add an Airport Extreme my network to serve movie files to InFuse running on the Apple TV 4.

I purchased a fifth generation Extreme (7.6.4 firmware) and, via Airport Utility, the Extreme extended my current network without a hitch. However, for no particular reason, I wanted the Extreme to be the Base Station in my network, rather than just an extension of the Airport Express that, remember, was working just fine as a Base Station accessing comcast internet service.

When I moved the cat-5 cable from the WAN port of the Airport Express to the WAN port of the Extreme, the Extreme simply wouldn’t detect the comcast service. I hard reset the Extreme. Power cycled the Extreme. On and on. Did the same to the cable modem. No matter what combination of power cycling, resetting, restarting, and so forth I tried, and I tried for several hours, I kept getting the same dual status error on the Extreme. Thought I was losing my mind.

At this point, I just assumed the WAN port on the Extreme was malfunctioning, since reconnecting the cat-5 cable back to WAN port on the Airport Express brought back my internet service just fine.

I eventually found my way to this post. I followed Tesserax’s excellent post to the letter. Still no success. Then I came across CoastRedwood’s post, which was one thing I hadn’t tried.

I hard reset the Extreme, connected the cable modem to the WAN port, launched Airport Utility, and set up the Extreme to create a new network. A wifi network was created, but still no internet access. I then clicked on the Extreme icon in Airport Utility and selected Base Station, Restore Default Settings, and let the Airport Utility do its thing.

Eventually, Airport Utility popped up a window with a diagram and a message to power cycle the cable modem, presumably because the Extreme wasn’t connecting to the comcast servers. The last line on the popup window was a recommendation to “Reset” the cable modem, rather than power cycle the cable modem, to see if a reset worked. So I pushed in the reset button on the back of the cable modem and waited, and waited, and waited. After about 10 full minutes, the Airport Utility reported “Done” and, amazingly, the Extreme was talking just fine to comcast internet servers. DNS assigned just fine. Presumably a power cycle of the cable modem in response to the Airport Utility message would have also worked, but I don't know for sure. I then set my Airport Expresses that was originally my "base station" to extend the network of the Extreme, and that went without a hitch.

So, thanks to CoastRedwood for weighing in. This is the first time I’ve ever seen every conceivable combination of hard resets and power cycling fail until the software fix of "Restore Default Settings" seemed to clear the path for a hard reset of the cable modem to work. Recall in my situation, my network worked just fine whenever I wanted to use the Extreme to extend the network, rather than use it as the Base Station. I can only assume that a hard reset of the Extreme does not get the Extreme to the same hardware-software state as is achieved through a Restore Default Settings via the Airport Utility. Crazy.

Thanks everyone for your clear and helpful advice. I am having this exact same problem with my Bell DSL ISP service in Canada. I got 'Internet Connection" and "No DNS Servers" errors on both my older Extreme and my brand-new one. The amber light is flashing. The Apple Tech last night told me the problem must be with the Bell Modem Sagemcom 2867. The Bell tech folks tell me the problem is with the Apple equipment.

I have done all sorts of powering downs and hard resets and base station resets. Nada.

Any advice?

Thank you so much! I was pulling my hair out with this issue and followed your directions to the 'T' and I'm up and working again. Yay!