Q: airport firmware 7.6.3

Strangely, 7.6.3 is permanently borking the AE even after rolling back firmware, no?

Yes it has. When I was using 7.6.1 prior to updating to 7.6.3, all of my ports showed as stealthed. Once I updated to 7.6.3 that's when the ports showed as 95% closed 5% stealthed. So when I migrated back to 7.6.1 my ports still showed at 95% stealthed and 5% closed. No change! And just so you know, it's not limited to just me. I have a second AEBS that has had the same thing happen to it. Plus a few of my friends have had the same exact thing happen to them. The 7.6.3 update is in fact buggy.

Yesterday morning, I rolled back to 7.6.1 on all three of our AirPort extremes and all my issues seem to have been resolved. With 7.6.3 I had users that were unable to connect to the network, those that were connected to wifi but had no internet/server connectivity and almost everyone suffered from random network drops. Also, with 7.6.2 transfer rates were all over the place, especially on our 2.4 GHz band.

When I checked the list of wireless clients from v6.2. of the Airport Utility, I see a mix of bonjour names, MAC addresses and IP addresses. Under 7.6.3, there were a large number of self assigned (169.254.X.X) IP addresses, now that I've rolled back to 7.6.1 the self assigned IPs are gone. Wonder if this is a symptom of the problem?

The tech called back a short while ago and the engineers had asked me to run some tests by changing the 5ghz channels and testing throughput. Three different channels, three different transfer rates...all below 6MB/sec. Some were flopping between 100KB and 2.5MB. The 2.4GHz channels maintained a steady 8MB/sec. So, 7.6.3 has crippled the 5GHz channel and continues to do so after the rollback to 7.6.1.

I also mentioned the stealthing/closed port issue and he mentioned that that is also a big deal—a hardware issue—-and will relay our data to the engineers today. He said we may hear back this afternoon or tomorrow. As per usual, as soon as I hear anything I will post here.

@Brackintosh: Though your clients are back online, have you checked the throughput? As noted above, 7.6.3 permanently crippled the throughput on my 5GHz channel. Please let us know.

Thanks for your efforts on this.  I've noticed the port non-stealthing issue as well.  I've rolled back to 7.6.1 and still the ports aren't stealthed.

Another issue I noted with 7.6.3 had to do with the USB disk I had plugged into the Airport Extreme and which was used as a Time Machine backup volume for 2 of the Macs in our household.  The net-net is that Time Machine backups became non-functional with 7.6.3.  Rolling back to 7.6.1 *and* doing a hard reset of the AE fixed that issue.

TM

Maybe the crippled TC is my problem now. I gave up and decided to make it a bridge so I can at least see my printers. Using Airport Utility I set it to work in bridge mode. However, when I try to update with these changes I get an error message saying:

"Advertising a service globally using Bonjour requires a global hostname."

I have no intention of sharing anything on the internet and have not set anything to do that. I read on another blog where someone found a setting that did this with their printers. I have been all over both iMac computers and have found nothing. Could this be an error in the utility or the crippled TC? If any one has any ideas where I should look for an errant setting that would cause this I would appreciate hearing from you very much.

Thanks in advance for any help on this error.

EDIT:  ignore this post.  if you start a new thread, someone else might be able to help you.

Have you checked to see what your throughput is after rolling back to 7.6.1? I'm trying to determine if others have lost throughput after the rollback as I have. I'm expecting a call from Apple today with an update and will update here as soon as I do.

Real world throughput is back to normal. After the rollback, I was once again able to continuously stream at stable (rather than wildly changing) speeds to my iPad, using a Slingbox and monitoring the bit rate. Also, more importantly, users have reported that things are back to normal again.

I have 25 to 40 devices connected (but not necessarily using bandwidth) to each of my two Airport Extremes. Is there any way to get an overall throughput for the wireless clients on each device?

Internet speed tests show improvement. The best I had before going back to 7.6.1 was 16 Mbps. Now it ranges from 16.5 Mbps to 26.1 Mbps.

Cy

7.6.3 would stop responding after 24-48 hours.. Thanks to this thread I rolled back and am hoping for some stability.

Apple seems to be having a quality control issue lately.  I hope they fix this too.

7.6.3 also killed the AE I was using to extend my TC network.  It either wouldn't connect at all, or connected very slowly.  Rolled back to 7.6.1 and everything is working again.

Avoid 7.6.3.

It's been nearly 2 months since this less than perfect firmware release, any news on a release to fix these issues?  It looks to me that it's time for a 7.6.4 release.  I searched everywhere on the apple site and elsewhere, but things appear to be mysteriouly quiet.  I almost looks like they don't think there is a problem.

This likely won't solve your needs. I do share your sentiments. But I for one have given up on Apple when it comes to networking. I have backed my TC down to 7.6.1 and am using it simply as a disk for TM on one iMac.Added an external disk for TM on the other iMac.  Added a Linksys router(wanted to get to ac anyhow), replaced AppleTV in the entertainment center with a Roku (added Plex server to mac) and now everything is working great. Speeds using my iPad for wireless testting are running around 20mbps. I won't be going back anytime soon.

The lack of quality software testing is sad. I switched to expensive Apple gear because "it works". Well now that has to be qualified with 'sometimes". I do hope Apple gets it act back together.

Cy

I am having similar issues with my TC that have been mentioned here. I too have experienced a loss of internet and have been searching for a way to downgrade my updated 7.6.3 back down to 7.6.1 I noticed that you mentioned you were able to do this, any chance you could tell me how it was done? Apologies, but I am new to the forums. Thanks.