Airport Utility v 6.3 Fails to See Airport Extreme or Express

Hi Rob,

The short answer to "why" IPv6 was set to Off can only be answered by the individual, or teams at Apple that develop and release Airport Utility patchs and upgrades. Most probably it was just an oversight.

But Mac users are a resourceful bunch, and through forums, such as this one, we collaborate to make life better for all Mac users.

The long answer: When the internet was concieved, a set of operating guidelines were developed to, among other things, specify how all the users and devices were going to be able to communicate. What they came up with was a system for assigning unique addresses for every user and device that is online called the Internet Protocol, version 4, or IPv4. At the time it was thought that approx 4 billion unique addresses would be more than enough. But it wasn't so Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6 was developed which allows for adding some number of additional unique addresses that is so huge it can only be expressed using scientific notation. (For more details on the Internet Protocol, both Google and Wikipaedia have tons of detail on this.)

How will this effect users like us?

The most obvious change will be in the actual IP addresses used in every device we use online. Under IPv4, IP addresses are composed of 6 groups of two numbers each (i.e. 09:89:00:01:67:55) but under IPv6 this is increased 8 groups of four numbers (i.e. 1234:4321:0000:8989:5748:1234:4321:0000)

For the time being, most internet service providers, gear manufacturers, etc. are still using IPv4 addresses.

However, that is starting to change, and in the near future device manufacturers, like Apple, will most likely begin building new Airport Extremes, Apple TVs, etc that have the new IPv6 addresses, like what prompted this whole discussion. Also, you will start to see ads from your ISP, or Web hosting companies claiming they support IPv6. As long as your home gear can handle both, which Apple's does, you won't really notice any difference (except , of course, when someone inadvertantly upgrades their software or hardware and forgets to make the default setting as "On," not "Off.")

I didnt see the problem with my macs and airports. I never turned IPv6 off on any of the devices, so I didnt lose communication between devices when they start using IPv6.

One correction: IPv4 is 4 groups of 3 numbers. The numbers in each group range from 0 to 255, like so 172.16.254.1

🙂

Can anyone check, after enabling IPv6, if iTunes Airplay connections take more time to be established?

TIA

I might have found a solution.

I had the same problem. I had updated the Airport utility from the program, and it failed, so I used Time Machine to revert to 6.2 with no problems. When I decided to try again when it popped up in the Update Utility (silly me, I thought they might have updated the update....), it STILL didn't find my Time Machine, but this time I could not restore the older version because it was "needed by the system". Thank you Apple Update.

However if I unplugged the ethernet cable from my laptop and gave it a minute, the utility found my Airport Extreme via WiFi and I was able to edit that way!

Here's why it didn't work before, and here's the solution. When you're editing your settings, in the Base Station tab, check the box that says "Allow Setup over WAN" and apply the settings. It will warn you that it is less secure (hey, it was never a problem BEFORE) and tell it to ignore the problem. Then give it a couple of minutes to settle in. The next time you plug in your ethernet cable, everything should work just fine again.

Still can't delete 6.3, but hey, now I don't need to!

I found that my IPv6 was turned off.

As soon as I set it back to Automattic the Airport showes up again. 🙂

I have a similar issue. At start-up, my iMac recognizes my new Extreme (5th generation) no problem. I am connected via ethernet and wifi is turned off. After my iMac sleeps, it will no longer recognize the Extreme. The whole wifi and ethernet network works fine but the iMac won't recognize the Extreme. After a reboot, all is fine until the next time it sleeps. I tried all the IPv6 settings mentioned above. Any ideas??

I have a similar issue. At start-up, my iMac recognizes my new Extreme (5th generation) no problem. I am connected via ethernet and wifi is turned off. After my iMac sleeps, it will no longer recognize the Extreme. The whole wifi and ethernet network works fine but the iMac won't recognize the Extreme. After a reboot, all is fine until the next time it sleeps. I tried all the IPv6 settings mentioned above. Is there some auto-connect feature I'm overlooking? Any ideas??

Thank you Jeff. You solved my problem. Going crazy after update to 6.3 I could not se my Airport base. But now after checking my IPV6 it works. Hurra from Denmark.

Thanks for the directions. This worked for me as well. I was able to see my new airport extreme in airport utility on my computer originally to set it up but then it failed to show up. Both my extreme and express showed up perfectly on my ipad. So until this, I thought I would just settle for that. However, I tried your suggestion on my MBP and it works perfectly. I did have to restart my computer twice. Once after the change and then again after connecting to wifi to be able to connect to sites. Thanks again.

Thanks, that was the ticket. As soon as I turned IPv6 back on, there was also an update for Airport (6.3.1) detected...too funny.

This totally fixed my issue and I have bee struggling with this for a long time! Thanks so much.

Read all these posts and it's not working for me.

I've had automatic and tried local only on both ethernet and wifi to no effect.

I can set up my airport Time capsule through an ipad, iphone and ancient macbook but not to my 3y old MBP upgraded to mavericks.

I keep getting the unexpected error whether I try ethernet or wifi.

When people talk about setting the IPv6 on the time capsule how would you go about doing this?

thanks

P

Not working for me.

Airport express is hardwired over ethernet to my thunderbolt with MBP 2013 on Mavericks, airport 6.3.2,

Still can't see base station under "other wifi devices' within airport utility on Thunderport Ethernet ?!?

My network on my MBP is configured with IPV6 "Link-Local-Only" and so does my base station but still can't get it to work.

Any help?

Got it working.

For me the solution was to do the hard reset whilst the ethernet cable was connected between my MBP and the airport time capsule.

Once setup in the airport utility the airport time capsule shows up. hovering the mouse over shows a buble with some info that can be edited, although not obvious, if you ckick on the bubble.

hope this helps some

Had the same problem with version 6.3.6 and the Airport Time Capsule.

The issue was with my McAfee internet security software. I guess it was smart enough to know that this was a different router than my previous netgear and switched the network type to Public from Home/Work. And I even had the same SSID and WPA2 password.

Once I switched the network type to Home/Work within McAfee, the Airport Utility recognized the device.