Airport extreme not working in bridge mode

Question

Devin389 Author

Level 1

0 points

Airport extreme not working in bridge mode

My room recieves internet through the wall(ethernet) im not entirely sure what the service is.

-when i connect straight to the wall there is no problem with connection

-I have my airport extreme connected to ethernet plug and it is using DHCP in bridge mode.

The internet is faster when i connect through the extreme, however, there are two main problems that i cant figure out.

1. it consistantly "times out" it goes from working(green) to not working (amber) to blinking amber briefly back to green again every 10-30 minutes

making it impossible to seamlessly stream movies or play games.

2. when i come back home from school i cant find the device. it is green but even if i type join a network and type the credentials in i cant find it, forcing me to reboot it once or twice a day.

I am the only person using the wireless and only have had one device on it thusfar- macbook pro

What can i do to stop 1/2 from happening at all? thank you for your time.

Airport extreme -OTHER

Posted on Sep 21, 2013 10:55 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

148,453 points

Sep 21, 2013 11:33 AM in response to Devin389

I have my airport extreme connected to ethernet plug and it is using DHCP in bridge mode.

FYI ... your AirPort Extreme cannot be in bridge mode with DHCP enabled. Both NAT & DHCP are disable in bridge mode.

Is your goal with the Extreme to provide a wireless / wired network for multiple computers at your dorm room?

Reply

Answer 2

Devin389 Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2013 12:27 PM in response to Tesserax

I misspoke (sorry!) it is connecting using DHCP and the router mode is off (bridge mode) my goal here is to provide wireless to 1 laptop and one ipad in the room without it constantly going down.

Reply

Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

148,453 points

Sep 21, 2013 12:30 PM in response to Devin389

Does your school require that your register the MAC address of the device that is connected to their network? If so, you would need to provide the hardware MAC address of your Extreme to them so that you can get connectivity.

Reply

Answer 4

Devin389 Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2013 12:38 PM in response to Tesserax

I dont believe that they require this. i get connectivity it just drops every so often, also there are other people with routers in the building and they are just fine. This also happened with the router when i used it at home for the same purpose.

Reply

Answer 5

Tesserax

Level 10

148,453 points

Sep 21, 2013 12:40 PM in response to Devin389

If this has happened with the Extreme at other locations then you basically have two choices: 1) Perform a "factory default" reset on it to see if this eliminates the issue, or 2) You have a faulty unit.

Reply

Answer 6

Devin389 Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2013 12:46 PM in response to Tesserax

I performed a factory default reset on the device once already. Is it possible that changing the radio mode would do anything?/ is there anything else i could possibly try? thank you for your time though

Reply

Answer 7

Tesserax

Level 10

148,453 points

Sep 21, 2013 1:34 PM in response to Devin389

Is it possible that changing the radio mode would do anything?

Potentially if there is a wireless client that cannot support the radio mode selected it would not be able to connect. This would also cause them to drop-off if they were already connected.

is there anything else i could possibly try?

If all of your wireless clients are 802.11n compatible, you can try changing the Radio Mode to: 802.11n only (5 GHz) - 802.11n only (2.4 GHz). This would prevent any other clients from connecting.

The other would be to be sure that you are using WPA2 Personal with a strong password.

Finally, if there are numerous Wi-Fi networks operating nearby they may be fighting for the same radio channels that yours is broadcasting on. You can quickly determine this if you are using a Mac. What you want to know is which are operating with a very strong signal and what channel they are on. Then change your AirPort's channel from the default (Automatic) to a channel at least 3-5 channels away on the 2.4 GHz band. You can ignore the 5 GHz band for now.

Reply

Answer 8

Devin389 Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2013 1:46 PM in response to Tesserax

Ok by changing the radio mode from 802.11 a/n- 802.11 b/g/n (automatic) to 802.11 a/n- 802.11 b/g and it has been working well ever since with no problems. not exactly sure why but that did it.

Reply