Airport Express - when extending with a second Express I get "Unexpected error occurred" and wifi goes down

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Airport Express - when extending with a second Express I get "Unexpected error occurred" and wifi goes down

I've had one Airport Express G2 running smoothly for months and now trying to extend it with a second Express over LAN cables (ie join existing network). When doing this I get "Unexpected error occurred. Try again." error and then the working base station goes offline (wifi down).

I have tried various ways of going about this and sometimes managed to bring the second one online to try different configs. But it only stays online briefly before both devices go offline (up and down constantly).

Also tried restarted the process from scratch on both devices several times but keep landing up with the same result as soon the second device gets connected.

Any ideas?

thanks

Posted on Jan 7, 2015 1:25 PM

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Answer 1

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Tesserax

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Jan 7, 2015 5:57 PM in response to Glenv

I've had one Airport Express G2 running smoothly for months and now trying to extend it with a second Express over LAN cables (ie join existing network). When doing this I get "Unexpected error occurred. Try again." error and then the working base station goes offline (wifi down).

You do NOT want to configure the second AirPort Express to "join existing network" when it will be connected back to the first via Ethernet. Instead, the second Express should be configured to "create a wireless network." What you would basically is a roaming type network.

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Answer 2

Jan 7, 2015 6:43 PM in response to Glenv

You do not indicate whether you are trying to configure the extending AirPort with an iPhone or iPad....or....with a Mac or PC.

Can you provide a bit more information in that regard?

Assuming that you are using an iPhone / iPad for the setup, or a recent Mac......the setup utility will practically configure the extending AirPort for you automatically. All that you really need to do is name the device and the setup "wizard" takes over from there.

While the utility might initially indicate that the AirPort Express will be setup to extend the network, the real key is checking to make sure that the next setup screen indicates that the AirPort is being configured to extend using Ethernet. If you don't see extend using Ethernet, then the setup will not be correct.

Once the extending AirPort has been setup, if you then go back into AirPort Utility to check the setting for the extending AirPort, the actual setting for the AirPort will be "Create a wireless network".

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Answer 3

Glenv Author

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Jan 8, 2015 1:38 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Thanks for the feedback.

I am using the Airport Utility on a recent Mac but it was the Utility reporting back the "Unexpected error has occurred. Try again." message.

I just did a manual "create a wireless network" with the same SSID (from Other Options during the setup). After some initial problems it seems to be stable now.

For now this looks to be resolved otherwise I'll report back.

Thanks again!

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Answer 4

Glenv Author

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Jan 8, 2015 1:41 PM in response to Tesserax

Thanks for the help, this seems to have done the trick!

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