WLAN outage every day - Clients are loosing connection

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WLAN outage every day - Clients are loosing connection

Hi,

I bought a week ago an Airport Extreme. The initial setup was fine. (2.4 & 5 GHz hidden SSID with WPA2 private key)

All clients (2x Ipad, 2x Iphone, 1x Windows 8.1 notebook) can connect to the wireless network. But...

From time to time all clients are loosing the connectivity to the wireless network. e.g. the Ipad: The wireless connection symbol in the top left corner disappears. If I take a look into the WLAN settings, the SSID is still available. But the IPad does can not connect. (it tries periodically to connect, without success).

If I click on the SSID to manual connect, it asks for a password. Even if I enter the correct password, it can't connect. (Error massage: Wrong password)

This happen more or less every evening.

The magic happens over night....

If I leave it as it is and try to connect again on the next morning. Everything is fine again. .....until the next outage.

This happen to ALL my clients! At the same time.

But it is not time driven. sometimes is happen at 21:00 CET, sometimes at 22:15 CET....

By the way... when this happens, the status LED of the Airport Extreme is still green and access able via LAN from my IMac with the Airport Utility.

Any ideas?

Airport Extreme 802.11ac

Posted on Jun 30, 2015 12:58 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 30, 2015 2:51 AM in response to ameyer73

Try turning off hidden SSID.. it is actually NOT part of the IEEE standard.. was introduced in the days of B wireless as a security method that is now useless.. and breaking the IEEE standard leads to all kinds of strange effects.. I don't know if it will fix it but surely worth a go.

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Answer 2

ameyer73 Author

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Jun 30, 2015 1:23 PM in response to LaPastenague

I tried it today, but without success.

Same situation.

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Answer 3

Jun 30, 2015 1:59 PM in response to ameyer73

It is hard to determine what is the problem..

I suggest you do check the log of the AE which the airport utility in windows can still get you into.. obviously you will need to plug in by ethernet to do that..

The iMac can do that also if it runs the old 5.6 utility which means you have OS up to Mountain Lion and can trick the OS .. google it.

So if I check the old utility I can see what the wireless is doing. Via logs the renewal of the password. And via the graphs.

The new v6 utility gives pretty icons and not a lot else. The graph should show a complete cut out of the wireless.. if not something else is happening.

You can also use the wireless diagnostics program built into the OS since Mountain Lion. (Even if your iMac is using ethernet just turn on the wireless for this).

About Wireless Diagnostics - Apple Support

The charts will show a definite cut out if the wireless is really dropping. I deliberately did a cut out to show in the chart.

If the diagnostic tools show interference then your problem is from outside.. but if it is internal then get apple to check/replace your AE.

I would set different names for the different bands.. so you can force the clients like ipad to use 5ghz instead and see if you get better results.. ie is the issue just on 2.4ghz where interference is huge in modern suburbia.

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Answer 4

jackell

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Jul 5, 2015 4:48 PM in response to ameyer73

I just received confirmation from a Consumer Support Specialist. & a supervisor tech. That the generation 6 Apple Airport Extreme cannot be set up properly on a Windows device.

Because this offer is updated Apple is chosen to not update the software to support generation 6 hardware.

Therefore it must only be set up with a Mac device.

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