Airport Express Connection Unknown

Same.. great new feature I suppose..

If you hover your mouse/cursor over the word unknown it will still show the details of the link.. this is the more important thing.

So I see my link is behaving much worse than usual today.. it should be around 120Mbps..

But wireless is like voodoo black arts.. you cannot predict it day to day.

It says good btw in Mountain Lion.. and if that is good I would hate to see bad.

Even though connection is shown 'Unknown' in Airport Utility under OS El Capitan for your Airport Express or Extreme Base Stations, if you hover your pointer over wireless clients (they are your devices connected to your wifi), you should see 'Excellent' or 'Good' in your connections. If you do, then you are fine for now. Ignore the 'Unknown.'

Not quite a solution or workaround. Mostly, this is an illusion. The missing connection information tells us what quality of connection there might be between two AirPort wireless access points.

"Hovering" will only indicate the connection quality between a wireless device and the base station that you are looking at.

Since you don't know what the connection quality might be between the AirPorts, you don't know anything about the connection back to the "main" router.

In other words, "hovering" might show up as Excellent.......but if the connection between the AriPorts is only Good (which you see as Unknown)......then you have a Good connection, not an Excellent one.

I am not saying looking at your wireless clients in Airport Utility for connection quality is a solution or workaround. I am saying, until Apple issues a patch for this erroneous connection information between your main router and your Airport Expresses, at least you are sure for now that all your devices are in 'Excellent' or 'Good' connection on your wifi network by hovering your pointer over the "wireless clients.'

If your devices are showing 'Excellent' or 'Good' connection, then you can safely assume, to some degree, that the connection between your main router and your Airport Expresses (or Access Points) are at least in good connections with one another for now. If they are not, then your devices will not as well, right?

Sorry, I do not think you understand.

Here is an example. An AirPort Extreme is the "main" router. An AirPort Express "extends" the signal from the AirPort Extreme.

AirPort Utility cannot tell you about the connection quality between the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express using El Capitan. In the past with other operating systems, my connection has changed from "Good" to "Poor".

Yet, when I checked the connection quality for devices that connect to the AirPort Express by hovering, all connections are "Excellent". But, this does not mean anything if the connection quality between the AirPort Extreme and Express is "Poor".

Most users will think that they have an Excellent connection, when in fact they have a Poor connection.

Do you have a suggestion that would allow users to understand their real connection quality using El Capitan?

I see your point.

You had a prior experience where connection between main router and Airport express indicating 'poor' connection, yet oddly your devices are showing 'Excellent' connection. I never had this issue before. Mine are always consistently good or excellent.

Well, since connection is showing 'Unknown' in El Capitan for now, to know the quality of connection between your main and access points, you can hover over the word 'Unknown' and look at the RSSI number (RSSI is your Received Signal Strength number). A good RSSI signal would be -50dBM, reasonable -75, and a bad one would be -90, -100 would be no signal.

If your RSSI numbers are good and your wireless clients are good or excellent...and you have no issues using your devices online. Then hope Apple issues a fix soon.

yet oddly your devices are showing 'Excellent' connection

Not odd at all. I'm not trying to prolong things here, but the "Excellent" connection was simply the link between the AirPort Express and wireless device....since the wireless devices were close to the AirPort Express.

But, that "Excellent" indication is an illusion.......because it does not tell you anything about the connection quality back to the main router.

I know how to do all the testing, etc. I was thinking more of a typical user who gets confused when he sees an "Excellent" connection but his performance is "Poor". Happens all the time.....and the current "bug" will not make troubleshooting easy to explain to users who post about this.

I have the same issue - my Airport Express (under my TimeCapsule) shows Unknown. All devices seem to work well except for Airplay speakers. I have 3 airplay UE Logitech speakers which have worked extremely well for a couple of years now...however, now the speakers break up sound constantly (actually within the first 3 minutes of a song playing). Can't get them to work since my upgrade and the only thing I notice is the Unknown signal strength so I'm assuming that may have something to do with it.

I have the same issue - my Airport Express (under my TimeCapsule) shows Unknown

This is a known bug in El Capitan. So, if this was the "upgrade" that you mentioned, Apple has more work to do. Things will stay the same until Apple provides a fix, hopefully with the next update.