Airport Express drops my internet connection every 20 or 30 minutes and has to be restarted

Has anyone come up with an answer for this? I have this problem, replaced my Airport Extreme and still have the problem. My next step is to replace the Modem (mine is somewhat old), but none of this was a problem until we had a short power outage about 3 weeks ago.

If your provider has not been out to the house in a few years to check the wiring and other connections leading to your modem, now might be a very good time to do this before you spend even more hours trying to guess at what might be wrong with one of your devices.

Replacing the modem at that time would make a lot of sense if it is 4-5 years old, since that is about all that you can expect from modems and routers these days.

If you don't want to replace the modem at this time, then connect a computer directly to the modem for a day or two and watch to see how that setup works. If the connection drops continue, you either have a defective Ethernet cable coming from the modem, or the modem itself is defective and will need to be replaced.

In my case the same thing happened, but I connected my CISCO DPQ2160 modem (only modem/norouter) directly to my laptop to rule out faults in airports, but the connection drops still happened.

ticed 2 lights of my modem suddenly going off and back on during the disconnect. As Bob said, rule the modem/ISP/backend cables etc. out first by using direct modem to computer ethernet for couple of days. If your ISP is tied to a MAC address, you would need to take care of that.

If you are using the same Ethernet cable that you used to check things when the computer was connected directly to the modem, then there is not much else to do other than try another Express.

Since the Express is still in warranty, ask Apple to replace the Express for you.

If the replacement does the same thing, then you you have a modem - router compatibility issue, and you will need to decide whether to try another brand of modem, or another brand of router.

DI'd you give enough time for the modem to computer setup to show faults? How long did you leave ur modem connected to the computer?

Update to my Airport problem.

I had the cable guy out and everything checked fine. I took my pc in and got it tuned up (I'm sure it wasn't related to the problem, but it was time anyway). I finally bought a new ARRIS Surfboard modem ( I have Mediacom and other modems weren't rated as well). I got the modem set up and then it wouldn't even recognize the Airport. Shut down, reset, shutdown, reset, unplug - I tried it all. I finally found one post that said to do another configuration with 10.0.1.1. and public as the password. It went through every step and reset everything. One more shutdown (this was going to be my last try before I called the dreaded cable company to use theirs and pay for it each month). I restarted my PC and walked away, thinking it wasn't going to work anyway. Well, evidently the Airport fairy was at my house because when I finally went back to check it it was all up and running and has continued to be online, now 4 days later. Now I want to move the modem because the lights are so bright, but I'm afraid to unplug it for fear it will all happen again. Maybe one day when I have the courage - - - - - -.

Glad it worked out for you 🙂