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Level 1

35 points

An Unusually Bad Experience

I just bought one of the new Airport Extremes (802.11n) today and am having a very bad experience. For starters, the new Airport Utility is crashing all the time on my iBook. Second, I am having trouble getting a few devices in my house to recognize the network I have created (Specifically the Xbox 360). Third, I cannot establish a WDS connection between my old Airport Extreme and the new one. I am not very familiar with creating and setting up complex wireless networks, but I didn't have nearly as much trouble with the old one. Any help would be appreciated.

14 in. iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1.5GB RAM 60GB HDD 1.42GHz G4

Posted on Feb 3, 2007 5:46 PM

Best reply

aristobrat

Level 1

100 points

Posted on Feb 3, 2007 6:25 PM

I had a sort of similar problem.

I got the new Extreme today and wanted to add my old Extreme and Express as WDS clients (acting as bridges to TiVos).

After I setup the new Extreme, the old Airports didn't show up in the AirPort Utility program, so I wasn't sure how to add them to the network.

What I ended up doing was pressing the reset button on each of them for 5 seconds, waiting for them to finish rebooting, then refreshing the AirPort Utility program.

Both of the old Airports showed up. I clicked on the first one, chose "Connect to my current wireless network", and then followed the wizard. It took about 5 minutes total to get both of them configured and running.

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83 replies

Feb 5, 2007 7:52 PM in response to XBoxer

Sorry, can't do it for you. The AEN and cable connection is im my basement with no TV in the vicinity. Wish I could help you out. Would be more than 1 hour of effort for me to do.

Jamie Green Author

Level 1

35 points

Feb 6, 2007 11:20 AM in response to XBoxer

Yeah I was suspecting it was M$'s problem...
Hopefully it IS addressed with the Spring update.
I am just doing MAC Address filtering with an open network for now, like someone suggested.

14 in. iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1.5GB RAM 60GB HDD 1.42GHz G4

Feb 6, 2007 4:55 PM in response to Jamie Green

You can also set the network to be closed (not advertising the SSID). That setting seems to work OK with the 360.

MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4)

Feb 6, 2007 6:32 PM in response to Jamie Green

Jamie,

Thanks for saving me the trouble. I was going to give that a try the next time I had a couple of hours.

Warren

scutter

Level 1

20 points

Feb 6, 2007 8:09 PM in response to XBoxer

To answer your question...

I've had the same issues with the Xbox 360 and 802.11n Airport Extreme. The wired connection definitely works though. So purchase away if your 360 is close enough for a wired connection until a fix comes our way.

MacBook, iBook G4, PowerMac G4, PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Feb 6, 2007 8:54 PM in response to Samuel Maffei

this is the solution that is working for me - closed network + no security + mac address filtering. my signal strength is much improved over my old dlink 614 so i'm not dropping my connection to xbox live as much, but i'd feel alot happer if i could use WEP. one step forward, one step back. okay, airport disk is working great, so maybe two steps forward!!

Jamie Green Author

Level 1

35 points

Feb 7, 2007 3:29 AM in response to Kip Moore

Haha call me stupid, but I never thought about what I had. Since I am using my old APX as a remote in a WDS setup, I could just put the old one by the 360 for now, and use a wired connection from it. Security isn't as big of a factor here, as I live in a rural location, but I just like having it there.

Feb 7, 2007 8:19 AM in response to Jamie Green

If it's any help, it's my understanding that the Xbox 360 doesn't correctly implement WPA, so if you set the security on your Airport to WPA/WPA2, the 360 simply won't see it. If, however, you set the Airport to just use WPA, it might work.

Well, it fixed my 360 not being able to connect, at least.

Feb 7, 2007 8:30 AM in response to Stevie BM

Are we talking about the same things?

We're talking about AirPort Extreme 'N' (the new one) and the fact that the 360 wireless adapter works with none of the encryption settings.

Feb 7, 2007 9:18 AM in response to Samuel Maffei

I have an Airport Express running WEP128, which works just fine with my Xbox360 - so this must be an issue with the new 802.11n basestations.

The Xbox doesn't seem to support WPA/WPA2 though.

Feb 7, 2007 9:21 AM in response to Samuel Maffei

Well, I have the older Airport Extreme wired to my Xbox 360 directly. Although I used to be able to connect to it with my original Xbox, the 360 refuses to connect to Live. This is with all of the security turned off.

Feb 7, 2007 9:38 AM in response to Brutalicious

I ran into the same problems with my 360 using a Linksys router and seeing how Linksys is so anti-Mac in their tech support, I researched the web for a solution. One solution that I found is that you can hard-wire your 360 into your iMac, MB, or MBP and turn on internet sharing via the Airport. This might be a pain if you're connecting to a desktop, but it's really easy if you have a laptop. I have had zero problem with this solution.

I don't remember the specifics how to set up the 360 in the "Network Connection" tab thing and can't access my Box while at school, but once I get home, I may be able to post details on the proper settings to get this to work.

Cheers,

Kyle

Feb 7, 2007 9:39 AM in response to Jamie Green

You can do what I do - use the 10/100 port on the 360 to connect it to an Airport Express - connect the Express wirelessly to your Extreme.

I also dual band my network. I have two networks - mostman and mostman-fast. mostman is for g devices (like my wii and all my expresses) and the n is for my n compatible kit.

-Mike

sburnett

Level 1

0 points

Feb 7, 2007 9:48 AM in response to Jamie Green

So I just emailed Major Nelson who is on the Xbox Live team at MS. And he responded already. I told him about the issue and linked him to this discussion and posed the question of whether this is a Xbox or Apple issue. This is what he said:

This is an Apple issue…ask them to get their device certified to work w/ Xbox Live.

So take that for what you will. Usually Major is pretty cool about admitting when MS messes up and even thinks that Vista took cues from OS X. Just thought I'd let you all know his side of the story.

Feb 7, 2007 9:46 AM in response to Mike Ostman

now that's a great idea. no point in selling my worthless netgear g Router. i'll have an N network and a G one. i am worried about posts elsewhere that suggest the N is not as fast as g with WPA turned on

An Unusually Bad Experience