Apple Releases AirPort Utility 5.4.2

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/03/apple-releases-airport-utility-5-4-2/)

Apple today released AirPort Utility 5.4.2 for both Mac (http://support.apple.com/downloads/AirPort_Utility_5_4_2_for_Mac) (16.86 MB) and Windows (http://support.apple.com/downloads/AirPort_Utility_5_4_2_for_Windows) (10.92 MB). The update offers several fixes to Apple's software for managing the AirPort Express Base Station, the AirPort Extreme Base Station, and Time Capsule. Issues addressed include:- An issue causing AirPort Utility to be unable to read certain AirPort wireless device configurations.

- An issue causing AirPort Utility to sometimes be unable to discover an AirPort wireless device when Back To My Mac is enabled.

- An issue causing AirPort Utility to sometimes be unable to download firmware.

- An issue causing AirPort Utility to not correctly import Access Control Lists created in AirPort Admin Utility 4.x

- Added the ability in AirPort Utility to show all wireless passwords in the "Equivalent Network Password" sheet.The Mac version requires OS X 10.4 or later, while the Windows version requires Vista or XP Pro SP2 or better.

Article Link: Apple Releases AirPort Utility 5.4.2 (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/03/apple-releases-airport-utility-5-4-2/)

[themoonisdown09]

I just installed it, although, I wasn't having any problems with my Airport Extreme Base Station before.

[GenericUsername]

The Mac version requires OS X 10.4 or later, while the Windows version requires Vista or XP Pro SP2 or better.Really? It won't work on XP Home?

[rikers_mailbox]

always nice to see Airport Updates. My home network (Extreme + Express WDS, 802.11g) is rock solid. Most reliable routers I've owned. I've been jonesing for the dual-band Extreme. It has 2 LAN ethernet ports available to connect my AppleTV and Roku box, instead of the 1 LAN port on my old Snow Extreme base station. That would ease some traffic on the wireless portion of the network.

I'm beginning to think we'll see some nifty iPhone/Airport integration in iPhone OS 3.0 .... like calls routed through WiFi (a la VoIP) instead of 3G when you're within range of designated Airport networks.

[vestigo74]

Awesome. Now, if I could just figure out how to stop my external drive (Air Disk) from constantly going into sleep mode, preventing the system from recognizing it right away...

[TheSlush]

I'm beginning to think we'll see some nifty iPhone/Airport integration in iPhone OS 3.0 .... like calls routed through WiFi (a la VoIP) instead of 3G when you're within range of designated Airport networks.

Would call minutes on an Airport Wi-Fi network would still count against your monthly AT&T allotment? Would AT&T allow alternative voice calling to circumvent their network and therefore their profit system? I suppose this is what Skype does...

[JoshBoy]

Awesome. Now, if I could just figure out how to stop my external drive (Air Disk) from constantly going into sleep mode, preventing the system from recognizing it right away...

Have you told your mac to mount the drive at start up? What drive is it?

[rikers_mailbox]

Would call minutes on an Airport Wi-Fi network would still count against your monthly AT&T allotment? Would AT&T allow alternative voice calling to circumvent their network and therefore their profit system? I suppose this is what Skype does...

In my opinion, calls made on WiFi should not count against your plan, much like how data services are transferred to WiFi instead of 3G with the current iPhone OS. It takes call traffic off the cellular network which is helpful to AT&T. And for the consumer, signal strength and voice quality would presumably be better on WiFi than 3G.

Heck, AT&T provides a fair number of DSL lines anyways, I'd like to see their partnership with Apple extend to Airport devices. Imagine signing up for DSL and having an Airport router provided instead of some D-Link/Linksys garbage. Ok, now I'm just dreaming.

[vestigo74]

Have you told your mac to mount the drive at start up? What drive is it?

Oh... I'm not sure how that works.

Basically, I have a 1TB external drive (Seagate) plugged into the USB port of my AirPort Extreme, and set up as an AirDisk. I have my 600GB iTunes library on that external drive, and my iMac and MacBook Pro both setup to point to it.

It works perfectly when the drive is awake and spinning... but it goes to sleep after 5mins of inactivity, and sometimes the only way I can get to to spin back up is if I physically browse to the disk in Finder and drill down a few levels on it.

It's a real pain in the ass when I crash for the night, grab my apple remote, fire up Front Row and go to start an episode of House or Californication... only to have it say that it can't find the files. Then I got to get out of bed, quit Front Row, open up Finder, etc etc...

[mavfan11]

I think maybe the March Airport update disabled my dell mini 9s ability to see my airport extreme and my macbook. It's weird because it worked fine running XP until the time I ran the update using my Macbook in early March and from then on my mini 9 won't see the Airport Extreme and I can no longer share my itunes library with my mini9. After I ran into these problems I installed Ubuntu on it and even now that I've hackintoshed it, the Airport Extreme doesn't show up as an available wireless point and no shared library. It shows up fine for my macbook, my iphone and for a Lenovo work laptop running Vista and a Dell 1530 running Windows 7 RC and I know the network isn't set to hidden or any other setting that should be doing this. I've triple checked and all the sharing settings are correct and the airport settings look right. Baffled in the Bay Area

[HailToTheVictor]

Oh... I'm not sure how that works.

Basically, I have a 1TB external drive (Seagate) plugged into the USB port of my AirPort Extreme, and set up as an AirDisk. I have my 600GB iTunes library on that external drive, and my iMac and MacBook Pro both setup to point to it.

It works perfectly when the drive is awake and spinning... but it goes to sleep after 5mins of inactivity, and sometimes the only way I can get to to spin back up is if I physically browse to the disk in Finder and drill down a few levels on it.

It's a real pain in the ass when I crash for the night, grab my apple remote, fire up Front Row and go to start an episode of House or Californication... only to have it say that it can't find the files. Then I got to get out of bed, quit Front Row, open up Finder, etc etc...

Yes. I have an Iomega external connected to my AP Extreme an run wireless Time machine backups and have my movie library in iTunes connected to Apple TV. It can be a real pain to get things all connected again, especially the movie folder being recognized on the Apple TV once things have been disconnected. Hope this may fix some of those issues

[chrisandersen]

I rolled back to 7.3.2 because of dropping connection errors. Should I update to 7.4.1, or is another update to that coming out soon?

[Bobdude161]

Wirelessly posted (Sausage: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Sweet. I was having configuration errors on the first gen time capsule. I hope this'll fix it

[UngratefulNinja]

My OS X 10.4 isn't picking up the update.

[chrisandersen]

I rolled back to 7.3.2 because of dropping connection errors. Should I update to 7.4.1, or is another update to that coming out soon?
I updated (7.4.1) the Express for my stereo and my second TC for backups and everything is fine, but can't pull the trigger on my TC that is connected to the internet yet.

[jessica.]

I rolled back to 7.3.2 because of dropping connection errors. Should I update to 7.4.1, or is another update to that coming out soon?

I did the same thing. I was so happy to see I was able to undo it. I am reluctant to say the least and will probably wait this one out again.

[chrisandersen]

The rollback option seems to be gone now. When you hover over the version number, all I get is 7.4100.25, instead of the 7.3.2 I had before.

[MrMoore]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Downloading now. Hopefully this fix the issue where my mbp get knocked off occasionally

[aine]

I did the same thing. I was so happy to see I was able to undo it. I am reluctant to say the least and will probably wait this one out again.
It's the Airport Utility software (5.4.1 to 5.4.2) that was updated, not the Airport Extreme Firmware, which remains at 7.4.1 as far as I know.

I had all kinds of problems with the 7.4.1 firmware, related to finding the attached USB disk on Windows. I know others who had the same problem.

Rolling back the firmware to 7.3.2 instantly solved the problem without any other changes.

I'll give the 5.4.2 Utility software a try...

[Santabean2000]

I can't wait to try this one. I have had a world of problems with my Extreme connecting up after installing 10.5.7 on my iMac.

Please let this resolve the issue!!:(

[SolRayz]

A year later, I am still having issues with my LaCie 500gb mini hub. The drive simply does not work well with the AEBS. When it is connected, I get pinwheels, data crawl, server interruptions, and occasional internet disruptions. I believe the issue is tied with the way the AEBS or the failure of the AEBS to mount or unmount drives properly. The result always ends up with me either not able to access the airdisk and my internet being slowed to a crawl or cutoff entirely. My only solution has been to reatttach and mount the LaCie drive to my mac, repair disk, unmount and then reattach to AEBS, whereby the process more or less starts all over again.

I gave up with this about a year ago, but I am now testing with the latest AEBS firmware and airport utility ver. that have come out.

So far its been a no go. I am having the same issues as before. I have reformatted in HFS+ a zillion times now. The LaCie drive has the latest firmware so I am not sure what else to do.

One other point is that I have a WD Passport usb drive that automounts and works great of the AEBS. Why not my USB/Firewaire combo LaCie mini hub. I read somewhere in the Apple Support forums that the AEBS is unable to handle drives that have the usb/firewire combo properly, but usb solo drives work fine. That seems the be the case for me.:mad:

Update: So I pick up a 1TB WD Elements (USB only) external drive today and all my problems are solved. AEBS and this drive are working flawlessly. Something about the LaCie Mini Hub that doesn't agree with the AEBS. Their has been nothing from :apple: or LaCie about this.

[jimmyvandel]

It's the Airport Utility software (5.4.1 to 5.4.2) that was updated, not the Airport Extreme Firmware, which remains at 7.4.1 as far as I know.

I had all kinds of problems with the 7.4.1 firmware, related to finding the attached USB disk on Windows. I know others who had the same problem.

Rolling back the firmware to 7.3.2 instantly solved the problem without any other changes.

I'll give the 5.4.2 Utility software a try...

Installed 5.4.2 last night.... then upgraded to 7.4.1 (again)... sadly by this morning the connection dropping issue had resurfaced. Looks like I'll be stepping back down to 7.3.2 tonight. The wait continues.:mad:

[Le Big Mac]

I'm beginning to think we'll see some nifty iPhone/Airport integration in iPhone OS 3.0 .... like calls routed through WiFi (a la VoIP) instead of 3G when you're within range of designated Airport networks.


This would be neat, especially if it doesn't count minutes, but can we really expect AT&T to set up a VOIP system for iPhone users? Especially when they're starting to introduce femtocell stations for home use that carry calls over VOIP.

[HailToTheVictor]

This would be neat, especially if it doesn't count minutes, but can we really expect AT&T to set up a VOIP system for iPhone users? Especially when they're starting to introduce femtocell stations for home use that carry calls over VOIP.

It would be cool, but I don't think AT&T would allow it.

[Aldaris]

I too had an extremely irritating time after I upgraded to the Dual-Band AirPort Extreme. The other day I saw I could have a separate name for a 5Ghz only signal. Since I initiated that I have not seen any drops, I will get to test it more this weekend and I'll report back after a full day of internet safari'n and Wow... WOW...

[rikers_mailbox]

This would be neat, especially if it doesn't count minutes, but can we really expect AT&T to set up a VOIP system for iPhone users? Especially when they're starting to introduce femtocell stations for home use that carry calls over VOIP.

I don't see as femtocells are any different than WiFi, just on a different radio frequency. Both femtocells and WiFi serve the same purpose, to connect to phones in a local setting and route traffic through a wired internet connection (aka VoIP). Femotocells are simply available to phones that do not have WiFi.

[gt1948]

for those of you having dropped connections and you think it might be due to the update to itunes 8.0, read this…

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2278

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2277?viewlocale=en_US

these fixed the problem for me....:apple:

[angemon89]

Wow, I hope I'm not the only one NOT having problems with my Airport devices. Because I recommend the hell out of them to people.

I had an Airport Extreme in the past with an Express used to extend my wireless - worked flawlessly.

Now I have a Time Capsule with an Express extending my wireless and have a printer hooked up to the Express - works flawlessly.

[Lumpydog]

Now I have a Time Capsule with an Express extending my wireless and have a printer hooked up to an Express - works flawlessly.

I have this exact setup - works beautifully - have had ZERO issues - 5 Macs running off this network - three wirelessly.

[BigTRQ]

My lone issue with my AEBS-n and AE-n is the fact that if I'm using 7.4.1 on both of them, I can NOT have a closed network, and have the AE-n on it in "Join a wireless network" mode. I should go back to 7.3.2, but I haven't had the time thus far. Then again, Apple shouldn't have made this an issue with 7.4.1's release.

I hoped that with the new Airport Utility 5.4.2, that some new firmware would be out for the AEBS-n and AE-n. Maybe later today/tomorrow...

[theBigD23]

I also got iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD upgrades.

[iPhoneNYC]

I had no issues before installing the update and none after.

[rikers_mailbox]

I had no issues before installing the update and none after.

Are you talking about yourself or your Apple routers? :D:p

[Dopeyman]

Oh... I'm not sure how that works.

Basically, I have a 1TB external drive (Seagate)...... (cut)

It works perfectly when the drive is awake and spinning... but it goes to sleep after 5mins of inactivity... (cut)

Is this drive one of those Freeagents??

If so, there is an app (PC only) in the utility disc that came with it that has options to keep it awake at all times.. I had one of those 500GB drives and I had the same problems till I read the manual.

[applevx]

Today just check the Update and found those updates from Apple.

A little late...:cool:

A little surprise...:p

A little job from Apple...:apple:


Love U :apple:

[applevx]

Are you talking about yourself or your Apple routers? :D:p

My guess he might talk both. LOL :D:D:D:D

[rdowns]

I installed this yesterday even though I had no issues. Wake from sleep this morning and can't access my 'n' network nor does Airport Utility see it. Ran up 2 flights of stairs and other computer works fine on 'g' network bridged off 'n' router. (no update installed).

Restarted router and still no good. A reboot solved the problem. We'll see what happens next time it is put to sleep.

[Boomer85]

I'm going to be replacing an older D-Link Wireless-G router next week with the new dual-band Airport Extreme (don't try and talk me out of it...I have $85 in Best Buy gift cards to burn :) )

...anyway, with all this chat about the Airport Extreme firmware issues people are seeing, as well as, potentially this new Airport Utility upgrade...can I get some advice as to what versions on each to run.

My setup will be:
- Dual Band Airport Extreme Base Station
- USB Printer connected to the AEBS
- Older Windows machine plugged into the AEBS (hard-wired)
- Unibody MBP (can't wait to take advantage of the "N")
- Dell lappy running Vista (just a "G" wireless card)
- 2 iPhone 3Gs and a Wii

Opinions welcomed...
Thanks!

[xiovoix]

My uMBP is dropping wifi connection quite frequently after most recent airport utility update! How do I roll this back?

[Eric S.]

My uMBP is dropping wifi connection quite frequently after most recent airport utility update! How do I roll this back?

I must be missing something, because how can updating the utility cause hardware issues? Did you use the new utility to change router settings or something?

As for rolling back, presumably you could go to your Time Machine (or other) backup, right?

[xiovoix]

Dunno! But my MBP was connecting perfectly to router. No changes! Just update. No new software, hardware etc. just status quo & update-then dropouts. I cant explain it then if it isn't! Yeah time machine on! Will do a restore and let you know FYI?

[fatespawn]

I did the same thing. I was so happy to see I was able to undo it. I am reluctant to say the least and will probably wait this one out again.

I had major problems initially when I first upgraded my TC to 7.4.1. I have a -g router in bridge mode connected to the TC for my -g devices and a few AE's spread around the house. Anyway, major IP conflict issues and the TC kept trying to talk to the -g devices (in -n 5ghz only mode)

Fast forward to last week when I had an unreleated problem and called Tech Support for my MacPro.... the tech asked why I hadn't upgraded to 7.4.1 (I had rolled back to 7.3.2 for the TC but kept 7.4.1 for the AE's...) and I told him. Anyway, since he was on the line anyway, he had me upgrade again, and this time no problems. I don't know if it's a different build or something, but it seems to work fine now.

-fate

[zora51]

like xioviox, after doing the Airport Utility Software Update a few days ago, I noticed my laptop is frequently kicking me off my wireless network. Haven't done anything else lately. Other computers (non-mac, and my mac-mini) hooked up to the wireless network have not been having any problems that I know of.

Any ideas??

[Blue Fox]

I'm going to be replacing an older D-Link Wireless-G router next week with the new dual-band Airport Extreme (don't try and talk me out of it...I have $85 in Best Buy gift cards to burn :) )

...anyway, with all this chat about the Airport Extreme firmware issues people are seeing, as well as, potentially this new Airport Utility upgrade...can I get some advice as to what versions on each to run.
Thanks!

Getting the Airport Extreme is probably the best investment you could do for a wi-fi network. And honestly, I have no idea what problems people are having with their firmware......as I have always upgraded to the latest version, and have never had a problem with my Airport. Best router I have ever purchased.

[Eric S.]

Getting the Airport Extreme is probably the best investment you could do for a wi-fi network. And honestly, I have no idea what problems people are having with their firmware......as I have always upgraded to the latest version, and have never had a problem with my Airport. Best router I have ever purchased.

I completely concur with that. I have never had an issue with my AEBS that was not easily resolved through Airport Utility.

[jMc]

like xioviox, after doing the Airport Utility Software Update a few days ago, I noticed my laptop is frequently kicking me off my wireless network. Haven't done anything else lately. Other computers (non-mac, and my mac-mini) hooked up to the wireless network have not been having any problems that I know of.

Any ideas??


I'm having the same issue with a -g Airport Express that I've not had a single problem with since 2005.

At first I had intermittent problems connecting to it, it would disappear from available networks intermittently or I would get bad password prompts, and even when I could connect I couldn't get any internet access on my MBP. I had no problem at all connecting fine on the same network with my iPhone. Airport Utility on the MBP couldn't even find the device to make any changes to set-up.

A full reset of the AE unit to factory settings seemed to do the trick, but then last night I had a similar issue, although just powering the AE down and back up again seemed to fix it that time.

Highly annoying. Hopefully the issues are now passed.

jx

[squints]

if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Mine worked fine