Airport Extreme - Internet Connection drops daily!?

Exact same thing has started happening to me, tried everything. I know it is definitely the Airport Extreme that is causing the problem as I get full speed with no drop outs when connecting my Macbook to the modem directly over Ethernet.

The Airport Extreme I have is about 3 years old now so I have given up trying to fix it and ordered the latest ASUS dual band router that seems to get some good reviews.

seeing this thread has me worried about buying an AE which is what I'm about to do.

I wonder how common these issues really are?

ozziegn said:

seeing this thread has me worried about buying an AE which is what I'm about to do.

I wonder how common these issues really are?

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Ditto. I'm reluctant now.

Are these problems over WiFi only? Or also with the Ethernet cables?

Me, too

I have 3 AEBS, all running firmware 7.6.1:
2 x A1143 (Airport Extreme)
1 x A1254 (Time Capsule)

I have had these same issues of random internet connection dropping with all three AEBS, and experienced them on 3 separate cable modems, using 2 different ISPs:

ISPs:
Comcast
Astound

Cable modems:
D-Link DCM-202
Motorola SB5120
Linksys DPC3008

I don't see any point in buying another Airport product. Has anyone had better success with other branded wifi routers?

I've had this problem with all the routers I've ever had (linksys, netgear, dlink) but so far my apple extreme has been working for 3+ years with no problems, same for my dad's and uncles

I have begun experiencing this problem within the last 10 days. It is occurring daily, sometimes 2-3 times per day. The resolution is always a power cycle via pulling the plug as a soft boot does not help.

When this happens the connection to my ISP is still active and all hard wired devices connect normally.

Airport Extreme 802.11n (5th Generation)
Software version 7.6.1

This device is just over a year old and until now has been rock solid. Very frustrating what is happening now.

Shiner, I am having exactly the same problems you are and it has started in the same random way after being rock solid for 1 1/2 years. I don't know if it's the AE going bad or what the problem is.

class77 said:

Shiner, I am having exactly the same problems you are and it has started in the same random way after being rock solid for 1 1/2 years. I don't know if it's the AE going bad or what the problem is.

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Yeah, it is really frustrating.

On the plus side it doesn't seem to be getting any worse, but I am still having to pull the plug at least once per day.

Getting worse here. Last two days I have had to pull the plug 3 times after getting home from work and before going to bed. Basically between 6pm-11pm.

This just happened to me last night. AEBS working perfectly for almost three years until last night. Suddenly my devices can all see the AEBS but not connect to the internet. What is odd is some devices were connected via lan cable and they couldn't even see the network. Some devices reported zero signal and some reported 300 Mbps some 19 Mbps. Odd. I tried everything, resetting and rebooting the AEBS, power cycling the modem, forgetting the network and re-adding on my iPhone and it connected fine for an hour or two and then boom no internet. Yet the Airport Utility always showed a conenction to the internet. I know it is not the modem because now my MBP is connected directly to it and it is working fine, I set up the MBP to share its internet connection until I get a new wifi access point and that is working fine, it is for sure the AEBS.

I just assumed my AEBS pooped the bed and ordered an Express for now, it is good enough for my needs at the moment.

Seems odd, but to me it just seemed like the hardware is failing since nothing else changed recently.

Well guess what, my Time Capsule purchased just about the same time as my AEBS crapped the bed too. That is two devices, used in two different houses on two different networks, purchased within one month of each other both dropping the network conenctions or refusing to give out IP addresses to devices connecting to them. Reboot sometimes allows some devices to connect, forgetting and adding the network back sometimes allows it to, but eventually everything gets knocked off.

So I replaced my AEBS with an Express for the past week, not one problem, works great. Removed my Time Capsule and just used the cable company wifi router and everything is working perfectly.

Hmmm, bad hardware, way to go Apple, less than three years on routers before they up and die, great life for a premium product. I wont be buying any more

I gave up and replaced my AE with an Asus RT-N66U last week. Working great. So far no drops, no reboots of the router and the signal is stronger as well.

just started having these same problems. my mini will not connect to the internet, i have to turn the wifi off and on, and when i homeshare with my ATV3, itll run perfectly, then one day it will buffer so slowly it doesn't get past 60 seconds, then i reset APE, buffers the whole episode in 1 minute, kind of getting frustrated at this point

joeinoregon said:

I have had similar problems for over a year now. Searching the internet exhaustively did not bring up any solutions. Last week out of frustration, I reset the router and crossed my fingers for the umpteenth time. No luck, the very next morning the green light was on but no internet.

I opened the AirPort Utility and started to hunt through every possible option. Choosing Manual Setup, I then clicked on the second icon on the top row "Internet" and then in the submenu row of buttons, I selected DHCP. Next comes what I think has solved my problems: "DHCP Lease" was set to 12 hours!! I don't know why this would do anything, and maybe it's not the problem, but I switched it to 9999 days and my internet hasn't gone out yet.

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Did you ever see any change and if you did how long has it worked. I have recently purchased a new AEBS it is running 7.6.3 and was good for two weeks and now around 6-10pm last 4-5 days I have to power cycle it. the green light is solid, I use it for my router, Im on a point to point fiber, i have wired and wirless items hooked to it. no macs, just pc, roku, wii. DHCP was set to 24 hrs. very frustrating. My dlink router would show you by indicators that your internet was down etc. this one light deal on the AEBS is pretty pitiful. one thing to note is that when it happens all wireless is down but LAN wired is not. all internet disabled. power cycle and everything works

RIP 1 year old Airport Extreme. I'm not sure what happened but it was working fine up until yesterday AM when I left the house. When I got back later in the day, no connection. I thought it was TWC's fault but I plugged directly into the modem and tested w my Airport Express (for travel) and both work fine.

I tried reconfiguring, I tried upgrading the firmware to 7.6.3 (which I did not want to do) still no good. I reverted the firmware back and thought maybe if I just sleep on it, it will magically start working again in the AM. Nope.

My first Extreme lasted a good 4 years until I had to replace it with this new unit but looking like it's dead after 1. I guess I'm using my Express until I get a new router. My NAS will probably appreciate the rest though. lol.

I will have to read through this when I get home

**Yes, I realize this thread was started almost 3 years ago, although most recent comments were from 2-3 weeks ago**

I'm now on my third AE in less than 12 months. Each has worked fine out of the box for 3-5 months and then, inexplicably, began dropping WiFi signal 5-6 times per day. I live far enough away from any other houses that I know its not my neighbors interfering with my signal, and in each case I can use Stumbler and a manual WiFi signal finder to identify that the AE just flat out QUITS broadcasting a WiFi signal. I'm still connected to my ISP as all the ethernet jacks still get me right into the internet, as does a direct connect to my cable modem. Bottom line is that something is wrong with the AE WiFi radio, and it appears to happen frequently.

I just this weekend gave up on Apple routers and bought a new Netgear that has AC band built in. So far, so good.

Apple boards are filled with other AE users expressing similar or identical issues. So far, no official word from Apple admitting to a bug and/or offering a fix, although the Genius bar was always quite willing to give me a replacement unit.

Does this only happen with the A Extreme and not with the A Express ?

I only had the Airport Extreme devices. Never an Express. But I've seen an equal number of threads on the Apple support forums complaining about this behavior (and slow WiFi speeds plus myriad other related issues) for both the A Express as well as the A Extreme.

Any movement on this issue?

There must be so many of us mugs who thought shelling out for another premium product would put an end to these issues and who, like me, now find themselves with two Apple AirPort Extreme Base Stations that work only intermittently! No wonder Apple is doing so well!

Incidentally, we have noticed that the problem mostly seems to affect web pages. When a relative was staying with us who wanted to use internet 'phone all day and all night a while ago, he was able to continue talking while the rest of us had constantly dropped connections. Likewise, we are able to use Amazon Prime Video with a very occasional dropped connection; but for the most part we have no problem. But in the middle of the night when almost nobody else in the UK is using the internet and certainly nobody in the house is using internet phone or streaming content, a simple webpage will take minutes and several trips to Network Diagnostics to load.

It's now 1214. Who'd have thought it? SEVEN YEARS?????

I thought I should chime in here with what is known to work in my experience.

1st-5th Generation Devices

Cable Modem

1. Downgrade to 7.6.1
2. Ensure that the modem is working properly.
3. If in Bridge Mode, set to DHCP and NAT for testing purposes.
4. If connected behind another router, give the Extreme a static IP out of the DHCP range.

NOTE: If running a double NAT configuration, some applications may not work. Only use Double NAT for testing.

DSL Modem

1. Ensure that modem is properly bridged and AirPort is set to use PPPoE.
2. Ensure modem is properly getting signal off the lines.
3. If in Bridge Mode from having the modem handle DHCP, set it to DHCP and NAT and bridge the modem.

6th Generation Devices

Cable Modem

1. Restore device to factory settings.
2. Upgrade to the 7.7.2 or 7.7.3 firmware.

NOTE: The 7.7.2 firmware included a fix for random and sporadic WAN dropouts.

DSL Modem

1. Bridge DSL modem properly and verify signal levels.
2. Reset base station.
3. Upgrade to latest firmware.

These steps are all troubleshooting measures I follow. Give them a shot!

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I am getting this now too on a 5th generation AEX. It will drop the PPPoE connection and the light will turn amber. The modem (in bridge mode) still has sync as shown on it's status light. Airport Utility reports that the AEX does not have a valid IP address. It takes a reboot of the AEX to fix the problem and reestablish the PPPoE connection.

I suspect that it occurs when the AEX is under heavy load e.g. downloading a torrent. Perhaps the AEX's NAT table is being overloaded? Though I would have expected that such an expensive router would be able to handle 200 connections easily. I have limited the number of global connections to 100 in an effort to see if this helps.

Smacky said:

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I am getting this now too on a 5th generation AEX. It will drop the PPPoE connection and the light will turn amber. The modem (in bridge mode) still has sync as shown on it's status light. Airport Utility reports that the AEX does not have a valid IP address. It takes a reboot of the AEX to fix the problem and reestablish the PPPoE connection.

I suspect that it occurs when the AEX is under heavy load e.g. downloading a torrent. Perhaps the AEX's NAT table is being overloaded? Though I would have expected that such an expensive router would be able to handle 200 connections easily. I have limited the number of global connections to 100 in an effort to see if this helps.

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What generation and firmware?

We use a 6th generation (previously 5th generation) Extreme to handle the network at school. This includes 105 bandwidth hungry users and eight AirPort Expresses as Access Points. It is very stable!

Altemose said:

What generation and firmware?

We use a 6th generation (previously 5th generation) Extreme to handle the network at school. This includes 105 bandwidth hungry users and eight AirPort Expresses as Access Points. It is very stable!

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It's a 5th gen AEX (the one before the tall AC capable one) running 7.6.4
I can't explain why this problem only started recently, perhaps the hardware is showing it's age. Anyway, with a lower global limit, connection has not dropped as yet

Smacky said:

It's a 5th gen AEX (the one before the tall AC capable one) running 7.6.4
I can't explain why this problem only started recently, perhaps the hardware is showing it's age. Anyway, with a lower global limit, connection has not dropped as yet

Click to expand...

Did you recently upgrade from 7.6.1 by chance?