Airport Extreme WiFi Randomly Drops

[bmburton13]

I have been experiencing this for the past couple of days now.

I recently replaced my old router with an Airport Extreme in hopes to have my house completely Apple-ized. I have it plugged into my modem and then my iMac directly connected to the back of the AE with my printer connected USB. I have the router right next to the iMac which is why i directly connected it. I'm not sure if it matters but I also have a Airport Express in my basement, which I have had for a long time, that I use to boost wifi signal and connect to a stereo for Airplay. (I thought it might be worth noting)

Everything seemed to be working fine for the first few days with one minor bump with the WiFi that I thought I fixed.

The problem I'm experiencing is that the Airport seems to be dropping the WiFi signal. Nothing wireless will get an internet connection. The thing that puzzles me is that all my WiFi devices and laptops see that the network exists but can't connect to it, but the iMac which is directly connected to the router is connected to the internet just fine, this is what lead me to believe there was not something wrong with my internet but more likely the wifi signal within the router. The router itself has the bright green light shinning away as well. Everything appears working fine, until you try to use safari or check mail on the wifi depended devices.

The thing that really pisses me off is that it seems to randomly connect back to the internet again and every web page is loading fast and every video streams with ease. It seems to do this once a day now.

I've tried everything, searched all over the forums, tried changing the routers channel, the DHCP Lease to 9999 days instead of 1. It's frustrating to be playing on Xbox Live with my buds and then all of a sudden the network drops. I haven't called my internet provider because I don't think they could possibly help. The only thing I can think of to do now is try the genius bar, but that is somewhat a drive, especially if they find that nothing is wrong and it works fine for them. I don't know what to do anymore besides ask the faithful Mac community.

I could really use the help and will be greatly appreciated. This is the first Apple product I've had such drawn out problems with. I don't want to give up on this beautifully made Apple product. I'm willing to try anything lol.

Thanks everyone

 

[bmburton13]

Update

It seems to be getting worse, it has dropped wifi twice today. In the past it would only do it once a day.

 

[bmburton13]

Update 2

I have been basically doing trial and error for the past 3 hours. I decided to completely deleted the network and started up a whole new one and paid extremely close attention to each setting just to make sure. I think I might have found something that works... for now. I changed the Radio Mode to a"802.11n (802.11a compatible)". I tried the (5GHz only) one and it seemed to work for every device except my '06 Macbook running Snow Leopard.

I hope people reply to this thread throwing around some ideas

 

[bmburton13]

Update 3

I decided to stop using the Airport Extreme and switch back to the old N-Router I was using. No more dropping wi-fi signals, except my mid 2011 iMac seems to loose Airport connection every now and then. It gets very annoying and the only thing that seems to fix it is to reset the modem. None of my other wifi devices are effected with a dropping wifi signal, only the iMac.

If anyone could give me any help it would be greatly appreciated once again. Maybe one reply with an attempt to help? I would really like to use the airport extreme as the only router in hopes to get my house a complete Apple house.

 

[Revelation78]

It's really hard to be of much help in this situation, there could be several things going on.

First off, what mode are you running the working AP in? i.e are you running it in a,b,g or n mode or a combination? Another thing to look at is are you running your AEBS in Dual mode? What authentication are you running? What firmware are you running on your AEBS?

Do you have a cordless phone in the house, if so, what frequency does it operate on?

 

[ReneeReader]

change channels?

When I first set up my Airport Express, it used to drop the wireless a lot. I played with the channel setting until I found one that did not seem to have interference. (It has been awhile so I don't remember the technical reasons behind all this.)

The channel setting is under Airport/Wireless/Channel dropdown (in an older Airport Utility, 5.6). I ended up putting it on channel 11, Nigel.