6th gen Airport Extreme randomly stops working

[Whackintosh]

In recent weeks, my Airport Extreme (6th gen, purchased around 2014) has begun to randomly stop working, the status light going amber until multiple reboots eventually gets things up and running again.

When this happens, making a hard connection from my modem to my Mac via ethernet allows for normal web access - yet connecting the AE to my Mac with an ethernet connection stills gives nothing - which makes it pretty safe to isolate the issue to the AE itself.

Is this a known issue to anyone here?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Frosties]

Do you get a message that it is overheating? A sad reality is that the fan in the router has a tendecy to stop working and the connection drops.

 

[Fishrrman]

Might be time to start browsing around for a replacement.

I'd recommend that you consider one of the new "mesh-type" systems that have come onto the market in the last couple of years...

 

[campyguy]

OP, you didn't offer whether your Airport Utility app offers any feedback? Does Airport Utility give an error message? Double NAT?

 

[Whackintosh]

That's the really strange part. Airport Utility has never given any error messages or notifications aside from showing that my AE is offline when it goes down.

 

[Frosties]

Then have you tried a factory reset?
Is your modem a router also?
Have you tried to set the extreme as a bridge and make the modem make the router? And vice versa? Sometimes routers don't play well together making the router firewall block the connection.

 

[Whackintosh]

I've not done a factory reset, no. I'll try that the next time the AE stops working. Thanks for the idea.

As for the modem, it's not a router. The modem and AE have worked well with each other for a long time, so unless something changed in a firmware update (to the modem), I don't think this is where the issue likely is.

 

[campyguy]

I roam a bit for work, 4 different locations, 4 different ISPs (all cable modems). One bit I've learned is to deal with the dynamic output of the ISPs I use - they're often futzing with modem configurations during their furtive transition to IPv6. All of my modems are Netgear units, before that it was Moto modems - I'd often get Double NAT errors, and sometimes (not all of the time) Airport Utility would tell me that I have a "Double NAT" error, but only when the frickin' error was happening. The ISPs had set the modems to renew its lease every 24 hours, during which it would enable its (the modem's) DHCP server. The modem's IPv4 DHCP Range started with "192.168", and that's the DHCP Range that my AE was set for - for the short period of time the modem was renewing its lease, then rebooting in the middle of the night, the AE ended up in a double NAT Catch-22/pushme-pullyou clusterf…, well, I think I can't type that last word there…

It wasn't until I pulled an all-nighter at one location when some of my employees were at another office when we went dark, Airport Utility launched and informed me/them of a double-NAT error. The modem did its thing at 3 am, but the network was still dead at both locations. Our network was useless several times in the weeks before that all-nighter. One or two or seven reboots of the network fixed it, until next time. I went through Console logs and deduced what was going on, despite the ISPs assurances that the modems did not have a DHCP server (they do, it's just not on full-time).

What I did to permanently fix my issues was to change the IPv4 DHCP Range of my Airport Extremes from the default "192.168" header (which is the same as each of my modems) to "10.0" (Airport Utility>Network>Network Options pull-down menu option). I used to have dead networks far too often until I figured out this workaround, but it's been two years now since I've had a hiccup. A reboot of your network - first power down your AE then your modem, then power up your modem and once that's complete power up your AE; then check the IP header in the AE, if its the same as your router most definitely change it to one of the other two options, then reboot your AE.

Give that a try, also try disabling IPv6 Sharing.