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AEBS Drops Signal

phiberglass

phiberglass

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 3, 2007
569
0
So, about every 15 minutes my airport extreme base station was dropping the signal. When I was close to the router the signal would disappear and I would have no internet. When I was further away, the signal would stay there but I could get no internet. The modem and router never turns off, it stays on, but just stops sending a signal and giving any internet. I took it in and got a replacement, but this still happens just not so often. Do you guys have any idea of what's happening. If I keep the AEBS log open will it show what's happening?

Thank you very much guys.
 
Have to tried to change wireless channels? Seems to me you are getting some kind of interference.
 
That's my agenda for my next tests. Right now I'm just trying it without external hd, I was using an old power brick, trying without, and some other stuff.

I've never had a problem with the channel I'm on, but I will be trying that next.

Thanks! :)
 
Could be something else (even bad hardware), but when my AEBS was fighting with some neighbor's router I was having more or less the exact same symptoms until I experimented with manually set channels.

If you live near other people, maybe a neighbor bought a router recently...?
 
Yea, I've been seeing some new networks popped up.

I don't live relatively close to other houses, but where my base station is it could be picking up some feedback from other routers. I've always been on channel 11 and had no problems, I've just changed to 6 and it seems to have fixed it. Thanks for all the help guys. Atleast I got a new AEBS :D
 
Arr, it dropped again while I was sleeping :(

I wonder what's happening. I'll keep trying it on channel 6 and see how well that goes.
 
Theres 2 on channel 6
2 on channel 11

and then me on 6 too

That's what the sniffer picked up. Should I use channel 1? Isn't there a lot of interference on channel 1?
 
Just changed to channel 1, we'll see how this goes.

This channel seems a lot slower :-/
 
It dropped again. This is frustrating, this has never happened before and now it's doing it all the time. :(
 
I had the same problem. When I configured my Mac OS 10.5 Leopard firewall, the firewall modified my BitTorrent client and caused the AirPort Extreme base station to crash (i.e. drop the signal after a few minutes.) I suggest that you turn off the firewall and use AppZapper, or another uninstall utility, to uninstall any Internet applications (e.g. BitTorrent clients, Skype, etc.) that are connecting to the Internet via the AEBS and causing it to crash. Then, reinstall the Internet applications and see if the problem persists.
 
are you manually changing the wireless channel used or is it set to auto? i think i read somewhere that setting to auto can cause it to reboot if there's interference
 
davidleon said:
I had the same problem. When I configured my Mac OS 10.5 Leopard firewall, the firewall modified my BitTorrent client and caused the AirPort Extreme base station to crash (i.e. drop the signal after a few minutes.) I suggest that you turn off the firewall and use AppZapper, or another uninstall utility, to uninstall any Internet applications (e.g. BitTorrent clients, Skype, etc.) that are connecting to the Internet via the AEBS and causing it to crash. Then, reinstall the Internet applications and see if the problem persists.
Click to expand...

Ya, I have no firewall up on my mac, but I do use adium, azureus, etc, I will have to try that. Thanks for the tip!
 
Also, have you disabled all IPv6 stuff on the Airport Extreme? I had trouble with my connection staying up when I first had it, turning off all IPv6 stuff made it rock-solid stable.
 
killmoms said:
Also, have you disabled all IPv6 stuff on the Airport Extreme? I had trouble with my connection staying up when I first had it, turning off all IPv6 stuff made it rock-solid stable.
Click to expand...

Nope, I was never sure what all that IPv6 stuff was so never messed with it, I will look into that.
 
phiberglass said:
What exactly should I keep enabled and what should I disable on IPv6?
Click to expand...

I've been having similar problems lately. Changing channels seems to have helped a bit, though my AEBS still drops signal and requires an unplug/re-plugin once in a while. If you don't need the IPv6 enabled, you can just set it to "link-local only" mode. I had it enabled but with "block incoming IPv6 connections" selected. I've switched to "link-local only" mode to see if that improves things...
 
augustgarage said:
I've been having similar problems lately. Changing channels seems to have helped a bit, though my AEBS still drops signal and requires an unplug/re-plugin once in a while. If you don't need the IPv6 enabled, you can just set it to "link-local only" mode. I had it enabled but with "block incoming IPv6 connections" selected. I've switched to "link-local only" mode to see if that improves things...
Click to expand...

Ya, I've switched to channel 1 and it only seems to happen about once or twice a day, instead of 4 or 5 times. This is weird it's never happened with my AEBS, but even does it with the new one I received :(
 
Wanted to join in on this as I was coming on to post my own thread. I bought the AEBS on 11/27 with my macbook. Never had a single problem with it until yesterday when wife called me to say "the internet wasn't working". Came home - cable modem with all lights on, AEBS with green signal - but the Macbook didn't have the AEBS in its airport listings. The PC connected via ethernet also was down. Unplugged the modem and the AEBS for 10 secs and reconnected. All was fine.
This am, awoke to find that the PC had no internet connection and the macbook didn't have the AEBS in its airport list again. This time I just unplugged the AEBS and plugged it back in. As soon as the light went green, I saw it in the list again and everything was working.
I haven't touched the firmware or anything else on the AEBS recently but something seems quite odd about this in that a number of us are having the same problem in the past few days.
E
 
I switched it to link-local only and it seems to have fixed it. I may switch back to channel 11 and see how it goes, but it hasn't dropped the signal in about 20 hours.
 
So it hasn't shut off for a few days after I set the base station to linkonly local. I just set it back to channel 11 so I'll let you guys know how that goes.
 
With it on channel 11 it hasn't dropped a signal or anything yet. So for me it seems changing it to link-local only for IPv6 stuff stopped it dropping the signal.
 
phiberglass said:
With it on channel 11 it hasn't dropped a signal or anything yet. So for me it seems changing it to link-local only for IPv6 stuff stopped it dropping the signal.
Click to expand...

Mine hasn't dropped the signal in a few days now either after I set it to link-local only and manually set the channel to one that no other routers are on (everyone else in my neighborhood seems to be on Channel 1).

I wouldn't be surprised if this had more to do with the behavior of our ISPs than our AEBSs...
 
augustgarage said:
Mine hasn't dropped the signal in a few days now either after I set it to link-local only and manually set the channel to one that no other routers are on (everyone else in my neighborhood seems to be on Channel 1).

I wouldn't be surprised if this had more to do with the behavior of our ISPs than our AEBSs...
Click to expand...

Yea, I'm on Cox so maybee seems like they have a lot of problems. I was thinking that the signal through the landlines or my coaxial cable was the problem and was skipping data through. I'm glad it's fixed though and I have a new AEBS :D I would attempt to take it off link local only to test to see if that was the problem but it's working perfect right now so I don't want to risk it =p
 
Same issue - and another request:

I have been having trouble connecting wirelessly to my Airport Extreme Base Station with my iBook G4. My setup is as follows: Cable comes into house - to cable modem - wired to AEBSn. I then connect wirelessly with both my desktop (MacPro, running Leopard; AEBSn sits right next to it) and also have been able (in the past) to connect with my iBook anywhere in my house (4-floor walkup).

Recently, my iBook has been dropping connections, and I'm having trouble 'seeing' the AEBSn. I have even gone up, next to the AEBSn with my iBook, and usually I get a pretty good connection, but I still get dropouts and low signal intensity at times.

I have reset the modem and AEBSn numerous times, and my ISP assures me my modem is working correctly. So that leaves (I think) the AEBSn itself, or my iBook as the culprit. I can still get a good connection with my desktop, but even that seems to be less reliable lately. I wondered if it could be my land line 2.4 GHz phones, but I have had them for a long time without any discernable interference.

I read in this thread about getting my hands on some wireless sniffer software - does anyone have any recommendations? I guess I'll try to manually choose the channel (it's set to auto right now). Maybe less interference that way.

Any help much appreciated. I was thinking about heading over to the Apple shop with my AEBS to see if that was the problem, but if choosing a channel is a fix, I can save a trip...

Thanks a million!

-c
 
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