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Airport Express becoming increasingly unreliable

S

Soundburst

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 4, 2006
691
20
Hey guy,

Was wondering if anyone could help.

For the past year my Airport has hardly ever failed. Yet now at least once a day the internet will fail.

The light will be green. . .the connection will be there but NONE of my devices (iPhone, MBP, iPod Touch) won't be able to connect to the internet.

It's like the Airport decides not to bother outputting any of the internet.

Is there a way I can force reinstall a firmware update or something to make it go back to normal as, as it is I have to turn it off and turn it back on to get it to work - I'm a big gamer and get cut outs during games too.

I'd like to reinstall the firmware and stuff without needing to redo the settings as I've two airports - the second acting as a bridge to the top floor of the house so they're connected by settings and I'm not sure how i did it in the first place lol.

Thanks a lot. :)
 
Before you start troubleshooting Airport Express, you really need to make sure it is not the ISP that is having issues. I have them periodically with my connection (Time Capsule). Sometimes the light will turn amber but usually stays green but I won't be able to connect for anywhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes, then all if fine with no intervention from me. Is the problem with my router? Doubtful--most likely a problem with the network outside of my control.

You didn't say in your post how long the outage is--or if it returns by itself--or if you have to do something to get your connection back. If it comes back all by itself, I would be inclined to put the blame on ISP network issues.
 
bobr1952 said:
Before you start troubleshooting Airport Express, you really need to make sure it is not the ISP that is having issues. I have them periodically with my connection (Time Capsule). Sometimes the light will turn amber but usually stays green but I won't be able to connect for anywhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes, then all if fine with no intervention from me. Is the problem with my router? Doubtful--most likely a problem with the network outside of my control.

You didn't say in your post how long the outage is--or if it returns by itself--or if you have to do something to get your connection back. If it comes back all by itself, I would be inclined to put the blame on ISP network issues.
Click to expand...

The outage is there until I reboot. The ISP is Virgin Media Fibre Optic 10mb Broadband and has never given me problems.

If I'm upstairs and I get a cut out - I'll rage, watch tv - it'll still not work. . .I'll come down stairs, reboot and all will be will.

If I'm downstairs in the same room as the Airport , it'll stop working, I'll reboot and itll work right away. :(
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117)

I have pretty much the same problem I got mine in 2006 as a refurb. You tried resetting it? Mine only does it about once a week.
 
Hey,

Would resetting it do something different that turning it off and on at the plug? :)
 
bobr1952 said:
Before you start troubleshooting Airport Express, you really need to make sure it is not the ISP that is having issues.
Click to expand...

Good point :) It's very easy to blame theor machine! Recently I've had a similar problem, only to find that a recently installed and particularly powerful wi-fi hotspot has "taken over" my connection. A quick check on my airport connection has resolved the issue.
 
I unplug it and put it back in just to get it going again, try a reset, never hurts to change your Wifi password anyway. It's already very easy to set up ya know.
 
If I reset it by holding in the tiny button. . . it doesn't clear all the setting in my Airport Express set up on the Mac does it?
 
Virgin Media is our ISP too supplying a 10 MB service, and more recently we've been having it drop out for no known reason. Often when we start it up in the morning (say around 5:30 AM) the Airport Extreme [2007] we use will blink amber for 2 - 5 minutes before the modem gives an internet feed. Sometimes during the day the web will freeze and we power down the Virgin [old NTL in fact] modem and AE to get the web back up into our residence.
 
How hot is your Express?

I found that my Airport Express was getting very warm where I had it plugged into the wall. (Behind a short file cabinet that serves as a printer stand.) It seemed to do much better when I stuck it on an extension cord and moved it out into the open. I did eventually replace it with a Time Capsule. In my experience, if the AE gets hot, it seems to have more problems.
 
I having the same problem with AE.

Mine gets really really hot and then it becomes unstable.

Already change the channel settings but when it gets hot it just fall apart.
 
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