Airport Extreme Gen-5 Stability Issue

[crellion]

I just got my brand-spanking new Airport Extreme 5 and am pretty happy with it.

It was loaded with 7.5.2 firmware to begin with (which I read a lot of people had issues with.)

I only had it for a day, but during the middle of the day - I started having the router randomly restart on me twice - dropping the wireless signal entirely.

I finally did a manual reboot and power-cycle on the cable-modem - now it's stable and haven't dropped wifi-since (knock-on-wood.)

I am concerned though (being this is a brand-new product) whether this is just a regular symptom that this router exhibits sometimes or have I gotten a defective-unit?

 

[JediMeister]

That's definitely not expected behavior, but there's not enough of a pattern to justify making the leap to considering it defective. Wait and see, you have 2 weeks to contact Apple to return it and 90 days of phone support to troubleshoot.

 

[crellion]

That's definitely not expected behavior, but there's not enough of a pattern to justify making the leap to considering it defective. Wait and see, you have 2 weeks to contact Apple to return it and 90 days of phone support to troubleshoot.

Is it possible that an unstable connection to the cable modem can sometimes trigger reboots on the router?

If I see nothing again in 2 weeks - was this just a weird glitch or something in the first place?

 

[crellion]

I finally found the Culprit!

Though this is the weirdest glitch I have seen so far in an Airport (I had owned the 4th Gen with this before.)

Anytime I send a "Print" signal from my wireless Windows laptop to another computer with a shared-Printer - the whole Router reboots!

I NEVER had this issue with my 4th Gen ABES before, but I am now finding this out from Day-1...

This is all in the Windows Network BTW... I don't have a Mac to test this "printing" glitch out on....

 

[crellion]

I have now tested this several times and see my AEBS reboot "EVERY" time.

This "shared" printer is connected to another PC - not the AEBS itself - and I actually have all Printer settings for it disabled (not using it at all.)

Still - I kind of wonder how can a plain "PRINT" signal from Windows trigger a router reboot?

 

[crellion]

Ok - I narrowed everything down to the wireless adapter on the PC connected to the Printer.

I was using a cheap Realtek Wireless-N USB adapater I got from Newegg.com. When I had it set to N-mode, the whole file-transfer rate copying from this machine (though it states its at 72mbps) slowed down to mere kilobytes. When I changed to mode to an older G-mode, it was giving my 3 mbps - easy.

Somehow the wireless-N mode on this USB adapter isn't jiving well with my AEBS causing it to reboot everytime I shoot it with loads of data (or a print-command). Reverting the adapter to G-mode makes everything stable.

However - here is something that I don't understand, I had this network setup working completely fine with my Gen-4 AEBS (which was also running 7.5.2), but why is it that I am seeing this compatibility issue with the Gen-5 AEBS now?

 

[crellion]

Anyone got any feedback on this? Is it even possible for incompatible wireless adapters to knock out routers?