Airport Extreme losing wireless connection with Time Capsule

[HCR93]

Hi everyone, long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a 1st gen Time Capsule acting as my home wireless network base station which is configured to allow the wireless network to be extended. It is also the sole DHCP server. I have a 4th gen Airport Extreme in "Extend a Wireless network" mode. Everything was running ok for several months. However now the Airport extreme keeps losing its connection with the network every day or so, leaving the Extreme flashing amber and requiring a daily reboot. Since the problem occured, I have disabled MAC address Access Control on the Time Capsule, and allocated a reserved DHCP IP address for the Airport Extreme - but this has not solved the problem. Further, there has been no change in the devices accessing the network.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks

 

[HCR93]

Nobody has any ideas?

My only thought is there any chance it could be a generation issue between the 2 devices, once being a 1st gen Time Capsule and another being a 4th gen Extreme? I've searched and can't seem to find any relevant suggestions. Thanks

 

[jposluns]

Same Problem..

I have an Extreme 4th gen as my main home router, and a second one (also 4th gen) that I'm using to extend the network.

After a power cycle it (the second one) works fine for somewhere between 4 hours and a day before going amber.

Next time it happens I'm going to plug an ethernet cable into it and see what the airport admin tool says.

Alternatively I'm going to try rebooting the main Extreme and see if the second one re-connects to it.

Have you resolved your issue since you posted?

 

[HCR93]

Solution

Yes, after days of playing around and taking advice (as well as enjoying Christmas), I found out it was the 7.6 firmware update causing problems. I downgraded my Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme to 7.5.2 (but left my two AirPort Express on the newer 7.6) and everything was solved. Almost a week now and rock-solid reliability as I had before.

As a side note though I am conceded that an Apple update could cause this within their own devices (although I understand wireless networks are notoriously flaky at times) and will definitely think twice before blindly clicking upgrade. Further I submitted a bug report so hopefully it will be fixed again in the future.

Hope this helps anyone in the same boat!