Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Airport Express Needs Frequent Restarts

I have an older Airport Express (firmware 6.3). I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and since then I have had to reboot it several times (about once every 48 hours or so) to get my wireless network back online. I have turned on Interference Robustness, but that hasn't helped. The other hardware involved: a 24 inch iMac Core 2 Duo; a 15 inch MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo and a new Airport Express (7.4.2) which I added to extend the network's range. I very seldom had any loss of wireless connectivity before the system upgrade.

I'd appreciate any suggestions.

It's likely that you'll have to update your old Airport Express firmware. Next, in case the old AE isn't 802.11n capable (the current model is), you may have to adjust your network settings accordingly. Finally, if the above adjustments shouldn't help, you may want to experiment with using the old AE to extend the network provided by the new one, rather than the other way around (if I understand your configuration correctly).

By posting back here with the details and results of your changes we may be ably to fine-tune things if and where necessary. Good luck!

Thanks. The firmware on the old AE is the latest it will take. Both are showing that they are in 802.11g compatible mode. I did some searching of the Apple boards and there was mention of potential conflicts with iTunes 9.x and Airtunes which resulted in the type of problem I've been seeing. Since I don't use Airtunes, I turned that off on both Expresses. If I continue to have the problem, I will try your suggestion of switching the routers. I will report back one way or the other.

I have a friend who experienced similar (but different) issues with his Airport Express. Finally, he took it to an Apple store and asked them to connect it to their system. Sure 'nuf, a few minutes later he was told the device was defective and was given a new one.

And all was agin sweetness and light.

I only say that because hardware problems lurk in mysterious places...

A final note on all this. I finally reversed the two Airport Expresses as suggested so that the new one is the primary and the old one is now set up as part of a WDS to extend the coverage area. The old one still fails every couple of days despite having been reset to factory settings and reconfigured, so it definitely seems to be a hardware problem. At least now I don't lose connectivity on my desktop when it goes down, and Airport Utility alerts me when there is a problem with the WDS so I know when it fails and can reboot it. Since we only need the extended network access occasionally, I can live with it until it fails for good.

I have no idea if it was accurate, so, for what it's worth... An AppleCare wireless specialist told me a while back that AirPort Express Base Stations do not degrade gradually, rather they suffer precipitous catastrophic failure.

I don't pretend to know for sure, but I can't come up with any software related explanation for this AE repeatedly dropping it's connection to the network at approximately 48 - 72 hour intervals.

can you tell us more about what it does after it loses the signal?

- does the airport in the mac remain turned on?
- does the SSID of the base remain in the list from the menubar? others too?
- what does it do when you try to reconnect? be detailed