AirPort Extreme network dropping.

snollup

Hi all,

I set up a small wireless network using an AirPort Extreme (APE) a few months ago and all seemed to be working fine until recently. My MacBook is now dropping the network very regularly. I have a printer and two external hard drives, one for Time Machine back ups & one for media, attached to the APE.

Once the network has dropped the APE needs to be power cycled before the MacBook will see it again. There is also an iPad & an iPhone on the network but the seem to be working fine.

Can anyone suggest any possible solutions.

Thanks.

Liameter

When mine did that the cause turned out to be a badly-seated Airport card. Bad connection. When my iBook did it, I had to replace the Airport card to fix the problem.

Check, too, to see if something else is creating interference. I heard of a Laptop PC with a bad battery connection that was generating RF interference.

There are many other possibilities. Test each piece of equipment by substitution. Good luck!

Sad Professor

So just to be clear, the MacBook is dropping the connection but the other devices aren't, is that right?

When is the connection dropping? When the machine wakes from sleep, starts up? Or is it just randomly at any time? What version of OS X are you running? Because many Lion users have had issues with their Mac losing its connection after waking from sleep. My MacBook Air has this problem.

When this happens have you tried turning WiFi off and back on? Unless the router itself has gone down, I find this usually solves any WiFi issues on my Macs. In fact, the next time this happens, try turning WiFi off/on on one of the devices that are still working and see if they are able to reconnect.

What version AEBS do you have? One of the more recent 5GHz models? I've one of the very old 2.4GHz ones and I've had nothing but problems with it lately. Basically it keeps crashing causing all my computers/devices to lose their connection and requiring a reboot to fix. I downgraded the firmware the other day and it seems better since. But like I said, it's a very old one.

snollup

Thanks Professor. See below in Bold...

Sad Professor wrote: »

So just to be clear, the MacBook is dropping the connection but the other devices aren't, is that right? Exactly.

When is the connection dropping? When the machine wakes from sleep, starts up? Or is it just randomly at any time?It's dropping randomly. Its also guaranteed to drop when transferring data to attached hard drives What version of OS X are you running? Am running Snow Leopard Because many Lion users have had issues with their Mac losing its connection after waking from sleep. My MacBook Air has this problem.

When this happens have you tried turning WiFi off and back on?Yes, have tried this but no joy. Unless the router itself has gone down, I find this usually solves any WiFi issues on my Macs. In fact, the next time this happens, try turning WiFi off/on on one of the devices that are still working and see if they are able to reconnect. Both the wifi (eircom) & AirPort Extreme remain up and no other devices are effected.

What version AEBS do you have? One of the more recent 5GHz models? I've one of the very old 2.4GHz ones and I've had nothing but problems with it lately. Basically it keeps crashing causing all my computers/devices to lose their connection and requiring a reboot to fix. I downgraded the firmware the other day and it seems better since. But like I said, it's a very old one.

Its running 7.6. Was running 7.6.1 but downgraded it to see if it helped... it didn't