Do Not Buy an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station, They Crash and Burn
February 26th, 2008
When my lovely second hand Netgear Rangemax router died I bought one of these new fangled AirPort Extreme Base Stations from Apple with the logic that;
- Hey it's Apple it'll just work with the rest of my computers
- It will be fast as f* thanks to the 802.11n
- It will be able to handle my ever increasing download traffic
- I was wrong...
Update: So apple have finally fixed this issue in the airport extreme update (firmware version 7.3.1) released last wednesday. I installed it straight away and have had no issues at all, huzzah! Thanks apple, finally I can say I recommend this product.
So while yes it is pretty, and it was a snap to setup my network something rather strange started happening. I would have really great connectivity for about an hour then the router would die, the little green light on the front would go amber and nothing would happen. The only solution being to pull the plug from the router and wait for it to restart.
I went investigating the problem and it seems like always it wasn't just me affected by a crashing router. The best write-up I found on the issue was from the excellent codelaide software they actually write a really useful utility for the mac called Lighthouse for dynamic port mapping so I would consider them an authority on the subject. In the article (which is albeit focused on their application) they reveal that it is actually a BUG in the AirPort Extreme Firmware (Version 7.2.1), yes folks you heard it. A BUG with Apple software. It is with the NAT/PMP server receiving requests that are perfectly valid NAT/PMP request but the router just shits itself and dies.
While the AirPort Extreme has been out for a while, it is available in two flavours now "Fast Ethernet" and Gigabit Ethernet. The fast ethernet version has been around for a while, if you have one of those and are experiencing these problems count yourself lucky. Just do the following;
- Open the AirPort Utility
- Hold down option and select Check for updates
- Download AirPort Extreme Firmware (Version 7.1.1)
- Install that firmware on your base station
- Relax
Now if you are like I and bought the Gigabit Ethernet version you will notice that there is only firmware versions 7.2 and 7.2.1, there is nothing lower this is the factory shipped software, with a bug in it. Now you can downgrade to 7.2 and I would really advise you doing that, although it doesn't stop the base station from dying it does restart itself afterwards saving a little bit of the inconvenience. The only other thing you can do is turn off any bittorrent client you have running, while it won't cut it out completely it will reduce the chance of it happening quite a bit.
So I phoned up Apple to discuss and well to cut a long story short they wanted to give me a new router no matter how much I explained to them that a firmware issue will be on every piece of hardware. Failing that they wanted me to make the long journey Mac-Sys, now they're great guys but I don't think even Steve Wozniak himself would be able to do anything. No matter how much I pressed or argued the fact or wanted to read out URLS for further info they were absolute in the fact that there is not a bug with their software. Well there is, and it seems to be getting worse every release please Apple acknowledge your dodgy software and fix the bugs, the last time you released an update to it was on August 29th 2007 what the hell have you been doing?
Anyway, that's enough of a rant just don't buy an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (at least until they get their act together) buy a Netgear Rangemax instead.
Update: So apple have finally fixed this issue in the airport extreme update (firmware version 7.3.1) released last wednesday. I installed it straight away and have had no issues at all, huzzah! Thanks apple, finally I can say I recommend this product.
16 Responses to “Do Not Buy an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station, They Crash and Burn”
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
February 26th, 2008 at 04:15 PM
Apple never admit bugs. Ever.
That said - BitTorrent seems to bugger up nearly every model of router.
Nasty, bad but sooo good.
February 26th, 2008 at 04:41 PM
The netgear one was awesome with BitTorrent while it was alive, it was second hand and died of a power supply failure after a couple of months. But they were months of blissful downloading.
February 26th, 2008 at 04:49 PM
It shouldn't die tho. Do you have a surge protector and a UPS?
February 26th, 2008 at 04:55 PM
I do have a surge protector, so I'm not sure what caused it do die... but there wasn't much to do with it being out of warranty and from america.
February 26th, 2008 at 04:59 PM
I'd also give the Airport Express a miss (it's the plug socket wireless thing for streaming audio/coneecting a wireless printer/expanding a wireless network) - it is basically a bitch to setup, especially if your WiFi is not open.
February 28th, 2008 at 06:32 PM
I might be a total fanboy, but we've not seen these issues with either Express or Extreme. Face it - we couldn't run our office on these devices as we plainly do.
Bittorrent is bad, mmkay. For routers. I mean.
March 7th, 2008 at 04:16 AM
My airport wireless gigabit is dead. Dead! No power. Now I have to return it, presumably get a new one, and apparently hold my breath until the power fails again. Crap.
March 8th, 2008 at 05:22 AM
Dude! any chance you can sendspace the firmware? give us a direct link??? apple is NO help at all on this.
March 13th, 2008 at 07:18 PM
Thanks for writing this article I'm having the same issue.
March 19th, 2008 at 09:45 AM
Having the same problem It drops the conection a couple of times a day, and craches totaly about once a week, requiering the plug to be pulled. And almost every time I change its settings it will stop communicationg requiering a total restore to factory settings. I have to change some settings now to enable a webserver. I wish it wont crash now, cus' its a pain to get it working again.
March 20th, 2008 at 03:05 AM
Finally a new patch is available that claims to fix the issues! New version: 7.3.1 http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/timecapsuleandairportbasestation80211nfirmware731.html It looks like you can download the file from here, but don't be fooled! It's available through Airport Utility 5.2.1 and above. Just installed it, but I can not confirm whether it indeed fixes the bugs.
March 21st, 2008 at 07:29 PM
same issue with my base. Hope apple will move, they delivered obvieusly shitty bases!
March 24th, 2008 at 02:58 AM
So I installed the 7.3.1 firmware and all is well :) No network drop outs since last week. Fingers crossed.
April 2nd, 2008 at 09:51 AM
David, Useful info here, thanks for posting. I'd sufered the same fate with previous version of this firmware, only noticed when my iPhone refused to go on web. I downgraded as you recommended and that solved it, but not an ideal solution to go backwards! So I just logged in to ask the question if the new updater fixed it and you already answered it - man you must be Telepsychotic ;-)
Thanks for sharing.
April 9th, 2008 at 09:55 AM
Feel a bit burned - bought the AEBS on the "wireless Time Machine" promise. Promise withdrawn, now there's Time Capsule for $xx.xx more. New Apple user, not thrilled. All the 7.1 - 7.2 - 7.1 putzing around to make it work at all.
Question: I've read that for some 7.3.1 drops their print functions for printers hung off the AEBS. Any trouble like that? I don't want to bother with the update if it's going to be another fiasco like 7.2.x.
Thanks for any info. I'm sure not to get it from Apple.
April 13th, 2008 at 04:02 PM
Paul, it works fine for printing for me. I would upgrade to 7.3.1 asap if I were you. My network hasn't dropped for weeks since I updated.