Apr
2011

Airport Express Woes

I have two Apple Airport Express devices. One in the loft with a USB printer and a set of speakers then another one in the living room with a set of speakers connected to it. However, the printer was randomly vanishing from the network and the speakers would cut out from time to time.

So I reset both devices and swapped them around. I noticed that the printer would remain on the network on one of the AE’s but vanish on the other. So I put the working one in the loft and just disconnected the second one assuming it was just faulty. Well today I tried resetting the suspect one and it appeared fine but iTunes would not connect to it yet my iPhone would for about 30 seconds before it decided to vanish. Both AE devices are running 6.3 which is the latest version.

Doing some research it was suggested to try downgrading the firmware then upgrading it again so that’s what I tried but it made no difference. After scouring Apple  discussions one person reported similar problems until they changed their Wireless channel to 12. I have mine on 6 as there are no other wireless networks in my range with that number.

I logged into my Sky router and changed the channel from 6 to 12 and also changed it so that it was set to 802.11g only and lo and behold it works!!

So if you have an Airport Express with the following issues :

Airport Express sound cutting out
Airport Express vanishing from network

Then try the above changes on your wireless router. You never know it may work for you 😀