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Airport Extreme won't stay connected to ISP

post #1 of 16
1/4/12 at 11:34am
Thread Starter 
My ISP provider supplies wireless Internet to my house via an antenna on the roof. My Dlink router works fine, but neither Airport Extreme or my MacBook will recognize the connection via an Ethernet cable. Apple supports claims that my Internet provider may not be complying to Internet standards. Anyone else had this problem or know of a workaround?
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post #2 of 16
1/4/12 at 11:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

My ISP provider supplies wireless Internet to my house via an antenna on the roof. My Dlink router works fine, but neither Airport Extreme or my MacBook will recognize the connection via an Ethernet cable. Apple supports claims that my Internet provider may not be complying to Internet standards. Anyone else had this problem or know of a workaround?

Presumably you have some kind of ISP router/box with LAN ports? How are you connecting the AE - to the DLink or directly to your ISP? Need more detail on the setup.
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post #3 of 16
1/4/12 at 12:56pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by muppetry View Post

Presumably you have some kind of ISP router/box with LAN ports? How are you connecting the AE - to the DLink or directly to your ISP? Need more detail on the setup.

Thanks for your interest. From the antenna on my roof there is an Ethernet cable that comes into the house and plugs into what the ISP calls a POE (point of entry). My router is plugged into the output port of the POE via an Ethernet cable. The Dlink router works fine but any Apple device will not recognize the cable connection OR will recognize it for a few minutes and then thinks it is not connected anymore.
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post #4 of 16
1/5/12 at 2:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

Thanks for your interest. From the antenna on my roof there is an Ethernet cable that comes into the house and plugs into what the ISP calls a POE (point of entry). My router is plugged into the output port of the POE via an Ethernet cable. The Dlink router works fine but any Apple device will not recognize the cable connection OR will recognize it for a few minutes and then thinks it is not connected anymore.

Then I would just plug everything into the DLink. Does the POE just have one output port? If so, some of those devices will only register and talk to one MAC address at a time, and if you plug in a different device (different MAC address) you have to reboot (the POE in this case) for it to work with the new device.
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post #5 of 16
1/6/12 at 2:22pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by muppetry View Post

Then I would just plug everything into the DLink. Does the POE just have one output port? If so, some of those devices will only register and talk to one MAC address at a time, and if you plug in a different device (different MAC address) you have to reboot (the POE in this case) for it to work with the new device.

Sure that will work. In fact I can used WiFi off the Dlink, but I was hoping someone would know why Apple products such as my MacBook and Airport Extreme won't recognize the Ethernet connection. I'll have to return the Extreme if noone has a solution. My Dlink is quite old, and I bought the Extreme to replace it. A round trip to town is 100kms so I was trying to be proactive. Looks like I bought the wrong product!
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post #6 of 16
1/6/12 at 3:46pm
There's a lot we don't know about the setup of the POE, the D-Link and the Airport and mismatched protocol settings across any of them could be the culprit. Awful hard to troubleshoot in a vacuum.

If you plug the D-Link into the POE and then the Airport into the D-Link, does it maintain the WAN connection or does it drop then too?
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post #7 of 16
1/6/12 at 8:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

Sure that will work. In fact I can used WiFi off the Dlink, but I was hoping someone would know why Apple products such as my MacBook and Airport Extreme won't recognize the Ethernet connection. I'll have to return the Extreme if noone has a solution. My Dlink is quite old, and I bought the Extreme to replace it. A round trip to town is 100kms so I was trying to be proactive. Looks like I bought the wrong product!

So did you try rebooting the POE after connecting the AE?
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post #8 of 16
1/7/12 at 8:00am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by muppetry View Post

So did you try rebooting the POE after connecting the AE?

Yes i did. This morning I plugged my MacBook into an Ethernet port on the Dlink router and it connected properly. The IP address is in the range of the range of the router. In other words only the last part of the address is different from the router, so this looks very normal.

When I try and use the AE the IP address is 169.254.201.167 and I think this might be out. Of the range allowed by my ISP. My usual IP address starts with 192. I wonder how I can get the AE to assign an IP address in the acceptable range.
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post #9 of 16
1/7/12 at 4:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

Yes i did. This morning I plugged my MacBook into an Ethernet port on the Dlink router and it connected properly. The IP address is in the range of the range of the router. In other words only the last part of the address is different from the router, so this looks very normal.

When I try and use the AE the IP address is 169.254.201.167 and I think this might be out. Of the range allowed by my ISP. My usual IP address starts with 192. I wonder how I can get the AE to assign an IP address in the acceptable range.

169 addresses indicate self-assigned - in other words no valid IP address assigned. That happens when a device is configured to obtain an IP by DHCP but the host device does not issue an address - either because it is not configured to be a DHCP server or because it is declining the lease request.

I'm still not clear though - is that the IP address of your AE when you connected it to the POE, or the IP address of your Mac when connected to the AE? Your DLink (not your ISP) will issue local 192.x.x.x addresses by default. These are LAN addresses, not WAN addresses. The AE, on the other hand, will issue local 10.x.x.x addresses. I would avoid manually assigning any addresses anywhere while troubleshooting, especially if you don't understand the relationship between LAN and WAN addresses. Also because with DHCP you don't need to worry about router/gateway addresses or DNS addresses.

If you don't want the DLink in the system, I would connect the AE to the POE, set it to acquire an address from the POE by DHCP (should be the default), create a wireless network, and distribute a range of IP addresses. Your AE will get whatever kind of address the POE issues, and your Mac should then connect to the AE and get a 10.x.x.x address.
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post #10 of 16
1/8/12 at 6:17pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by muppetry View Post

169 addresses indicate self-assigned - in other words no valid IP address assigned. That happens when a device is configured to obtain an IP by DHCP but the host device does not issue an address - either because it is not configured to be a DHCP server or because it is declining the lease request.

I'm still not clear though - is that the IP address of your AE when you connected it to the POE, or the IP address of your Mac when connected to the AE? Your DLink (not your ISP) will issue local 192.x.x.x addresses by default. These are LAN addresses, not WAN addresses. The AE, on the other hand, will issue local 10.x.x.x addresses. I would avoid manually assigning any addresses anywhere while troubleshooting, especially if you don't understand the relationship between LAN and WAN addresses. Also because with DHCP you don't need to worry about router/gateway addresses or DNS addresses.

If you don't want the DLink in the system, I would connect the AE to the POE, set it to acquire an address from the POE by DHCP (should be the default), create a wireless network, and distribute a range of IP addresses. Your AE will get whatever kind of address the POE issues, and your Mac should then connect to the AE and get a 10.x.x.x address.

My ISP does us DHCP. The self assigned IP address shows up in the AE when the connection drops which it does within a few minutes of connecting. I found a MAC forum where many people have experienced this problem, some suggesting it happened after an Airport software upgrade. I think the 10.x.x.x addresses that AE uses by default are being rejected by my ISP causing the connection to drop. I have discovered an option in the AE setup that will force it to use IP addresses starting with 192.168 just like the Dlink. I'm going to try that tomorrow.
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post #11 of 16
1/8/12 at 7:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

I think the 10.x.x.x addresses that AE uses by default are being rejected by my ISP causing the connection to drop.

No... your ISP could care less what IP addresses your Airport distributes to the LAN. Your IP will assign an IP address to the DSL or Cable modem you use, which SHOULD pass it through to the Airport which uses that IP to talk to the ISP (or the modem may be it's own router and assign yet another address to whatever router you have plugged into it), but the whole point of a router is that it distributes its own addresses to the LAN, but uses just the one assigned IP to talk to the WAN (in this case, your ISP.)

What MAY help, is to get the MAC address of your Airport then call your ISP customer service/support number and talk to them about your problem. They should be able to get your connection set up so that it recognizes that MAC address as a desired connection and to not drop it... give it an unlimited DHCP lease or something....

In any case, it's probably not a hardware problem, but a problem in the way your hardware is communicating with the ISP... in other words, a software/setting problem... whether on your end or theirs.
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post #12 of 16
1/9/12 at 11:02am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by KingOfSomewhereHot View Post

No... your ISP could care less what IP addresses your Airport distributes to the LAN. Your IP will assign an IP address to the DSL or Cable modem you use, which SHOULD pass it through to the Airport which uses that IP to talk to the ISP (or the modem may be it's own router and assign yet another address to whatever router you have plugged into it), but the whole point of a router is that it distributes its own addresses to the LAN, but uses just the one assigned IP to talk to the WAN (in this case, your ISP.)

What MAY help, is to get the MAC address of your Airport then call your ISP customer service/support number and talk to them about your problem. They should be able to get your connection set up so that it recognizes that MAC address as a desired connection and to not drop it... give it an unlimited DHCP lease or something....

In any case, it's probably not a hardware problem, but a problem in the way your hardware is communicating with the ISP... in other words, a software/setting problem... whether on your end or theirs.

That makes perfect sense. Thanks. I did try this morning and the AE would not recognize the ethernet connection no matter what I tried. so I switched back to Dlink and it took a while to get going and was very slow loading pages. About an hour later the internet went down completely and has only just come back. Now things seem to be flying. I wonder if I should try the u
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post #13 of 16
1/9/12 at 11:04am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

That makes perfect sense. Thanks. I did try this morning and the AE would not recognize the ethernet connection no matter what I tried. so I switched back to Dlink and it took a while to get going and was very slow loading pages. About an hour later the internet went down completely and has only just come back. Now things seem to be flying. I wonder if I should try the u

I wonder if I should try tha AE now. Not sure I have the willpower to go.through that again!
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post #14 of 16
1/9/12 at 11:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

I wonder if I should try tha AE now. Not sure I have the willpower to go.through that again!

No harm trying. Just make sure that you reboot the POE after connecting the AE. And as mentioned earlier, it doesn't matter what DHCP LAN addresses the AE gives out.

One other thing - check the DLink to see what IP it is acquiring from the POE before you switch.
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post #15 of 16
1/10/12 at 1:20pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by muppetry View Post

No harm trying. Just make sure that you reboot the POE after connecting the AE. And as mentioned earlier, it doesn't matter what DHCP LAN addresses the AE gives out.

One other thing - check the DLink to see what IP it is acquiring from the POE before you switch.

The Airport Extreme is going to be returned. I connected it to my MacBook via Ethernet cable, upgraded the firmware and then set up the router. Then I connected it to the POE and it worked for a while but gradually degraded to the point where speedtests showed normal upload performance but virtually non-existent download performance. I talked to my ISP who asked me to connect my MacBook directly to the POE but it wouldn't recognize the Ethernet cable. So I hooked up our windows laptop and it worked perfectly. Then I hooked up my Dlink again and everything is working beautifully. Thanks Apple for wasting so much of my time!
And thank you for your help.
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post #16 of 16
1/10/12 at 1:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by CBournon View Post

The Airport Extreme is going to be returned. I connected it to my MacBook via Ethernet cable, upgraded the firmware and then set up the router. Then I connected it to the POE and it worked for a while but gradually degraded to the point where speedtests showed normal upload performance but virtually non-existent download performance. I talked to my ISP who asked me to connect my MacBook directly to the POE but it wouldn't recognize the Ethernet cable. So I hooked up our windows laptop and it worked perfectly. Then I hooked up my Dlink again and everything is working beautifully. Thanks Apple for wasting so much of my time!
And thank you for your help.

Very strange. Sorry it didn't work out.
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