AirPort Extreme Base Station and Wireless Software Updates

Apple also briefly released AirPort Management Tools 1.0 [...] However, the tools were removed from Apple's site later the same day.

The software is still available on Apple's website, albeit via a different URL. Go to ...

<http://www.apple.com/support/airport/>

... and you will find a link to "AirPort Management Tools" in the Resources section in the right-hand column.

IMHO it was about time that Apple released a tool like this: not only does the AirPort Management Utility provide a list of clients connected to a base station. The AirPort Client Monitor also plots graphs for signal strength vs. noise level as well as the effective transmission rate. A very welcome trouble-shooting tool in situations where you are confronted with too-low WLAN throughput or even dropped connections within your AirPort network.

Jochen.

I avoided the 3.4 upgrade for a while - having used software update to get everything else prior to that. When the new iTunes and Security upgrade showed up, I attempted to download them. Hmmm. Software Update no longer worked over my airport connection.

I have a 'Snow' basestation - white, with dual ethernet ports - which was a replacement for a dead grey ABS just last year.

Everything seems to work fine - Safari, Mail - except downloads. And not just via Software Update. If I attempt to download directly from the Apple support site, the download proceeds through the last few seconds, and then stops with 1-4 seconds remaining, then hangs. DOA. At least Software Update dies at the beginning of the download, a few hundred KB at the most, so I don't sit there with high expectations for an hour or so.

I also experienced this with trying to download from the Palm website. 360 KB and klunk.

Deja Vu!

This happened before - between June 2002 and Oct 2002 - when Software Update and Sherlock were not functional with airport. I was under some warranty then, and a tech at Apple (after 2 hours on the phone) isolated it to incompatible software on the ABS and other cpus.

Could that April security upgrade have had this effect? Here's the history of installed updates on my laptop (I was never able to see a history on my desktop!-?) Mar 1 2004 2004-02-23 Security Update Mar 8 2004 Airport 3.3.1 Update ------------------ iSight Update Mar 16 2004 Mac OS X 10.3.3 April 07 2004 Security Update 2004-04-05

Haven't been able to do a software update since.

I have posted my woes on the Apple discussion board, but have no way of knowing how to get this info to Apple sw itself. Maybe someone here can do that.

Thanks, Bob Jones

:frown:

Bob Jones wrote:

>Everything seems to work fine - Safari, Mail - except downloads. And not just
>via Software Update. If I attempt to download directly from the Apple support
>site, the download proceeds through the last few seconds, and then stops with
>1-4 seconds remaining, then hangs. DOA. At least Software Update dies at the
>beginning of the download, a few hundred KB at the most, so I don't sit there
>with high expectations for an hour or so.
>
>
Saw a comment that seems similar to this problem on Mac OS X Hints.
They indicate it occurs in updates/downloads where you have to agree to
a license agreement. Apparently a corrupt font can cause the problem.
They call out a specific one from HP (Times RO) but I imagine other
fonts might cause the issue too.

<http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040502100350626>

It refers to a page at apple support:

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25725>

Kevin

Kevin,
Thanks for the info, but this doesn't appear to be my problem. EVERY
download fails, whether through Software Update or directly from the
Apple site. I also had the upgrade to the Palm desktop fail. They only
fail, however, when I am connected through airport. And they fail
differently - software update fails at the neginning, a few KB into the
download; the Apple site direct downloads fail at the very end, after a
long, long time.

I am able to download successfully using the internal modem, however.
The failures and successes occur on two separate machines. The only
common link for the failures is the Airport connection.

Looking back through my old notes, I had a similar problem with my old
graphite airport (before it died) using Sherlock, back in '02. There
was some incompatibility between airport software and the software on
the cpu, and it also impacted ONLY downloads, not mail or browsers. It
could only be fixed by resetting the airport - hard reset. I was under
warranty, and had an Apple tech walk me through the reset and reload
procedure for an hour and a half, so I was remiss in my note-taking
(hard to write when you're holding hands, jabbibg paper clips, typing
IP addresses, etc.)

I suspect that I'll have to do a hard reset on the Snow airport, and
hope I can get it reloaded successfully. I've read and printed the
support documentation from Apple on the reset and reload, but there are
so many steps and caveats that it's a little disconcerting, and I want
to finish everything I NEED to get done before I jump into this
secondary (since I can download via modem) maintenance.

Bob