You were the one trolling.

Do you carry around a PC to use as an MP3 player too?

We're quite aware that PCs can do lots of things, but they're noisy, use lots of power and damned ugly.

An airport express router is barely larger than a plug and uses very little power as it is an appliance.

You can use a PC to cook an egg too. But I'd much sooner use a frying pan:

http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/~htsu/humor/fry_egg.html

Bill, I was in touch with Billion support on this and they showed me how to change some settings that had been recommended on the web. The settings are:

iwpriv ra0 set BeaconPeriod=75
iwpriv ra0 set RTS threshold=2307
iwpriv ra0 set FragThreshold=2304

You can set these on the Billion 7800N using Terminal as follows:

1. Open command prompt.
2. Type 'telnet 192.168.1.254'
3. Enter your username and password set to the 7800N
4. Type 'iwpriv ra0 set BeaconPeriod=75'
5. Type 'iwpriv ra0 set RTS threshold=2307'
6. Type 'iwpriv ra0 set FragThreshold=2304'
7. Type 'save'
8. Type 'Logout'

Without the quotes, obviously

I have also tried setting BeaconPeriod to a low as 25 but nothing came of it.

Should you wish to reset the default values just use the above commands with these values:

BeaconPeriod 100
RTSthreshold 2347
Fragthreshold 2346

Printed out for future reference, thank you

I don't want to change any router settings yet, I'm trying to track down an occasional IPv6-related problem that only occurs every 3-4 days, at the moment I don't know whether to shout at Billion or my ISP

Anyway, for the moment I can now listen to music without annoying breaks... I turned the AEX's wireless off and connected using Ethernet via a spare homeplug I happened to have around. You can't beat brute force

Not ideal for a variety of reasons, but it'll do until I can try your suggestion.

As a side issue, I asked Billion support if there was any sort of list as to what could be done via telnet. The reply wasn't what I wanted, but it was what I expected:

We are sorry but Telent or CLI is not supported by 7800N.

In reply to a post by gilesjuk:

There can be loads of wireless routers in the vicinity. Tried changing channel?

Yes, I went through all that with the laptops when I swapped the Airport Extreme for the Billion. It was fine on the 5GHz band (nobody else using it) but selecting Auto channel selection on 2.4GHz was a seriously bad idea... so with the aid of iStumbler it's now on channel 4 and working well

I don't think it's Apple or Billion related- someone I know on another forum had exactly the same problem with a PC, iPhone and Netgear router. Though interestingly, he manually selected the same channel that Auto had, and the problems disappeared

Edited by billford (Wed 15-Jun-11 13:36:02)

I started getting drop outs on my Airport Express & Airport Extreme's a year or so ago; took me ages to work out what was causing it.....

It's the later firmwares for these that cause my problems.

Downgrading to 7.3.2; and I can stream HD videos no problem at all; going up to 7.5.2 (or anything higher than 7.3.2 in fact) caused juddering video, and random disconnections.

Might be worth a go at downgrading the firmware on the Airport first.

Alan

I had issued on 7.5.2 as well, similar to what is listed here.

Back to 7.4.2 and all is fine. Have tried 7.5.2 since but same issue.

Matt

How do you go about reverting an Airport device back to an earlier firmware release?

First off, download the firmware that you want to downgrade to - it can be found on the Apple website here {edit - that link doesn't work really - it looks like it'll take you to places to download the firmware from, but they don't work - nice job Apple}

Once you have the firmware, start up Airport Utility, highlight your Airport and click Manual setup.

Go to the 'Base Station' drop down menu, and select 'Upload firmware'

A window will appear, and in the 'Upload Version' box, select 'Other...' {edit: Hopefully you will have older firmwares listed in the drop down list, as you can't download older firmwares at the moment}

Choose the firmware file that you downloaded earlier, and upload that to the router. {edit: as above}

Alan

It looks like there are 2 links for the 7.3.2 firmware:

1 - version 107 (this one works on my Airport Express)

2- version 106

3 - version 105 (this one works on my Airport Extreme)

4- version 104

If one doesn't work, try the other - it'll warn you if it's the wrong version for your device, and won't let you proceed (well that's my experience anyway)

Thanks, I'd never noticed that "Upload firmware" on the menu

So the tricky bit is finding the firmware file... that figures


eta- we crossed in the router... thanks for those links

Edited by billford (Sun 19-Jun-11 13:43:08)