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Recent Airport Extreme issues with Comcast: Green Light but Not Working. FIX FOUND!!!

I suddenly have a client that has been having a lot of problems with their Airport Extreme v5 (A1408) router on Comcast, and I aim to get to the bottom of it.
 
I was remote, my client was pulling the strings.  So I couldn't do a whole ton of diagnostics.  The goal was to get back and running as soon as possible.

On the Apple Airport Extreme, "Green means Good".  Until Now.

Usually, a solid green LED on the Airport series means that everything is A-OK.  But despite the green,  the Extreme didn't seem to be broadcasting its WiFi SSIDs, and the Extreme didn't seem to be talking to the modem.  It was all very sad.  In fact, both the WiFi and Ethernet of the router were non-functional. A hard (power) restart of the modem and router, connectivity came back and would work perfectly well for 5 to 60 minutes, and then the router would "disappear" again.

 The router's LED and the modem lights claimed that everything was A-OK, but the lack of visible WiFi SSIDs said something was not right.

So I *assumed* that something was wrong with the Extreme.  Maybe the WiFi chipset was over-heating and failing.  Or something.

FIX FOUND!

Wow, after a lot of digging, it turns out that the WiFi calling feature of iOS 14.0.0 was crashing the Airport Extreme!  The short of the fix is to make sure all your users are using 14.0.1 or newer.  I'm not sure if Apple will ever patch these older routers, but I hope so!  A client should never be able to crash a piece of network gear.   

Here are the other things I tried before I found the above fix:

Replace my Airport Extreme with a different one

So I found an identical replacement Airport Extreme in my inventory, configured it with my client's configuration, and delivered it.   I also sent out the power brick and the Ethernet cable.  In short, the change means that all the hardware is different EXCEPT the modem, the modem's power adapter, and the Coax cable.Sadly, the weird behavior continued.

Reconfigure my Airport Extreme

So I decided to go after the configuration of the Extreme.

I fooled around with the channel settings.  The problem continued.

Next I disabled the router's IPv6 connection sharing option, because, you know, why not.  Sure, it has been enabled for several years, but it seems worth a try.   Sadly, manipulating the "IPv6 Connection Sharing" didn't fix anything.

Reset the modem and router configurations to Factory Defaults

Next, I reset the modem to factory defaults.  Do to this, I restarted the modem without a coax CATV cable connected, waited a bit, and then went to 192.168.100.1.  From there, I chose the "Reset to Factory Defaults" button.  Note that this button does NOT appear if the modem is connected to cable TV service.

Second, I factory reset the Airport Extreme by holding down the "reset" mini push button.  Then I  reconfigured the Extreme as if it were a brand new router.

Then I used the router for a couple hours, and it seems totally stable.  Then it started to have problems again.

From there, I learned about the WiFi Calling Crashiness, and then all problems were solved!


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