Anyone know why a brand new ZTE zxv10 w300 modem/router would continually kick my Apple Airport Express off the network?

November 23, 2011 9:10 PM

Anyone know why a brand new ZTE zxv10 w300 modem/router would continually kick my Apple Airport Express off the network?

I've been using an Apple Airport Express to stream music from my laptop to my stereo for about a year, with no problems.

Recently, my main modem/router broke down, so now I have a new ZTE zxv10 w300 modem/router from my ISP, which is mostly working fine.

However, I can no longer stream music as before. Running the AirPort Utility and trying to find the Airport Express over the wifi network mostly results in "Airport Utility was unable to find any AirPort wireless devices" messages.

If I connect the AE to the network via Ethernet cable, I can then find and configure it. Removing the cable and then trying to reach the AE over the wifi network again results in failure.

I've tried every type of AE reset method I can find on the Net, and even bought a second Airport Express to see if my original unit had a hardware issue. It exhibits the same issues as the first.

Any ideas? I'm flummoxed. Let me know if there's any other info I can provide. Tia.

posted by kaboomer to Computers & Internet (20 answers total)

Is broadcast/multicast disabled on your router? Did your ips change internally?
posted by devnull at 12:10 AM on November 24, 2011

Multicast is still at default setting: Enabled/IGMP v2.

Not sure about ips - what does that mean?
posted by kaboomer at 9:37 AM on November 24, 2011

Just noticed that I can successfully ping the Airport Express over the network from my laptop.

That's bizarre, right?
posted by kaboomer at 9:50 AM on November 24, 2011

So your network looks like this: you have a single router that connects you to the internet. The router also has a wireless access point built in. Everything connects to this router. Is that right?

I suspect that the wireless network doesn't have multicast available or is doing some kind of packet filtering/firewalling.
posted by devnull at 4:18 AM on November 25, 2011

"So your network looks like this: you have a single router that connects you to the internet. The router also has a wireless access point built in. Everything connects to this router. Is that right?"

Yes, that's right.
posted by kaboomer at 12:37 PM on November 25, 2011

Try checking if your wireless network has a separate firewall or separate settings (multicast, broadcast, etc) from the rest of your router.
posted by devnull at 11:33 PM on November 29, 2011

Hmmm...doesn't seem to, though I'm not sure I'd know for certain if it did.

I've disabled the only firewall I can find in the settings, but I did that initially, last week, so I don't think that has to do with the problem.
posted by kaboomer at 8:19 PM on December 1, 2011

Just reset the AE and tried again. I can configure the AE to create its own wireless network and then successfully stream music from my laptop to the AE. Of course, when I do that, I'm no longer connected to my modem/router and the internet, which negates the whole point.

Switching my laptop back to the home wifi network generated by the modem/router results in laptop's inability to find the AE, which starts the whole cycle anew...

Does this provide any clues?
posted by kaboomer at 11:12 AM on December 2, 2011

Just spent another hour working on this, with no results. Anyone with an idea as to what the problem might be? Tia!
posted by kaboomer at 11:07 AM on December 4, 2011

Show us some traceroutes to the wireless modem, to the router, and to somewhere else (like 8.8.8.8)
posted by devnull at 11:39 PM on December 4, 2011

Thanks, devnull.

Here are traceroutes to the router/modem and to 8.8.8.8. I can't generate one for the AirportExpress because my computer can't find it, of course. Do these help?


TO ZTE MODEM/ROUTER
traceroute to 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 167.185 ms 1.050 ms 0.782 ms

traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.517 ms 2.459 ms 0.993 ms
2 70-36-234-1.dsl.dynamic.sonic.net (70.36.234.1) 6.844 ms 5.501 ms 6.418 ms
3 gig1-2.cr1.hywrca01.sonic.net (70.36.201.5) 5.556 ms 5.975 ms 5.443 ms
4 po6.cr1.snjsca11.sonic.net (75.101.33.194) 7.168 ms 7.915 ms 5.746 ms
5 0.xe-7-0-0.gw3.equinix-sj.sonic.net (64.142.0.105) 11.257 ms 7.025 ms 7.866 ms
6 eqixsj-google-gige.google.com (206.223.116.21) 8.212 ms 9.297 ms 8.146 ms
7 216.239.49.170 (216.239.49.170) 8.987 ms 10.031 ms
216.239.49.168 (216.239.49.168) 9.488 ms
8 209.85.249.4 (209.85.249.4) 8.753 ms 10.458 ms 10.512 ms
9 64.233.175.223 (64.233.175.223) 10.234 ms 10.590 ms 9.763 ms
10 google-public-dns-a.google.com (8.8.8.8) 9.799 ms 11.258 ms 10.501 ms
posted by kaboomer at 6:29 PM on December 5, 2011

Okay, I also switched to the separate network being broadcast by the AE. Here is the relevant traceroute:


traceroute to 10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1) 2.467 ms 1.184 ms 2.667 ms
posted by kaboomer at 6:47 PM on December 5, 2011

192.168.1.1 and 10.0.1.1 are completely different networks. Did you statically set ip addresses somewhere? Does everything get ips via dhcp? Configure the AE in the same way the rest of your network is configured: either use dhcp or assign it a static ip in the same range as everything else.
posted by devnull at 11:49 PM on December 5, 2011

Thanks, devnull. I know those are two different networks. The issue has been that I can't get the AE to stay connected to the 192.168.1.1 network.

However, it currently seems to be connected, with the ip 192.168.1.4 (everything in my network gets ips via dhcp).

Here's the traceroute:

traceroute to 192.168.1.4 (192.168.1.4), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.4 (192.168.1.4) 129.402 ms 4.042 ms 3.691 ms
posted by kaboomer at 4:26 PM on December 6, 2011

And now it is unreachable via its configuration utility (Airport Utility) again. However, it still shows up as connected in the main router's admin page, with the ip 192.168.1.4.
posted by kaboomer at 4:36 PM on December 6, 2011

What's the reason they are on different networks?
posted by devnull at 12:59 AM on December 9, 2011

They are only on different networks because the only way to reach the AE to configure it is to set it to generate its own network.

When I attempt to configure the AE to join my main modem/router's network - the one that everything else in the house is connected to - I suddenly can no longer reach the AE with its configuration utility. This was the whole problem in the first place - I can't get the AE to stay connected to the main wifi network.
posted by kaboomer at 2:21 PM on December 9, 2011

You need to fix that problem for your multicast to work.
posted by devnull at 5:14 AM on December 10, 2011

Exactly. I need to fix that problem. That was the whole point of my posting here, to learn how to fix that problem. I don't know how to do that. If anyone could explain how to do that, or point me in the direction of another resource that does, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
posted by kaboomer at 10:03 AM on December 10, 2011

Connect your AE with an ethernet cable. Get the AE's MAC address. Configure the AE to get an ip using DHCP when it uses wireless. Disconnect the ethernet cable and restart the AE. Watch your DHCP server's logs for the AE, use the MAC address if necessary. If you see nothing try a different channel on the AE.

Good luck!
posted by devnull at 11:32 PM on December 11, 2011