I upgraded my old Lynksys 802.11g router to an Apple Airport Extreme (v7.2.1) 802.11n, and my Soundbridge M1000 (v 3.0.44) promptly stopped working. The M1000 can see my access point, but then it timesout when connecting to the Airport. If I turn OFF WEP at the Airport, or connect the M1000 via. cable to the airport, then the soundbridge M1000 works great, but this is not acceptable from a security standpoint or a physical layout standpoint. All other wireless devices in my house seem to work fine with Apple airport, although I have not tried the WII. However, the PSIII and all the laptops (Windows and MAC) work fine, as well as the new Apple TV (which is why I really wanted the higher speed from the airport extreme 802.11n).

Any work-arounds yet?

I would really hate to have to switch to another Apple product for the bedroom. I really like the big display and the remote on my M1000. Its perfect for the bedroom, where I refuse to have a TV. And those little apple spoolers that must be controlled from the PC (hard to do at 3AM when you need some relaxing music, but dont want to have to get out of bed and log into the PC). I want my M1000 to work with the Apple Airport extreme! Please provide some kind of work around.

Thanks,
Wayne

I too have an M1000 and am running AP Extreme. I have spent hours trying to get this thing running to no avail.
Somebody throw me a bone here: I will not run without 128 bit WEP and prefer WPA. What can be done to make this work?
The things been idle for months now and am regreting the purchase...

Sorry to reply to my own post.

I finally found a thread&post (see below) that indicates that Roku does not plan on supporting the Apple Airport Extreme in the "TSN" WEP mode.

Bummer. Any suggestions for a workaround?

As a last resoirt, I am thinking about connecting my old wireless router/WAP to a port on the Airport, but I think this might impair the wireless-n performance.

Any better ideas?

Thanks,
Wayne

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RokuDaveC wrote:

Hi again,

Here's the lowdown... The WEP used on the "Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n with Gigabit Ethernet" is NOT standard WEP. It is 'transitional security network WEP'. Apple have an issue logged here

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305213

which describes the problem. Basically, 3rd party wireless devices 'may not connect' to the AP. This is slightly ambiguous as it could mean 'are not allowed to connect' or just 'possibly won't connect'. I suspect it's the latter...

However, it is possible to get standard WEP on this AP but to do so involves running in 802.11b/g mode i.e. disabling 802.11n. Quoting from here:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/airport802_11n/topic4545.html

1) "legacy" WEP is not compatible with 802.11n draft. Switching to this mode requires disabling the 802.11n protocol, thereby eliminating this router's best feature, and potentially showing the AppleTV in a bad light, which is probably why Apple decided to leave the feature out and strong arm people into using radio modes that guarantee good performance.

2) To activate WEP, you need to select a non-802.11n radio mode; from the Airport/Wireless tab, hold command (or control on Windows) while clicking on the "Radio Mode" tab, and select the appropriate non-n mode, for instance "802.11b/g compatible". WEP 40bit and 128bit become options in the "Wireless Security" popup. Unlike with the "Transitional" mode, you can specify a hexadecimal key by prefixing it with a dollar sign.

When I followed the steps described, the airport utility rejected an ASCII password and insisted (by implication!) on a hex password (without any prefix - straight hex digits). Once this was done, the Soundbridge then connected and worked properly.

Based on the fact we just found out about it, there are no current plans to support WEP (TSN) though we will investigate some more.

Hope this helps,

DaveC.

http://forums.rokulabs.com/viewtopic.php?p=81404 is the link to that thread posting, if anybody wants to look at that thread.

Well I tried to use my Linksys with the Apple Airport extreme, but that did not work well... and I am not sure it ever would have.

So I bit the bullet and converted all my other wireless devices from WEP to WPA. (Seven devices in total)

And now itunes and the Roku are talking just fine through the apple airport extreme. And I admit it is nice to be using the more secure WPA protocol, although I doubt I needed it.

Also it took a lot less time, than I 1st thought to convert all those other wireless devices to WPA. Only one windows-vista laptop acts a little odd with the WPA, but I was able to find a work-around for the laptop.

So I am good! I have my Roku working back in the bedroom.

Thanks,
Wayne

Hello:

Just got a new airport extreme, which is coolio. I'm running 802.11n (b/g compatibility mode) - I need 802.11n.

I can't connect with my Roku - it sees the network, but cannot connect.

I am running an open network right now, so this is not a security thing - can't connect.

I'm seeing discussion around this topic related to connect and WEP/WAP - wondering if there is a definitive answer - should be m1000 be able to connect via 802.11n open network?

Assuming the answer above it "yes", what alternatives do I have for security?

Any help is appreciated.

Many thanks.

parki...

I'm using my M1001 (latest firmware) with an Airport Extreme (latest firmware) with the extreme in (2.4Ghz) B+G+N mode. The wireless security is set to WPA/WPA2 and I have no problems with it.

If your M1000 is really an M1000 (ie not an M1001 just with the wrong/old model printed on the case) then it won't work with WPA security, but I would have thought it would work successfully with WEP or no security as long as it was seeing good signal strength and your base station was on a channel with little interference... Have you tried setting some other channel on the Airport Extreme, in case it is an interference problem, or moving the devices temporarily close to each other to see if that yields a different outcome?

When you try to connect, is anything logged in Airport Utility (go to Manual Setup, click the Advanced tab, then press the Logs and Statistics button)?


ted.h.

Okay - it's working now, and i have the airport extreme base station access control doing security on the MAC address.

I have no idea why it wasn't working before - I unplugged it, un/re-plugged the wifi card (802.11b) and set it back up.

All nice now.

Thanks.

parki...

Just a quick note to those of you out there considering using the Soundbridge radio with Apple's Airport Extreme... They work well together, expect for the fact that you need to use WPA, not WEP for security. The hex value for WPA is a pain to enter (as it is a very long key), but you only have to do this once. My signal strength improved by about 25% over Apple's Airport Express. Signal noise was also reduced. Nothing special was done to configure Airport Express except that I had to use b/g/n compatibility.