Airport Drops and requires Mac Restart

Question

I'm new to the board and apologize if this has been covered elsewhere, but 25 or so minutes of searching didn't get me where I hoped to be. I just bought a new airport express base station for the sole purpose of listening to my itunes catalog on the living room stereo. I have an imac and a windows tower and thus no need for wireless internet access. I hooked the airport express up in the living room and instantly its generic network name was available in Internet Connect. I configured it with a new name etc. and right away my music was on the stereo.
The problem is that after a few hours, the network goes down (completely unavailable in the airport selection dropdown box), and won't come online again until I restart the mac. Unplugging the airport express for a few minutes does nothing to solve the problem. The airport has the latest firmware update and the mac has the latest 10.4. Any ideas what I can do to keep this thing up for longer than a few hours. Thanks so much.
iMac Core Duo   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

Hi all,
I have the exact same problem.
Background:
MacBook Pro
OS X 10.4.11
Router: Billion 7404VGP (ADSL2+ modem + wireless router + voIP)
Airport Express Firmware v6.3
Previously I had been using a Netcomm Wireless router with WEP encryption. I got my AE to join that for ~5mths & everything worked great.
I've recently had to change ISP & modem/router (hence the Billion) & set up the AE in the exact same way as the Netcomm, but now with WPA2 encryption. And the AE becomes 'undetectable' but iTunes & Airport Admin Utility after a certain amount of time (I have noted my router's renewal interval's 3600s also, so that must be the time after which the AE drops off).
I have scoured websites/forums everything for a solution, but so far with no success. I have even read somewhere that ensuring SSID broadcast is ON in the router settings solves it. If it does, it hasn't yet for me.
I have called Mac Customer Support (In Australia) a few times about this issue, each time with no satisfactory outcome.
I wondered if I made my encryption back to WEP (as opposed to WPA2), maybe the key renewal interval stops being an issue, and the AE would stop dropping off?
(I'm not very technically minded, so don't REALLY know the different btw WEP & WPA2 except that WPA2's encryption's much better).
I wondered also: instead of using my AE to join my existing network, what if I made it a WDS client? I had read somewhere that WPA2 & WDS do not work together, and a WDS can only be set up with WEP encryption.
Can AirTunes still work if the AE is a WDS client?
If I tried (really hard) to set up a WDS with WEP encryption, would my AE stop 'disappearing from iTunes?'
The whole notion of having to physically unplug & replug the AE just to get AirTunes working most times is really defeating the purpose of having a wireless network!
Has anyone out there found a solution for this apparently common problem yet?
Many thanks,
Leo