Leaf disables Apple Airport wireless internet connection

[TimeBandits]

I've had my Leaf since Dec 2011. I've noticed my internet connection has been dropping frequently. I noticed it happened a lot when I was out of the house; I'd come home and my connection would be down.

Although I haven't done any testing of any kind it's now pretty apparent that anytime I leave the house and use my Leaf, I lose internet connection and need to reboot my Apple Airport Extreme router. The router is pretty old, maybe 10-15 years. Of course a simple test would be to start the Leaf then come back inside the house to see if it is just the act of turning on the car that causes the issue -- simple test but as I said I haven't done any yet.

Anybody else have similar issues? Fortunately I work from home so there's one daily reboot I don't have which most people likely would.

 

[Cheezmo]

A garage door opener can cause wifi interference but shouldn't do anything that would cause a wireless base station to require rebooting. That is the only think I can think of that could interact with a wifi network that would be related to driving your car.

 

[thankyouOB]

my experience is that old routers need replacing. certainly, 15 years fits that description.
i have several macbooks and any issues disappeared once i updated my router.
these problems predate the LEAF.

 

[GeekEV]

I agree that it's high time to replace that router. It's internal components are probably starting to fail at that age. It's starting to get warmer and noticed that even my newer router would have an issue because it was already situated in a hot location - when the ambient temperature went up that proved too much for it and it became unreliable. Moving it to a cooler location remedied it for me. But that may not be enough for a 15yr old router!

 

[Nubo]

There are no 15 year old Airport Extreme routers. Even the oldest "spaceship" AE routers are just turning 10. If it's square-shaped, it's 6 years old at most.

Out of curiosity, do you have a garage door opener? If so, try cycling that a couple of times without doing anything to the car, and see if it affects your router. I'm thinking along the lines of a spike on the power line.

 

[TimeBandits]

I do not have a garage or garage door opener. The Airport Base Station is circular and likely the 10-year old one mentioned above (i was just taking a quick guess at the age). It cutoff again today when I ran out for 10 minutes to pick the kid up from school. DOH!

 

[JeremyW]

If it's the oldest one, it probably has bad caps in it. If you're handy with a soldering iron, there's a guide to replacing the capacitors here.

 

[EVDRIVER]

Those old Apple routers have many issues, don't bother buying another. Try one of these, I use them all the time even on large networks, it will give you much better range and performance and much faster speed overall. The issue is not the car it's the router.

http://www.amazon.com/AirRouter-802-11g-Featuring-Ubiquiti-AirOS/dp/B007ZJ8KLA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1365601581&sr=8-2&keywords=ubiquiti+airrouter" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[Nubo]

I do not have a garage or garage door opener. The Airport Base Station is circular and likely the 10-year old one mentioned above (i was just taking a quick guess at the age). It cutoff again today when I ran out for 10 minutes to pick the kid up from school. DOH!

Ah, pretty old then. The new dual-band Airport Extreme routers are quite capable and well-regarded. We have the Time Capsule version, which comes in quite handy for backing up my wife's MacBook.

The network drop is still intriguing. Trying hard to imagine the correlation with the car itself. Any lights or devices you habitually switch on/off when you depart or arrive?

Best approach would be to communicate with someone who's watching the network connection as you go about leaving and taking a short drive and determine the exact point where it drops. If it's an arcing switch or something in the house wiring it would be good to know and get repaired, even if a new router would be able to ride through it. If the car's telematics are somehow interfering, then yeah a new router is probably the way to go.

 

[GeekEV]

It's funny how often we draw correlations in what is really just coincidence... I'm guilty as charged as well.