I was recently having an issue with my Airport Express. I was trying to set it up so that I could play music through it. I got it to join my network, but I couldn’t connect to it in iTunes. When I went to go reconfigure it, I found that I also couldn’t connect to it…even though I could see it. I kept getting an error message:
An error occured while trying to access the Apple wireless device. Make sure your network connection is valid and try again. Error 10057
The problem turned out to be a subtle configuration setting with my WiFi. My network is set for WPA with TKIP encryption. However, it appears that Airport Express doesn’t really like to play well with TKIP. Switching the encryption to WPA with TKIP and AES (also called TKIP+AES) fixed the issues. Presumably, setting the network encryption to WPA with AES would also work.
I tried confirming my findings, however I wasn’t able to find anything in the manual or tech specs.
Hopefully, this post helps someone else with a similar problem.
I actually noticed the same thing with the Airport Express we have. Set it up to act as a print server for one of my roommate’s USB printer. Had a heck of a time trying to get it to join our network with WPA/TKIP.
Sure enough WPA/TKIP+AES on the router worked fine.
Where do you seethe TKIP stuff? I couldn’t find it as an option when I went into the router?
Thanks.
@Topper
It depends on what router your using. Check the instructions to find out how to set TKIP.
AES is much more secure than TKIP anyway… I always select exclusively WPA2 & AES when setting up 802.11 networks
Now that my xbox 360 is behind a wireless bridge, I don’t have to support the less secure stuff anymore ^_^
(Yes, I’m totally calling out MicroSoft on their false advertising. )
This post saved my life. I’ve been struggling with my Airport Express for about the last 4 hours. I got it to play music, but it was skippy as it would only connect to my wireless bridge/extender (dd-wrt WRT160N). It wouldn’t connect to my main wireless router (a Comcast netgear crapbox) for unknown reasons. Connecting to bridge “worked”, but there were so many hops going through so much drywall that it would skip every 45 or seconds.
I just moved my network over to TKIP+AES from TKIP and the Airport Express connected to the main router without issue. I’ve been listening skip free for 15 minutes. My life is complete… for now.