Restart airport router via command line

Question

Is there any way to restart an apple router via the commandline?

Problem: My airport express starts to "give out" every day or so. I usually have to unplug it for a couple of seconds and then plug it back in. By "give out" I mean it isn't connected to the network and is flashing a yellow light. So, I'm looking for an automatic way to restart the express. I've looked into snmp and it doesn't seem like there's a way to send commands, it's only for stats it seems.

To clarify:

I do not care using Command line, or any other means of remotely resetting the router.

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible, check out this link:

https://github.com/samuelthomas2774/airport/wiki/SSH

I stumbled upon this as I was trying to figure out how to remotely reboot the Airport Extreme while having “setup over WAN” disabled, but still having VPN access to a server in the local network.

Apparently using the node-acp utility it is as simple as running

acp --host airport-extreme.local --password password reboot

Answer 2

It's not possible to access the Airport Express from the command line.

If you want to dig into SNMP and are comfortable with Java, you can look at the code for the latest version of the Linux version of Airport Utility on Ubuntu Launchpad.

Answer 3

If this is the current AppleTV-styled revision, it should most certainly be under warranty, and the best solution is probably replacing it, not rebooting it.

If it's the old 802.11g brick-style model, you'll want to try an earlier firmware unless you absolutely cannot live without multi-speaker AirPlay. The last firmware update for the 802.11g models has an issue with some (generally earlier) units and will crash after some time. Rolling back to firmware 6.1.1 resolves the issue.