The Roku has always been fairly flaky when it comes to multiple hops. The two typical situations are when both the server and client are connected wirelessly, or when some sort of range extender is used.

You're able to connect when you take the Belkin range extender out of the loop, so that seems to be the culprit. I doubt if anybody is going to be able to tell you if the problem lies with Roku hardware, Roku software, 3rd party licensed code, or the firmware and hardware in your BT wireless hub and Belkin equipment.

One thing that might help is if you can try a Belkin router to go along with your Belkin range extender, since we know that at least one person has that working, and it's less likely that are hidden incompatibilities between equipment from the same vendor. Updating the firmware in your various devices might help as well.

Getting a router with better range is probably the best option. Otherwise, look for a wired solution, such as homeplug.

I have been discussing this issue on the Firefly forum as well in the hope that someone there may be able to assist. Ron (the firefly expert) has recently posted the following information, which I wanted to share with you in case it prompts any settings or fixes from anyone here.

rpedde wrote:

Duffledorf wrote:

Likewise, having connected to a music library, if I stop Firefly or close itunes, the Soundbridge still thinks they are there and lets me choose them and then says "Connection to server failed". This means that regardless of if the library is active or not, the Soundbridge is not interacting with it through the Belkin, except when I do a restart.

Discovery works via multicast dns.

When firefly (or itunes) starts, it sends pre-caching announcements to the other mdns servers on the network via multicast. These will look like udp packets from the device to 224.0.0.251 port 5353.

Once it's up, it doesn't spam those anymore. Instead it waits for mdns queries (which again look like udp 5353 to 224.0.0.251) from the device asking for servers that have a specific service. The server should respond, and everything is okay.

It looks to me like something isn't right with multicast on your setup. Like multicast is only going one-way across the link.

You can try double-checking all your devices and seeing if they have an option to enable IGMP or multicast, or maybe even something about media streaming.

Failing that, I don't know a way to *make* the devices work with multicast (other than a round of firmware updates, potentially).

- Ron

Thanks for your comments Mark, I am resisting the temptation to go buy more kit until I can identify the problem, as there is no guarantee that a new router or a new extender will solve the problem. So I am still trying to exhaust the settings issues. While buying a Belkin router may make for better compatability, I have had so much trouble with the extender that it has put me off buying Belkin products. I guess you are right that the best option is a more powerful router, but admit I never know what to look for in what indicates the signal strength of a router - any advice?

Duff

Did anybody get to the bottom of this? I have had 3 soundbridges running for years, sometimes for hours at a time, with no problem. I recently installed a new M1000, by ethernet, connected to firefly, also via ethernet, via a BT Homehub 3, and I am getting this 70 minutes cutoff problem. Don't know what to try next, having been through wireless connections, different router, a different M1000, but always getting the symptoms described above.
Guy
Sorry my setup has changed over the years. Now Win7, firefly 16xx, i think. itunes 11.