I use both Twonkyvision and Firefly to play my music on two different NAS drives running linux. I play it most of the day. It doesn't matter what server I am using to play my music, they both go down for no apparnat reason. I get a message on my Roku that it's lost communication with the server. I then get a message that it is trying to play the next song and it doesn't. It goes to the next song and so on. Sometimes, the communication will come back. I don't know enough about linux so I need some help. How can I prevent this from happening? Is there something I need to configure so I don't lose communication with either server? Thank you.



Scot

Hi Scot,

This does not sound like a Linux problem. It could be, if there is some other process running to interrupt things every so often, but both Twonky and Firefly are very stable under Linux - my current up-time is 125 days since my last reboot, and that was for hardware related reasons. What platform (hardware, Linux distro) are you using?

I suspect it is much more likely that your SoundBridge has a failing power supply (a very common problem if the unit is some years old), or that the connection to the server (wifi? wired?) is failing for some reason.

Which SoundBridge model do you have? This will help us point you in the right direction.

Regards,

Les.

Hi Les,

Thanks for your response. For Twonkyvision, I am using a Maxtor Shared Storage Two with openmss installed with coyote. For Firefly, I am using a Pogoplug with an attached usb hard drive. Firefly at times has gone down. I have no idea what version of linux they are running.
You just rang a bell with me. There was a couple noticeable changes. They were a brand new cable modem and router. When i installed it, I was getting dropped a lot. When I called Linksys tech support, the gentleman informed me that I had to map a mac address onto it which is what I did and stabled the network. When I am runnning Firefly on eithe one on my Roku Soundbridge 1001, I was getting disconnected either wired or wireless. I am thinking now it is probably my router causing the problem. The router is a Linksys E2000 which is a 1 gigabyte router. That makes sense. If you can think of something else, let me know. If there is anything else you need to know, just ask. Thansk Les.



Scot

Hi Scot,

I am not convinced that the router is to blame. I am not sure what the MAC address thing was about - MAC filtering? or fixing an IP address for a particular MAC address? or something else?

So to try to narrow this down a bit.... You say that Firefly has gone down. Does Twonky also disappear sometimes? or if not disappear, at least fail to respond? (Twonky and Firefly use different protocols to communicate with the Soundbridge, and if the router is responsible then it's possible that only one or the other might be affected.)

The E2000 looks like a nice router, but I don't see that it would drop the connection - especially if running wired to the SoundBridge.

I'd like to check the power supply since it is a known weak point. Do you have access to a voltmeter? It would be useful to check the supply into the SoundBridge while it is running - carefully use the meter probes to slightly pierce the insulation of the 5 volt DC power cable. Note - the SoundBridge must be connected - measuring without will most likely give a good reading, but it would not be the same as when everything is connected.

Les.

(v late here - will catch up tomorrow)

Hi Les,

Thanks Les. I was just on the phone with the Linksys people. I thought they could give me some ideas. Boy was I wrong. I upgraded the router to the latest firmware since it came out in the beginning of this month.
The mapping of he computer MAC address onto the router was because my internet connection was dropping. Ever since I did that, it is stablized.
To play my music, I compile playlists and then I play them on The Soundbridge. It seemed that the longer I played the music on the wired Soundbridge, it would likely go down. I was playing music off of Firefly lst week. The playlist was playing about 6 hours, then I lost communication. When I went to look for the server, it had dissappeared off of the Soundbridge. On the Soundbridge that is wireless, I started to play a playlist in about a few minutes, I lost the connection.
Since I was having issues with Firefly, I played my music through Twonkyvision. Just yesterday I was playing music from Twonkyvision and I lost communication with the server.
I know it sounds hard to believe that the router is dropping the connection but it happens on both Twonkyvision and Firefly so the logical thing would be a problem with the router. I am hoping that the firmware I applied will fix the problem but I won't know until I observe it for a few days.
I know it is not a power supply issue. One of my Soundbridges went dark because of the power supply. I bought two of them and used one on Soundbridge connected wirelessly. I have to monitor the situation. The linksys person told me that it could be a problem with the router and to apply the firmware which I did. I can't think of anything else I can do.



Scot

scooterg wrote:

I know it is not a power supply issue. One of my Soundbridges went dark because of the power supply. I bought two of them and used one on Soundbridge connected wirelessly. I have to monitor the situation. The linksys person told me that it could be a problem with the router and to apply the firmware which I did. I can't think of anything else I can do.

Hi Scot,

Since you've been there before with power supplies, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. And it could still be the router. I once had a Belkin which fell over if given too much to do for an hour or so.... and I won't bore you with may adventures with Linksys routers and VPN clients....

Do you have any possibility to borrow a different make/model of router for a day or two just to see how things behave then...?

Les.

Hi Les,

I know now it is the router. I upgraded the firmware on it last night and everything seemed ok. This morning when I got up, I can't talk to anything on my internal network but I can get onto the internet. I rebooted the router but that didn't help. I used to have another router but that one had problems with it also. I wish I had another to borrow but I don't. I have never seen anything like this before. After the reboot, I get some strange results. The twonkyvision server is completely down. The Firefly server is up but neither one of the Roku's see's it. Also, there is no firewall because I turned it off a while ago so that is not a factor.
This is why I suspect the router and nothing else at this point.



Scot

Hi Bregent,

Thanks for your input. I did some research this morning and it seems that others have had problems with these routers being unreliable. I did go out an purchase a new router and I am configuring everything back. The weirdest thing was when I first got the Linksys E2000 I had to map a mac address onto it because my internet kept dropping out. I don't think that will happen with this router or at least I hope it doesn't. Since I upgraded the firmware last night, I wasn't getting anything to show up. There is a possibility of some kind of corruption in the routing table but who knows. I am pretty much washed up on Linksys Tech support. They are usesless! I will take your suggestion of puttting static ip addresses on the Soundbridges. Thanks Bregent.


Scot

Hi Les and Bregent,

I wanted to giv you an update. Bought a new Linksys Valet Plus yesterday and installed it. I configured the servers and Soundbridges to have static ip addresses. So far so good. It is stable so far. I will post another message in a week to let you know if the problem has been solved. Thanks for your help!


Scot

Hi Scot,

Thanks for the update. Static IP's can help a lot - it depends on the router and the network environment. Also, some routers allow you to fix the IP address against the MAC addresses of the devices in the router settings, so you don't need to fix the IP at each device. However, I suspect things will be more solid if you do fix per device so that they are not using DHCP to get addresses from the router. Let us know how it goes.

Les.

Hi Les,

Thanks for your response. I actually reserved the ipaddresses with the Mac address on the E2000 but did not seem to matter. When I unplugged the router, the DHCP addresses changed anyway even though I reserved them. Very odd. The weirdest thing was the disconnections that occurred when I was playing the music either from Twonkyvison or from Firefly. I am happy to report that everything is working as it is supposed to be. I had purchased the Linksys Valet Plus, put the one music server and the Soundbridges on static ip addresses. The Pogoplug that I have that runs Firefly, there is no way to put that on a static ipaddress because the Pogoplug doesn't support it yet or maybe never will. There is one other thing. I bought the E2000 back in March. It was brand spanking new back then. There were no comments said about it. Now I read that some people had inconsistent network problems with it. There similar problems with the Valet Plus. My conclusion from that is, Linksys has some Quality Control issues and there is nothing anyone can do about that. It is unfortunate I had to spend $100 on the E2000. I didn't even want to send it back to Linksys for another router. I just couldn't trust it anymore. The last think is I don't have to map a Mac address onto the Valet Plus when I am on the internet. It just works! Thanks to you Les and Bregent for your suggestions. They lead me down the path to solved this. I appreciate it very much!