wireless 99% OK, then 'streamer not responding'

Might be worth checking if Virgin uses dynamic IP address allocation. Rather than allocate your own settings let the router do it. With BT I only selected the appropriate network and entered the code. The router took care of all the allocating automatically. Setting a static address yourself might be confusing it. Hope this helps. 

Hi spacehopper.

It looks to me that your network setup is ok. Personally, I reserve IP addresses in the router and leave the streamer as delivered to operate via DHCP, but what you have done is fine as long as the correct values have been entered, which in your case they have.

I don’t use wireless so do not have experience of the App; I am therefore unable to help regarding the lack of response by your streamer. AFAIK there is nothing to ‘wake’ in the streamer itself, so suspect that the problem is elsewhere. Although I am with Virgin my connection is via their cable modem with me supplying the router etc, so again I am not familiar with the one you use.

Hopefully someone will be able to offer more constructive advice.

ATB Peter  

AndyPat thanks for the response, I totally agree with you about letting the router do the work...with DHCP everything works fine, except the problem is then much worse, in that I can only connect over wireless by powering the ND5 off/on.  Using a static IP on the ND5 solves this, except I still have this 'streamer not responding' problem.

Beginning to think the router was free for a reason!! 

Thanks Peter, I'll give that another shot, and reserve an address but enable DHCP again on the streamer.  n-Stream has worked perfectly when I had the ND5 connected via ethernet to the router, unfortunately its now relegated to another room with any possibility of hard wiring it.

Try to remove all security temporarely on your wireless, does it work better?

Manu I will certainly give that a try, thanks.  Interestingly I just tried to play a normal flac (16/44.1) track and it took a good minute for the buffer to reach 100% and then after 7 seconds it stopped altogether and n-Stream went back to the full album listing preview.  No idea why that should be.  Only one laptop using our wifi at this same time.

> And I have set the Gateway & DNS1 to the same address as the router - 192.168.1.1

Is you router providing DNS? I you would like at the IP Configuration of one of your other devices that gets its IP from DHCP and check what it sets the Domain Name System address to and set your DNS entry to match this. 

DNS is the name of the server that looks when you send it a name (e.g. www.apple.com) and returns its IP address. This is usually some server on the internet. I would think the ND5 uses DNS to resolve the addresses for Internet radio stations. 

The router should be the default gateway and the subnet mask should be the same as your other devices on the network or your router on its inside interface,which is as you have set it to 255.255.255.0. 

garyi thanks for that...I've just been reading up on 'Using Google Public DNS' and it looks straight forward, even if a fair bit over my head!!

I'll give this a try and see how I get on.

I know that when I set the ND5 to static IP and hadn't altered the Gateway and DNS iRadio would not connect - whether that is relevant or not it works fine now these are set to the same IP as the router.

Not sure I follow when you say the easy check is DHCP?  DHCP works great, but for some reason, overnight usually, I go back to the ND5 and can only get it connecting to the network after powering off and on again....

I'll try using a static IP outside of the routers DHCP range but using google DNS and see what we get!!

Try setting DNS 1: 194.168.4.100 and DNS 2: 194.168.8.100 if you can. See if that works for you, these are Virgin’s settings.

> Guys, I have no idea why you think this is anything to do with DNS. DNS is purely a name resolution process.

If you have eliminated the impossible whatever is left no matter how improbable must be .... 

If it doesn't help then at least we have eliminated it and it is good idea to get it right so that the player can correctly resolve any names it needs to. 

I'd use the addresses Peter has given and see what happens.  

As Gary says setting the DNS often does cure things you don't expect it to, as some bit of code somewhere is trying to resolve a name or reverse look-up an address even if we can't see why it should need to ... 

Try setting your DHCP range from x.x.x.100 to x.x.x.199 and assign (set at the router) your network player a reserved address within that range (e.g., x.x.x.180). This will insure that your player has registered with the router and might help matters when compared to straight-up static IP addressing (set at the player).

Feeling really lucky? Assign by reservation your phone / control point tablet etc. to an address in the same range (say, x.x.x.198).

I stumbled on trying a cheap switch after I had lost connections while trying to copy my music folders around the network and even between Public and Private on my NAS. My Netgear DG832N seemed to get bored with some connections - even though there was traffic still to be passed.

Most bits & bobs are on fixed IPs and these are reserved at the Netgear. This took, me, some planning but, once a list has been noted and reserved on the Router, seems to work well.

The Netgear now connects direct to the internet and the rest of the network passes through the Switch which hangs off the Router.

I suspected a 'timeout' or similar in the Netgear that allowed everything to work for a while and then lost even active connections.

As someone who stumbled through all this I had thought the Netgear should do this. The £10 switch allows everything to work - even though I suspect the Netgear could be disciplined by someone who knew how to persuade it.

Arse -

until 5 seconds after I posted and what has been a 26 hour copy of music fell down. Better than every 40 minutes but I think I'll play a CD - loud.

Hi all, many thanks for all the comment and suggestions, really appreciated.  As a ‘layman’ understanding some of this is a bit of a challenge, but I wanted to post a quick update- I haven’t really had time this last few days to go into this.

Regarding DNS, I briefly did try using Google’s DNS as DNS 1 on the ND5, but this didn’t help.  In fact I just couldn’t get any communication between the router and ND5.  I need to look at this properly.

Something which did suddenly reveal itself was that the QNAP, having been used for nearly a month with no problem, suddenly had a new IP address.  In trying to understand all this I had overlooked the need to issue it with a static IP.  This is strange as both my wife and I have shares mapped on our laptops and without any problems until this sudden change – presumably the router issuing it via DHCP?

Last night was a particularly frustrating evening.  A backup of one of our laptops over wifi meant I could only get 6 seconds of audio before the buffer emptied and then another wait of 6 seconds before more audio!!  Gave up in the end.  Yet this morning I can stream TV from the QNAP and flacs to the ND5 without any problems.  And big surprise the ND5 worked fine...no “Streamer not responding”.

Yesterday I left both the router and ND5 unplugged from the mains for a good 2 hours. The Netgear factory reset again. 

My setting if this helps are:-

The ND5 is set to DHCP. No reservation at the router.

The QNAP (wired to router) is assigned the following:

Static IP: 192.168.1.8  (this is reserved on the router against its MAC address)

Subnet: 255.255.255.0

Gateway 192.168.1.1 (same IP as router)

DNS 192.168.1.1

My iPhone:

DHCP

192.168.1.2

255.255.255.0

Router: 192.168.1.1

DNS: 192.168.1.1

So far so good, but apart from the 2 hour powerdown of the units, and using a static IP for the QNAP, and no reservation for the ND5, I can't see anything that's changed??!!

Cheers,

Bryan

Bryan, glad you have it working. If you are using DHCP sometimes you can't do changes instantly - unless your DHCP gives you control to force release leases. Therefore sometimes you have to let your DHCP timeout. This is also true for ARP tables, these should flush and rebroadcast if they do not get a response on a port to a particular MAC address. The ARP table maps IP address to MAC addresses to port/interface. (Within your own single  LAN network it is actually the MAC address that is the most important - not the IP address - but that is taken care of for you.) Therefore again if you are plugging and unplugging LAN components - depending n the 'quality' of your switch or switch/router it can be best to power cycle with consumer stuff, and let everything start up from scratch  - or give a long time out..

With industrial equipment you have total control over these parameters and so is not a problem - but for consumer to keep things simple, this is sometimes the penalty.

Simon