Network issues... Switch suggestions!

As I understand it any Network switch you purchase will be driven by a network cable from one of the ports on your router. I doubt whether the switch is to blame so will be interested to hear how you get on with both the Superuniti and the NAS connected direct to the router.

Until you know for sure it all works fine direct off the router I would be cautious about blaming the switch.

regards

Geoff

I had similar issues. You need to get all the components plugged in directly to the switch with cable. No wi-fi at all; it's just not reliable enough, particularly if you want to use hi-res FLAC. No need to spend £500 on a switch; the NetGear one I use successfully cost £25.

Geoff and Chris, thanks for your replies!

I plugged my NAS directly to my router, and my SuperUniti has not had any problems as I had before yet (been playing for almost an hour now, even hi-res Flac works fine over wifi)

Since connecting the NAS directly to my router ment disconnecting one computer and connecting it to my switch. This computer is running an SQL-server and I am always connected to the server over RDP. Having it connected to the switch has caused my RDP session to disconnect every now and then (10 times in an hour at least), so I guess tomorrow switching it all back will tell for sure but I think it is rather safe to say that the switch is to blame.

I agree it's unlikely to be the switch because this sort of application is trivial for a switch, even for a cheap and nasty one - although not saying your one is.

What are you using to stream the FLAC to your player? You mention a NAS, is your streamer on the NAS or on a seperate PC?

I suspect your streamer might be having issues. I am intriqued by your statement'no buffer issues' on Superuniti... If you mean it stays at 100% - then its not network throughput. BTW upnp uses TCP and so the stream does not need to be totally constant and can be quite accepting of occasional network performance glitches

Simon, my NAS has a built-in DLNA-server.

I listened for about 1 1/2 hour without any issues, when having my NAS connected to the switch I would have glitches on 50% of the songs played.

I ordered a new HP ProCurve 24-port managed switch and it will be delivered tomorrow, so if my problem wasn't caused by my old switch I will hopefully see something in the new switch's log.

BTW, my old switch was an old DLink switch that, when googled it, is notorious for failing.

I guess I can also try applying static IP on my SuperUniti and my NAS, and just having my SuperUniti, NAS and my new switch connected if my problems persists.

Ok good, it sounds like you have it in hand. I am intrigued by your buffer statement as that would imply its not stream related. But hopefully your new switch will sort things out.

Naim recommend you use only an un-managed switch fro streaming audio and the dealer who supplied you this should know that because it was part of the Naim Network Training program. He should also be resolving your network issues for you instead of selling you a black box and you sort yourself out!

I am sorry but that really is bad advice if indeed it is Naim's approach as you say.... As a qualified network design engineer who has designed hundreds of commercial and some SOHO  implementations streaming audio and video I would NOT use unmanaged switches unless through careful qualification. In a home LAN environment where the demands are usually (butfee finitely not always) trivial an unmanaged switch is cheaper and supports a basic set of uncinfigurable options which often (but not always) would suffice for the consumer and can be RECOMMENDED on that basis. But many managed switches default to a valid config with no user intervention required.

However if one is advising or designing  one should qualify the environment and requirements FIRST before determining whether a managed switch is required, rather than blindly recommending that you should use an  unmanaged s witch. Such considerations include IGMP snooping, Spanning Tree protocol, VLANs, QoS, Lauer 2 forwarding parameters etc.

For any dealer or person wanting to design, configure and recommend home / small officI network implementations with confidence can I recommend the Cisco CCENT qualification. Even if you don't take the exam and only study the course, you will find clarity will prevail (and despite being Cisco, the theory is mostly generic, and standards based).. This qualification is designed to get the novice to the first level of network design, implantation and debugging for the smaller implementation. It also addresses wifi, bridges, collision domains and IPV6, and there are mainy questions raised that match its syllabus on this forum.

Simon

For my money i would have checked the ethernet cables first. Did you use the cable connecting the switch to the router as the nas to the router?

Well you may want to argue that with Naim. They have their reasons and I can tell you it is based on an intimate knowledge of their products and how they are supposed to interact with the network.

Much of what you say here is in fact correct but this is NOT and IT environment and there are differences that just matter!

This chaps problem probably is not his switch, but the point here is he has been left in the lurch by the dealer who sold him it or he wash´t prepared to pay the dealer to install it properly, including the network. That is the big issue here

Gordon

Really can't blame the dealer here, I guess it is maybe a bit different here in Sweden how the Naim dealer operates but it is not very common having the dealer installing the hifi gears.

However, I had a ND5 XS and it did work like a charm (had it for a couple of months around Christmas) and nothing has really been changed in my network topology since then. I bought my SuperUniti some weeks ago and I had issues with it directly.

Everything is ok when connecting my NAS directly to my router but connecting my NAS to my switch makes the problem reappear. Got my new switch installed today, HP ProCurve, and now it works having the NAS connected to the switch.

So everything is fine, for now

Fine but the point is you should have asking your dealer on these issues and if he cannot support them he cannot sell these products, that is why there has been formal training done by Naim. These are not simple " hifi gears " anymore!

Gordon

Ok - but it is FOOLISH to blindly advise network equipment for ANY connected equipment whether Naim or not without qualifying first what you are trying to do PERIOD  - and I can assure you there is no magic with Naim at the L2 frame level its all IT. Its like walking into the road without looking. you may be lucky..

and I would seriously question the validity of any network training that recommends  otherwise (speaking as someone who sometimes develops ICT training programmes)

"Well you may want to argue that with Naim. They have their reasons and I can tell you it is based on an intimate knowledge of their products and how they are supposed to interact with the network."

I am sorry - I don't mean to be disrespectful - but in the context of a L2 managed switch switch or un managed switch, this to me is absolute poppycock sir!

So lets agree to disagree.

Somchie its great you new managed ProCurve is working - you were right that Dlink must have been a terrible piece of rubbish.

Which Procureve did you go for out of interest? 

Simon

Hi Simon,

Whilst I understand that you have an in depth knowledge of networking and what you are saying is not incorrect can I suggest that it is not really applicable to this instance of fairly low requirement (bandwidth wise) streaming. (As an aside - we *REQUIRE* the use of a carefully qualified managed switch for use with our NaimNet product set that uses IGMP routing very heavily to maintain performance.)

From what he has described, there is no reason to immediately assume that the original poster should require a managed switch to resolve his issue and there is no reason why any normal user should require a managed switch to implement any system using a Uniti series product, in which case suggesting the use of a managed switch is essential is really muddying the waters for the typical user and possibly even frightening them into believing that the products are difficult to set up and configure - I would expect that had he replaced his d-Link with a simple NetGear ProSafe unit it would work just as well.

A managed switch offers an incredible amount of versatility and flexibility but can also be “inadvertently” set up in many different ways (possibly so as to block UPnP discovery or UPnP traffic or to segragate ports etc.) and in the hands of anyone who doesn’t understand what they are doing they could easily be the cause of a non functioning installation which – realistically - we (Naim) or the dealer would be unable to support, ergo, recommending a good quality unmanaged switch for a Uniti series product within a typical domestic environment is a very sensible standpoint to take - in fact we had an instance of exactly this only last week where a managed switch (and it was an HP ProCurve switch by coincidence) that was installed by a customers "IT Guy" turned out to have IGMP/Multicast filtering enabled by default which had the effect that after a period of time all the customers UPnP servers would appear to vanish from the customers network until the Uniti was rebooted.

ATB

Phil

Phil - I couldnt agree more - my point was that I was confident Naim would not be blindly recommending a specific switch, router WAP - you name it,  with out qualifying its environment and use FIRST, hence why i recommend anyone advocating/recommending networks have at LEAST a CCENT accreditation - if they don't walk the other way as there is a possibility they don't really know what they are talking about - let alone design or debugging it for optimum performance. Of course there are some instances where you have a ring of switches / bridges / WAP / ethernet over mains/  if they are all unmanaged they will network storm and fail your network... hence whay I say always check first...

Again it looked like the voodoo dolls were being dusted for an outing of "managed switch sounds less good that an unamanged switch" which clearly is ridiculous and does nothng to bolster confidence in networked audio for the less intiated.

And we know about issues with IGMP with certain consumer routers and WAPs not supporting it correclty so uPNP / Airplay stops wotking correctly.. in fact I remember noting this on this on a recent beta programme 

Cheers

Simon

Absolutely ... I have a vermin - erm - I mean Virgin SuperHub here at home which nowadays has a "Cablemodem" mode that can be activated to turn off all its routing and WiFi functions and makes it a basic, dumb (but fast) cablemodem that can be attached to the WAN port of a *DECENT* router.

I take a little pride in believing that I had a little something to do with that after spending a weekend with a friend (who is a fairly senior contract developer for a certain red logo'd broadcast media company and quite conveniently had the email address of the SuperHub project manager) tearing that wonderful device apart and reporting on its - erm - shortcomings.

Phil

i used to work for a celestial three lettered broadcast company - and shall we say some of the compromises - I mean design considerations that went into their STBs so as to keep the cost down was rather erm... interesting  

That is excellent, I have a HP ProCurve in the house - it is 1990s model, but it still works perfectly. I think if you buy switches from companies like HP or Juniper then they may cost a little more, but they are really first class - a bit like Motala's bandy team.

These HP and Juniper are both managed switches, but unless you want to use the feature set then you can just use them as easily as you would a hub, My Juniper switch is also a firewall and intrusion protection system so it keeps my home network relatively safe. I have a small Cisco router currently doing WAN duties to connect to ADSL, but I'll replace it with a Juniper when I get around to it. I find IOS a bit too much sometimes, where as I know my around JunOS.

I use an Apple Airport Extreme for wireless - mine is set up as a wireless access point - my wireless and wired network are in the same sub-network, the Cisco router does the DHCP. 

So I think you have made a good choice with your switch and I hope you are enjoying your ND5XS.

If only the world had adopted AppleTalk instead of IP everything would have just worked 

> Hence why i recommend anyone advocating/recommending networks have at LEAST a CCENT accreditation 

So does my lowly JNCIP-SEC not count 

Guy, come come IOS is yes... a little ideosynchratic, but like riding a bike, once learnt, you never forget - and if you know IOS you will be able to work your way around a recent HP managed PRoCurve device

And I maintain the Apple Airport Extreme is one fantastic WAP for the money that supports multicast very well for our streaming solutions. (Apple or uPNP)

Oh I think you'll find your JNCIP-SEC is above the standard of the CCENT

Bwahahahaaha!!!!

Phil

Simon, Phil

You guys should go for Apple Certification - you'd love it

How do you configure a network printer?

A. You allocate a fixed IP address that is not in the local subnet

B. You insert a firewall between the printer and your Mac and devote the rest of your day to configuring it

C. You use magic voodoo dust and a suitable spell

D. You plug it in to to your network, switch on at the mains and it just works

As long as you look for magic phrase it just works you pass

It is some time since I took the test, but the level was as above - I scraped through, just.

All the best, Guy  

Anyway, I'm too old for more exams so hoping I can remember enough about IP networks to get the NDS to work when it is available, as the demo at Bristol showed just how good this device was.   

I'm saying nothing...

Phil

Ahh..... that explains why mine only talks to my netbook PC and old Windows laptop. For this novice the MAC just puts its nose in the air and insists on a USB connection

I am sorry, I don´t mean to be disrespectful, but what in fact does " poppycock" mean, sir?