UnitiServe & NAS disappear from N-Serve

The change to the IP address certainly could be the root of the problem.  I'm pretty sure that once nServe has "found" your uServe on a certain ip address, that's where it wants to see it when you launch it. 

I think that nothing is wrong other than perhaps a problem with that router.   I'm here in the States but there must be a very good reason so many people do not like that router. 

Sounds like you have not fixed the ips of your devices.

in the event of a power outage, switching off or simply a fixed amount of time, non fixed ips will change.

this is discussed ad nausuam here, i think its about time for a sticky

Hi, if you use DHCP for the IP addresses, them it is quite pssible that after a certain time, often called the lease time, the devices have to re applyfor their IP addresses and they could be assigned different IP addresses. This may also happen if the device resets after a power outage or firmware update.

This is normal, although the preference is  normally for leases to retain their previous IP addresses when renewed where possible, but it does always have to be.

I won't get technical, but the actual network addresses don't change, and depending on how the application software is written, changing IP addresses (which is a higher level address) shouldn't be a big deal on a LAN using upnp etc. ( something called upnp discovery is used to work out where devices are).

Anyway, if you would understandably not wish occasionally 'dealing' with this issue, then manually assigning fixed IP addresses to your devices keeps everything fixed and static for ever, but you need to manage things as opposed to your DHCP server.

Agree with Gary, could do with sticky as this above all else seems to catch people out on their home LANs.

Simon

Another solution is to tell the router to fix the assigned ip addresses given to devices by dhcp. it seems to be remembered until you reset your router, and it makes life a lot easier when adding new devices.

Claus

Thank you so much, to all that replied.

The system has been just fine for over 6 months on the same IP addresses. I had a look at the DHCP settings, and the lease ranges from 1-30 days. Is that the norm? You guys are right, I need to give them fixed IP addresses. Is there an old post that describes how to do this? Can they have the same IPs?

David

"Can they have the same IPs?"

No, never... It's like 2 houses in the same street with the same number; confuses the hell out of the postman!

How to set up reserved IP addresses depends on the router - I'm not familiar with the home hubs so can't help with the specifics. Someone else here may know... I use Draytek routers.

Cheers for that...I used to be a Postman, and know just what that's like!

My modem is BT 'Openreach'. Do you know if you can have a different router with the BT modem?

I was looking at the BT website.  The 'Openreach' products appear to be used with BT's new fibre service, which I am sure is much faster than what you used to have!  They say that tou must use their "Openreach hub" they call it (really a cable modem/router).  I suspect that that is correct. I could not find a user guide on the BT site, as such should tell you how to set static ip addresses on it.  But I'm sure it's possible.  Would a call to BT customer service help?

I think that in principle, all home equipment works about the same -- you will find in the setup menus for the hub a section where you can set static ip addresses.  You log into the hub setup system by entering into your web browser the ip address 192.168.1.1, and entering the login name and password for the hub.  Somewhere buried in all of the options (and static ip settings often are buried as they discourage unknowledgeable folk from changing settings and rendering their network inoperative) there probably is a blank form or table that you will fill out with (A) the ip address you want to set, and (B) the "Mac address" of the device you want to have that specific ip address.  The "Mac address" is a series of letters and numbers that is unique to each particular device; each computer, iPhone, iPad, server, etc etc that can be on a network has one.

So the issues come down to (1) finding where in all of the hub's setup menus you actually set static ip addresses, and (2) finding the Mac addresses of each device for which you want to set a static ip address.  Both of these are beyond my competency to try to explain here   But that is what you're looking at doing, or something close!

Meerkat, yes you can use different internet routers with BT. The  settings depend on what service you have and what ADSL enabled router you hae (assuming you are not using fibre) but it is usually quite straightforward to setup but you do need to manually configure it..

But as I said this really seems an unlikely thing to swap out given the symptoms you describe, specifically your NAS is seen my your Mac, but its juist your upnp server that runs on your NAS that disappears.

Simon

Thank you Bart and Simon.

I do have 'Infinity', which is BT's  fibre optic Broadband. The router and modem are two seperate boxes. I do have to say, it is very fast and reliable, compared to the 'Orange' Broadband that I had this time last year. I can see in advanced settings that it is possible to fix static IP addresses. I'll give it a go later.

Thanks again guys

David