More Unitiserve problems...

I take it that you have your UnitiServe and NAS hard wired via Ethernet to a gigabit switch connected to your router? If not i suggest you give it a try

Timbo, have you asked someone from Naim (Phil Harris does this I think) to remotely log in to your UnitiServe and check settings ?

Jan

Phil is the man.  Accessed my HDX remotely and sorted it in less than 2 minutes.  G

Cannot guarantee it will help but I reported something similar ref our Unitiserve SSD losing sight of the share file a while ago and seem to have cured it by disabling the "Barefruit service" provided by BT (and apparently other ISPs - it is some kind of web address help).

If you Google "Barefruit Service" you should find some detail

John

Tim, I see you are based in Alberta.. So perhaps becoming clearer.

I recommend two things.

A) statically define your Unitiserve address.  Ie DO NOT use DHCP.. Enter the address manually.

B) if you can't do a) change your Internet router.. As it looks to be that that is possibly mis behaving by relaying a DHCP lease renew request from your Unitiserve (to perhaps your ISP) for some reason.

Simon

Thanks for all of your replies!

To clarify a few things:

The U/S is hard wired to the network and so is the NAS

All have a static IP address of 192.168.0.something

I have a switch that connects the NAS and U/S so that local traffic is handled accordingly

I am based in Edmonton, Alberta Canada and my ISP is Shaw. I have had them out a few times, they replaced an older cable modem with a new one which speeded things up a lot and then they were caught repairing a local repeater, seems others had been complaining about poor service. But that was all last year. The Unitiserve always has a good consistent internet connection.

I've never had problems with a 209 address on my network until I got the unitiserve, to give credit to Phil, he has been extremely helpful in trying to pin down my problems.

I'm trying to track down this weird 209 IP and think it is something to do with the DNS as configured in DLink routers, however I have tried several routers and have even taken my Unitiserve over to my brother in laws as he has Telus an an ISP and I ripped a few CDs to his NAS and still picked up the 209 address.

At present I am using the Sherlock Holmes methodology and one day hope to have a solution.

Cheers

Tim

Tim, ok thanks, so if you have taken your unitiserve to another network, different ISP/Internet router, and you statically define your Unitiserve address, and the issue still happens.. I am afraid it is increasingly looking like a faulty Unitiserve.. Thanks for the extra info.

I'll lookup the ARIN address you posted and see who owns it and post back.

Simon

Hi Tim, that address is registered to a US ISP called NTT America in Michegan, and belongs to Cogent Communications.. I assume these mean nothing to you?

Thanks for looking up the rogue IP, I've never heard of the company.

Another piece of info which might help is that the only consistent item amongst all of this is DLink routers, I have a couple (the other is a spare and not used) and my brother in law has one as well.

Maybe I might try another brand of router, it might help. This is my second Unitiserve and I'm pretty sure it is working OK. Phil Harris alluded to something problematic with my DNS.

I'm going to be logging these occurrences to see if I can find a pattern.

Thanks for your help.

Tim

Tim, ok thanks, I can't see the connection to DNS unless it is something specific to the software within the Unitiserve which clearly Phil would be aware of. DNS is simply a network application that resolves addresses to clients who provide a domain name such as 'forum.naimaudio.com', like a telephone directory look up.

I think your suggestion of trying a non Netgear routers is also sensible.

Out of interest, do you know what your DNS address is? It might be in your router config, or the TCP/IP settings for your windows/mac PC.

Simon

Hi Simon:

My DNS address is 192.168.0.1 which all of the house network items will point to and which is the router. The router then points to two DNS addresses primary: 204.194.232.200 and Secondary: 204.194.234.200 supplied by my ISP.

I have found out there is a parental control service on the router which restricts access to some sites and when I activated this way back before Christmas all of my network items suddenly had an IP of 209.69.32.145 and I was told that the DLink routers will disable my ISP DNS for this one which supposedly screens out dodgy websites.

Took me a while to discover this and since I have turned it off, however the only time I get this address is when my unitiserve maps it to my NAS, not any other NAS just the one which holds my music.

Cheers

Tim

Tim.. Interesting... So it would appear you had a proxy DNS.. But then when activating it your Dlink assigned its proxy DNS address to all your devices on your network !! That sounds incredibly wrong.. I think your suggestion of trying an alternate router sounds more and more sensible.

If you Google up those DNS ip addresses, there is much to read about DLink's implementation of "Advanced DNS."  I too would vote to get rid of those DLink routers, and somehow clear that ip address out of the uServe.

Thanks Simon and Bart I will do just that, any recommendations?

Tim

Just a quick update, my U/S stopped recognized my NAS at about 16:49. I then read your comments and checked and sure enough the U/S was recognizing the NAS with that rogue IP so then I followed your advice and checked on the DLink advanced DNS info.

Next I examined my router and found a checkbox called DNS relay so as this was checked I unchecked it and saved the settings, lo and behold the U/S recognized the NAS with the correct IP and was back.

The downside is I couldn't connect any any of my usual websites such as the BBC, Naim etc - bugger!! So I re-checked the box on the router and rebooted it and checked the U/S and all was still OK.

Looks like I will pop out shopping for a new NON DLINK router!!

Cheers

Tim

Tim I'm not sure how it works in Canada where you are, but here in Boston my isp (Verizon FiOS) has made some provision to provide me with DNS services.  Why a company like DLink would want to hijack that, and have purchasers of its routers use some other DNS service, is totally unknown to me. 

One solution might be to find out the ip addresses of the DNS service your ISP 'wants' you to use, and change the settings in the DLink router to use them.  Or Google up "open DNS" and use those.  Or Google's dns.  If that's not possible, definitely buy a different router.  Perhaps NetGear??

Hi Bart:

I was thinking along those lines, yesterday I ordered a new touter. A TPlink model which has got some good reviews and I'm trying to find out how to change the default dns lookups on my router to those provided by my isp.

The Unitiserve started to play nicely later last night after rebooting the router.

Cheers

Tim

Just a quick update on my weird DNS problems. First thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I have ordered a nice shiny new NON D-link router, an ASUS RT-AC66U 802.11AC DUAL BAND WIRELESS ROUTER 2.4GHZ/ 5GHZ so I hope that performs better, I returned the TPlink as it didn't have gigabyte LAN.

So I did a bit of digging and the nub of the problem seems to be the parental controls section on the D-Link router i.e. do you use the D-link option and their DNS servers or use open DNS and use the ISP servers. It seems whatever option I tried the router would always keep the D-link DNS servers. I tried a firmware update and the system reported I had the latest version.

But by accident I found a complaint by someone that the Router did not find the latest version and one had to seek and download the latest firmware manually. I found out that my router was two updates behind, so I downloaded the latest version and updated the router. Quite different, more info and when I try the setting for Open DNS the servers revert to my ISP ones and so far (fingers crossed) I haven't seen that rogue DNS and the unitiserve has been solid.

Still going to change out the D-Link router when the new one arrives.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Tim

Tim,

Glad you got it sorted.  The joys of digital audio !......

Paul

All of a sudden I am having the same issue with Unitiserve. All of my computers in the network can recognize the shared folder except the Unitiserve, and in the Unitiserve the share I pointed to carries a mysterious IP address (I suspected it's a Unitiserve self-generated IP address, not something obtained externally or the NAS where the share is located).

By the way is there a way to change the IP of Unitiserve to a fixed IP instead of a dynamic IP? I am using Mac so the only way I can access Unitiserve is through its web-based interface, which I don't find fixing a fixed IP an option. Thanks

I'm not sure about changing the IP address on the Unitiserve, but I reserved an address through the router. If you have a DLink router check if the DNS servers are the ones provided by your ISP and if the IP address for shared areas shown by the Unitiserve is something like 209.69.32.145 then get a new non DLink router or at least investigate and try and turn off DNS relay or advanced DNS.

Tim