172 XS intermittently not responding to iOS Naim app - Suggestions?

Have you looked through the 'discovery issues' thread under featured topics - it's likely to be a network issue. 

Hi Colin,

Are you getting the little spinning circle? If so then I'm having the same issue. Sometimes the app finds the streamer, but UPNP doesn't work and sometimes the whole app loses contact. The iPad Air is worse than the iPhone 5.

As, HH says, it's probably a network thing. For me it seems to have begun around the time I upgraded to Talktalk superfast broadband.

Keith

It's almost certainly a network issue as HungryHalibut and Keith say. It's very unlikely to be a fault with your 172 XS. But the first thing I would suggest is that if your 172 XS is pre-owned, you should reset to factory settings, which you do through the spanner button on the remote and then navigate from there to factory settings. Sometimes Naim streamers exhibit weird faults after updating the firmware and a factory reset always sorts this out. If it's brand new and had the firmware in from the factory rather than at the dealer, then move on to the next paragraph.

If that doesn't fix your problem, then it would be worth buying a cheap network switch like a Netgear GS105 which will cost you about £25 and put that between the 172 XS and your router. Basically you plug everything into the switch and just have a single ethernet cable back to the router. Many of us have found this approach sorts out any discovery issues.

Let us know how you get on.

best

David

yes most likely multicast discovery issue as used by Upnp and airplay. It might be a poor implementation of multicast functionality on your router and or wifi access point. Plenty written on this over the years on the forum...

One option is to connect a cheap standard un managed network switch (like a little Netgear or similar) to your internet router and connect an Apple Aiport Express to that switch, along with your NAS and have your iPad connect to the Airport Express  SSID - this is known to work and will isolate any bad protocol implementation in your consumer internet router.

But before the above try checking that IGMP snooping is DISABLED on your internet router - if it has this as an option.

Simon

Hi Simon,

Can you explain the Airport Express option? Is this instead of wifi?

Keith

Yes, it provides its own seperate wifi.. and importantly it usually works well with the way multicast discovery works..

Simon

Thanks - checked that IGMP is disabled (it is). I am using an Apple TimeCapsule as my router. 

Trying a factory re-set next!

Last night I tried switching everything in the network off and back on one by one. It seems to have improved, but not fixed the problem. 

I downloaded Network Analyser, as suggested by Phil Harris and I notice my Apple devices don't have a B for Bonjour. Is this right? Spotify Connect  works, by the way.

Keith

How are you connecting your NAS. and 172 to the router.. Is it wired Ethernet or wifi or Powerline adapters? If all wired Ethernet.... you might want to try a little unmanaged to group the connections to first before passing to the time Capsule. I used to do this. The fact that when you power cycled and it got better for a while suggests this might help..

that network service monitor only gives an approx idea, and has limitations. Keith unless you disabled, the Apple devices should have Bonjour.. That app can have timing problems.. If you keep rescanning you might see services reappear - and disappear.

if you know how to send pings, I have what I consider a better check you can do that better confirms the network discovery paths are open. If you ping 239.255.255.250 on your LAN you should see all the UPnP network discoverable devices respond back to the ping... If one doesn't it suggest there may well not be a reliable network path to it.

Simon

I forgot to say, if it's only occasionally devices disappear, and they come back on thier own.. You might need live with it as it could a limitation on your network router not refreshing the IGMP groups properly or at all and leaving it to the clients..Now  if you are network  IT competent and have a managed switch there is a function you can do to specifically address this.. and that is set up an IGMP Querier .. This will keep your multicast discovery group upto date .. and devices will always appear consistently in the Naim app etc. I use a small Cisco 2960 switch to achieve this, as I can't rely on my Netgear internet router.

Davis IGMP Snooping and IGMP support are two different things... It's specifically the snooping issue that is most likely causing the issue you describe (discovery group ports being enabled or disabled) . However switch IGMP on.. I think on the Apple device that's is more for external multicast like IPTV, but no harm in trying... and it may be there is no snooping option, so you might need that little unmanaged switch.

I just looked at my own network on my iPad using the app Phil recommends and only some of the devices showed a B including only two of the five Naim devices and my iPhone (which also wasn't showing a B) still found all the streamers immediately. So I'm not sure what that means.... 

David - you might have missed it - I posted a response to exactly this above

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

that network service monitor only gives an approx idea, and has limitations. .... unless you disabled, the Apple devices you should have Bonjour.. That app can have timing problems.. If you keep rescanning you might see services reappear - and disappear.

Thanks Simon. I did see your earlier post and I suppose I was illustrating that even on a perfectly working network, I still get odd Bonjour results.  Having everything connecting via Netgear switches was the key for me. Prior to that, I had some things plugged into the back of the router and the rest into Netgear switches wherever I needed to split the cable as it went around the house. A week or two when my Thinkpad suddenly kept losing sight of my network printer convinced me to put everything via switches and just have the one Ethernet cable back to the router.  That sorted it all out. Mind you the Naim stuff always worked fine for me, apart from a problem of getting my Thinkpad to see the downloads folder on my Unitiserve, which I solved by mapping the US download folder.

But I'm hoping the OP's problem may be that his 172 needed a factory reset.  Naim recommend it in the firmware upgrade instructions, but mostly it isn't necessary as we know and it can be very inconvenient, but in the year I have been in this forum I have regularly seen strange and inexplicable issues fixed that way. 

Best

David

David Hendon posted:

I suppose I was illustrating that even on a perfectly working network, I still get odd Bonjour results.  

Well David - the services you see on that app are reliant on the software apps on those devices to respond back - and so if the apps on the devices are slow, faulty or under load they might not respond back and you will see a blank. This can happen with a perfect network - as the network is independent of the apps.. which is hy its not really a network analyzer tool - but more an application services analyzer tool.

The multicast ping approach I suggest uses a lower level response from the client - typically built into the TCP/IP stack itself and can be a more reliable way of showing network operability - but not so useful at differentiating application services

Simon

I think there is more to it than that. At the moment if I scan using the Net Analyser app, I can reliably see Bonjour on my UQ2 and my SU, but not at all on my UL or my N272. In the case of the UQ2 and the SU the Bonjour service running is _spotify-connect._tcp. But my Naim app on my iPhone can see all of the Naim kit and control it (none of it is actually playing anything at the moment owing to a grand child taking our lives over for the day).

best

David

Exactly - you may find the service analyzer app has a tighter timeout than the controller timer. I cant remember if its this app or another but you can adjust the timeout

S

Thanks for the advice. It's very much appreciated.

Sadly, I'm not very technical able, so some of your suggestions are beyond me. I can confirm that everything is wired by Ethernet (no powerlines) and the music related stuff (NDS, Unitiserve, NAS, Pi) are all on an unmanaged Netgear switch. I suspect the issue is with the ISP supplied router which replaced the Netgear router when we went to superfast broadband.

I think that Bonjour is present and correct as Spotify Connect works.

Rebooting everything on the network does seem to have helped a lot. I may try the Airport Express solution, but for now I'll see if everything behaves itself and accept the need todo a full reboot from time to time. The app now responds much more quickly on the iPad, although it did lose connection this morning. Interestingly, It was the iPad that had become unreliable and my iPhone (which I rarely use for the Naim app) was much less affected.

Sorry to gave hijacked Colin's thread with my own problems.

Thanks again,

Keith