Problem with my NDS being recognised by Naim app

Richard the Naim response is, it is your network that is the issue not the hardware or app.

Besides the joke that your NDS is in an identity crises by being put of the market. I have to connect to the earlier remark. 

Things i would suggest to check are:

1. Is their an alternate network in the house which the iPad can switch to. If so check if it is connected to that network at the time you have your problems. If so forget the network on the iPad.

2. Disconnect and put newly in all network cables.

3. Check your router as such.

4. In the case you mention does the NDS still play manually - using the remote, or also no connection to the NAS.

5. Test the connection by using another network cable ...

Hope one of these will work for you.

Richard, have you tried a reboot of your router/switch as well as NDS and iPhone/ipad?

Does the NDS show up after a while - i.e. slow to be discovered, or not at all?

Is there another network that the iPhone/ipad are also connected to?

I'm with Richard and Bert. That seems to me to be almost certainly symptomatic of the app and NDS connecting to different networks. If you have an Apple Router check if your Guest Network is activated, very occasionally I had the same issue and it is almost invariably the iPad and thus the App connecting to a different network, in my case the Guest Network. Disabling the Guest Network solved it.

Guys,

Thanks for the quick reply. I have switched the cables around (my core is also connected via lan cable) and reset and restarted my router. Seems to work fine at the moment. Will monitor and see if things change in a few days. Will also take Camlan's advice of disabling the guest network.

Cheers...

Richard Choong posted:

Guys,

Thanks for the quick reply. I have switched the cables around (my core is also connected via lan cable) and reset and restarted my router. Seems to work fine at the moment. Will monitor and see if things change in a few days. Will also take Camlan's advice of disabling the guest network.

Cheers...

it happened to me once or twice in one year.  Sometimes the app is not playing files or even the unitserve disappears...i restart the serve and the nds, and all works again.

Restarting a network device such as a server or streamer will force your router’s DHCP server to renew the device’s network i.p. address lease which should ensure that it is visible on the network. If you are confident enough to log into your router you can access its network settngs and will be able to see and adjust the default DHCP lease period. My HH5 allows a lease period of  between 1 day to 21 days. Depending on the number of devices on your network you can adjust it to suit your needs. As a rule of thumb the more devices on the network, the shorter the lease time.

Obsydian posted:

Richard the Naim response is, it is your network that is the issue not the hardware or app.

Hi Obsydian,

I know from your past postings that you don't like the way that we approach diagnosing issues but the simple fact is that generally it is the underlying network that causes many of them - which I know you yourself don't believe but for many years people didn't believe the earth was round or that the sun was the centre of our solar system (or that there was such a thing as a solar system - all the stars simply presumed to just be pin-pricks in a non-specific dark mantle that surrounded us)...

Often - with things like BT HomeHubs or Technicolor routers especially - when discovery works for a while and then gets less reliable it is normally found that a reboot of the router will restore functionality for a while. We have done our own testing here and found that when many of those routers are run for a period of time they start to drop data especially when bridging between wired and wireless (or 2.4 and 5GHz wireless) networks and vice versa. With regular inter-device traffic this isn't disasterous as the non-arrival of packets will simply result in subsequent retransmission so things "work" but are just a bit slower however when this relates to the traffic used for autodiscovery then a non-response to a non-device-specific network broadcast results in devices not being "seen". Again, you may not like this but I don't like Marmite and that abomination still is a reality... :-)

There is a lot of "stuff" between the app on your portable device and the streamer so if nothing has changed on the streamer (i.e. the firmware hasn't been updated) and the app hasn't changed on the portable device yet a change in operation has become apparent then it could be any part of that "chain" - the app sits on top of an OS, the OS sits on top of a hardware platform, the hardware platform sits on top of the OSI network model to connect to the network, the network you are connected to connects via a network bridge (running code) that interprets protocols and bridges data between networks and then the whole process is reversed on the path to the destination device - just because the app is one extreme end of what you are interacting with and the streamer is at the other extreme end then it is easy to simply presume that the issue has to be either with the app or with the streamer because the various transport layers that exist between them aren't visible or tangible.

When diagnosing issues we try to eradicate the network first simply because from what we see as reported issues and the history of solutions to them (we do learn from reported issues and tend to be able to pick out patterns of similarity) then the network normally is the culprit if - after eliminating the network from the equation - the issue persists then we don't have a problem looking at fixing anything that is a problem with our kit but if there's an issue with a flaky piece of network hardware (we are aware that there are tens of thousands of, say, HomeHubs out there and many people are having no issues with them so it isn't them all that do it) than it isn't reasonable to expect us to write custom code to attempt to get around another devices faults or failings however I do see exactly this issue with the HomeHub 5 that I currently have myself, the HomeHub 3 that preceded it (and was swapped out when we went to "fibre" in our area) and even my dads HomeHub 6 and we have seen similar behaviour with a number of Technicolor routers and earlier SuperHubs.

I hope that this helps you understand exactly why we take the steps that we take whenever we get issues raised...

Best

Phil

Richard Choong posted:

Hi. I am wondering if any of you have this issue and can advise me my next course of action.

Recently, my NDS is failing to show up on my Naim app. I have to turn off my NDS and restart my ipad or phone (not just restart the app) for it to be recognized again. It doesn't happen all the time, it's intermittent and happens every few days. Before I approach the distributor, I would like some feedback if anyone has experienced something similar. My app and NDS are updated to the latest version and firmware. 

Hi Richard,

First some questions if you don't mind...

Did the issue start with any change to anything on the network?

Do you have any Ethernet over Mains links in your network?

How is your NDS connected to your network?

Do you have any additional Wireless Extenders or Wireless Access Points beyond the one built into your router?

What router do you have?

When your device isn't detected - can you still control your NDS from the IR remote and access (and play) Internet Radio?

When your device isn't detected - instead of turning off the NDS and restarting your portable device - what happens if you reboot only your router? Can you then find your NDS on the app (once the router is back up again)?

Cheers

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

Richard Choong posted:

Hi. I am wondering if any of you have this issue and can advise me my next course of action.

Recently, my NDS is failing to show up on my Naim app. I have to turn off my NDS and restart my ipad or phone (not just restart the app) for it to be recognized again. It doesn't happen all the time, it's intermittent and happens every few days. Before I approach the distributor, I would like some feedback if anyone has experienced something similar. My app and NDS are updated to the latest version and firmware. 

Hi Richard,

First some questions if you don't mind...

Did the issue start with any change to anything on the network?

Do you have any Ethernet over Mains links in your network?

How is your NDS connected to your network?

Do you have any additional Wireless Extenders or Wireless Access Points beyond the one built into your router?

What router do you have?

When your device isn't detected - can you still control your NDS from the IR remote and access (and play) Internet Radio?

When your device isn't detected - instead of turning off the NDS and restarting your portable device - what happens if you reboot only your router? Can you then find your NDS on the app (once the router is back up again)?

Cheers

Phil

No. I did not change anything in the network. It just started one day.

No. I don't use Ethernet over Mains.

Its connected via LAN cable (Cat6)

No. Only the router

Asus RC-AC88U

Yes. I can still use the remote. Everything is fine save that it does not appear on my app.

I have not tried just rebooting the router but since I started this thread, I have switched the cables around (my core is also connected via lan cable) and reset and restarted my router. Seems to work fine at the moment. I am going to leave it like this for a few days then switch the cables back. Just to be clear, my core has never seen any issues being recognised by the app. Even after I switched the cables. Will report back in a few days.

I have always had discovery issues. Restarting the app a few times would eventually find my NDX.

But then I fixed it.

I simply added room manually specifying the IP of my NDX and now it works perfectly.

If you can see the NDS on your network I would try that.

Hi Richard... some good pointers above, but the behaviour you describe is not unusual in some home network setups and simply switching devices on and off may alleviate in the short term but not resolves and is simply masking an underlying fault. The discovery method for UPnP (and other services) requires compliant network equipment that handles something called multicast IP addresses. These IP addresses needs to be handled in a specific way otherwise things like discovery won’t work or work reliably. Therefore

First ensure you are using Ethernet or Wifi and not consumer workarounds like mains powerline adapters and the like. BTW Cat 4, 5 and 5e are entirely fine for most home networks, especially for audio use... you don’t need exotic/more expensive  Cat 6 or higher specification cables

If the above is the case, the next step, if you have one, is to look at the combined Wifi access point/broadband router.... see if there is a setting called ‘IGMP snooping’ on its setup interface... if so try disabling it.

if there is no setting, or seems to make no difference, it may be your home broadband router/Wifi access point is having multicast issues.. the next thing to try is get a small separate switch like a used Cisco 2960, or a little cheap Netgear, and connect back to your router. Connect  your NAS and Streamer to this switch, and then importantly get a new Wifi access point. The Ubiquiti range are ideal.. plug this into the switch as well. Create a new SSID on it just for your audio and iPad running the Naim app though you can replace your old SSID with it  and iPad running your Naim app. You will almost certainly now have reliable discovery and more effective operation. This will probably apply to home automation, UPnP and AirPlay as well.

SImon...all good advice but my question is this. If nothing had changed...why did it happen out of the blue? I mean, it was fine for more than 6mths.

Are you sure there has been no firmware change anywhere such as on home broadband router? Also are you using wired Ethernet...if using powerline adapters a new main appliance with you or a neighbour could be causing interference and unreliable multicast data transfer. 

Is your Wifi signal strength and usage the same... is the Wifi performance the same, or is a neighbour or family member now loading your  Wifi channels. Placing a Wifi access point closer to your operation point will improve things... Wifi works best when receivers are not on full sensitivity and transmitters are on max power... multiple lower power access points is optimal for combating neighbouring interference and load capacity.

its the environmental that can change application behaviour not the network itself... so there have probably been changes in the environment or the the network device software. 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Are you sure there has been no firmware change anywhere such as on home broadband router? Also are you using wired Ethernet...if using powerline adapters a new main appliance with you or a neighbour could be causing interference and unreliable multicast data transfer. 

Is your Wifi signal strength and usage the same... is the Wifi performance the same, or is a neighbour or family member now loading your  Wifi channels. Placing a Wifi access point closer to your operation point will improve things... Wifi works best when receivers are not on full sensitivity and transmitters are on max power... multiple lower power access points is optimal for combating neighbouring interference and load capacity.

its the environmental that can change application behaviour not the network itself... so there have probably been changes in the environment or the the network device software. 

I am positive that at the time the symptoms first started appearing there was no firmware update to my router. 

I use a wired system for my NDS on cables that there purposefully laid for the system. I do not use power line adapters

Phil Harris posted:

Obsydian posted:

Richard the Naim response is, it is your network that is the issue not the hardware or app.

Hi Obsydian,

I know from your past postings that you don't like the way that we approach diagnosing issues but the simple fact is that generally it is the underlying network that causes many of them - which I know you yourself don't believe but for many years people didn't believe the earth was round or that the sun was the centre of our solar system (or that there was such a thing as a solar system - all the stars simply presumed to just be pin-pricks in a non-specific dark mantle that surrounded us)...

Often - with things like BT HomeHubs or Technicolor routers especially - when discovery works for a while and then gets less reliable it is normally found that a reboot of the router will restore functionality for a while. We have done our own testing here and found that when many of those routers are run for a period of time they start to drop data especially when bridging between wired and wireless (or 2.4 and 5GHz wireless) networks and vice versa. With regular inter-device traffic this isn't disasterous as the non-arrival of packets will simply result in subsequent retransmission so things "work" but are just a bit slower however when this relates to the traffic used for autodiscovery then a non-response to a non-device-specific network broadcast results in devices not being "seen". Again, you may not like this but I don't like Marmite and that abomination still is a reality... :-)

There is a lot of "stuff" between the app on your portable device and the streamer so if nothing has changed on the streamer (i.e. the firmware hasn't been updated) and the app hasn't changed on the portable device yet a change in operation has become apparent then it could be any part of that "chain" - the app sits on top of an OS, the OS sits on top of a hardware platform, the hardware platform sits on top of the OSI network model to connect to the network, the network you are connected to connects via a network bridge (running code) that interprets protocols and bridges data between networks and then the whole process is reversed on the path to the destination device - just because the app is one extreme end of what you are interacting with and the streamer is at the other extreme end then it is easy to simply presume that the issue has to be either with the app or with the streamer because the various transport layers that exist between them aren't visible or tangible.

When diagnosing issues we try to eradicate the network first simply because from what we see as reported issues and the history of solutions to them (we do learn from reported issues and tend to be able to pick out patterns of similarity) then the network normally is the culprit if - after eliminating the network from the equation - the issue persists then we don't have a problem looking at fixing anything that is a problem with our kit but if there's an issue with a flaky piece of network hardware (we are aware that there are tens of thousands of, say, HomeHubs out there and many people are having no issues with them so it isn't them all that do it) than it isn't reasonable to expect us to write custom code to attempt to get around another devices faults or failings however I do see exactly this issue with the HomeHub 5 that I currently have myself, the HomeHub 3 that preceded it (and was swapped out when we went to "fibre" in our area) and even my dads HomeHub 6 and we have seen similar behaviour with a number of Technicolor routers and earlier SuperHubs.

I hope that this helps you understand exactly why we take the steps that we take whenever we get issues raised...

Best

Phil

Thanks Phil.

But the majority of tech users just want to plug and play. Heck most can barely connect their items to WiFi as they can't find or know the WiFi password.

They (me) can plugin and use over a dozen items in my household without a single issue.

Saying it's the user network is a plain cop out.

Given issues across different streamers, core, then I'd say plain and simple the Naim software team are not fit for purpose or the world is flat and everyone else product wise is the issue.

I used to have similar problems - the system would run for weeks, sometimes months without a glitch...  Then for a few weeks it wouldn't find the streamer or it wouldn't find the media server.  The fact tat it was only the app affected was the key, working from the front panel was reliable.  I finally traced it down to two configuration setting in the WAP part of my router and changed them.

Now the only issue is the sockets reconnection and screen refresh problems in the Android app in the OnResume() handler method.

Obsydian posted:

Given issues across different streamers, core, then I'd say plain and simple the Naim software team are not fit for purpose or the world is flat and everyone else product wise is the issue.

You have clearly never had the outstanding Sky Q experience if you think that Naim are alone in having network issues affect their product performance. Naim streaming is Rolls Royce in comparison.

Obsydian posted:

Thanks Phil.

But the majority of tech users just want to plug and play. Heck most can barely connect their items to WiFi as they can't find or know the WiFi password.

They (me) can plugin and use over a dozen items in my household without a single issue.

Saying it's the user network is a plain cop out.

...and...

Obsydian posted:

Given issues across different streamers, core, then I'd say plain and simple the Naim software team are not fit for purpose or the world is flat and everyone else product wise is the issue.

Hi,

I have tried to explain very clearly and simply on a number of occasions why we start out looking at the underlying network for the cause of certain issues first but it seems that I am in some way not explaining appropriately for you so what bit of what I'm saying do you not follow?

I can understand you not liking the answers or explanations that I am giving you, however, not liking an answer or explanation that you are being given doesn't make that answer or explanation any less correct...

Please forgive my vehicular analogies but your stance with your replies does seem akin to owning a house with a badly rutted driveway, buying a Ferrari and then complaining to Ferrari that the nose of the car has been damaged as you arrived home then blindly proclaiming that Ferrari should change the design of their vehicle and that their suggestion that you repair the ruts in your driveway is a cop-out...

The simple fact is that if the freebie stuff that your ISP gives you worked correctly and did everything that could be asked of it then there would be no market for aftermarket routers - being able to connect a dozen items to your network and get to websites, mailservers and Windows / Apple / Android updates doesn't mean that your network is "working correctly", just that you happen not to have used the functionality that it doesn't do correctly.

Remember - the *ONLY* reason an ISP gives you (or sells you cheaply) a router is so that they have less support hassles (and in BTs case so that they can syphon off part of the service that you pay for to extend their "cloud" network for all their subscribers) as they then only have to train their support staff to support one preconfigured device and if you stray away from that then you are on your own...

Best Regards

Phil Harris

Bananahead posted:

I have always had discovery issues. Restarting the app a few times would eventually find my NDX.

But then I fixed it.

I simply added room manually specifying the IP of my NDX and now it works perfectly.

If you can see the NDS on your network I would try that.

Hi,

This will only work reliably if you reserve an IP address for your NDX on your router or otherwise you could find that the DHCP address given to your NDX will change and the manual setting will no longer have your device on the end of it...

Cheers

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

Bananahead posted:

I have always had discovery issues. Restarting the app a few times would eventually find my NDX.

But then I fixed it.

I simply added room manually specifying the IP of my NDX and now it works perfectly.

If you can see the NDS on your network I would try that.

Hi,

This will only work reliably if you reserve an IP address for your NDX on your router or otherwise you could find that the DHCP address given to your NDX will change and the manual setting will no longer have your device on the end of it...

Cheers

Phil

Hi Phil

Yes I realise that

I tend to use some static IP addresses because I have two homes with two networks and two mirrored NAS' . I move a laptop between them that likes having mapped drives with the same IP.

Bananahead posted:

Phil Harris posted:

Bananahead posted:

I have always had discovery issues. Restarting the app a few times would eventually find my NDX.

But then I fixed it.

I simply added room manually specifying the IP of my NDX and now it works perfectly.

If you can see the NDS on your network I would try that.

Hi,

This will only work reliably if you reserve an IP address for your NDX on your router or otherwise you could find that the DHCP address given to your NDX will change and the manual setting will no longer have your device on the end of it...

Cheers

Phil

Hi Phil

Yes I realise that

I tend to use some static IP addresses because I have two homes with two networks and two mirrored NAS' . I move a laptop between them that likes having mapped drives with the same IP.

 

Hi,

That's cool - I was just suggesting reserving addresses as quite often we get people who have not really completely understood what they were doing and have set static IP addresses on things like NASs and servers because they've been told to here and then maybe years later change their ISP and get a different router that's on 192.168.1.x rather than 192.168.0.x (or vice versa) and suddenly can't access those devices and don't know how to manually swap their PC onto the old range to be able to reset those old devices and of course we can't help them by doing it remotely...

Phil

Richard Choong posted:

SImon...all good advice but my question is this. If nothing had changed...why did it happen out of the blue? I mean, it was fine for more than 6mths.

Hi Richard,

I see you have restarted your router and that things are OK at the moment - this is often the case with these issues so please let me know if you start finding that after a while discovery becomes less reliable (this is my suspicion that it will do).

I have an ASUS router (can't remember the model) that I set up at the GF's to isolate her kids computers and consoles from my/her computers and kit (I'm always wary of what the kids point their machines at) but they do tend to share firmwares across the range so if I can get a streamer onto that network I'll see if I can find any oddities on there...

Cheers

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

Obsydian posted:

Thanks Phil.

But the majority of tech users just want to plug and play. Heck most can barely connect their items to WiFi as they can't find or know the WiFi password.

They (me) can plugin and use over a dozen items in my household without a single issue.

Saying it's the user network is a plain cop out.

...and...

Obsydian posted:

Given issues across different streamers, core, then I'd say plain and simple the Naim software team are not fit for purpose or the world is flat and everyone else product wise is the issue.

Hi,

I have tried to explain very clearly and simply on a number of occasions why we start out looking at the underlying network for the cause of certain issues first but it seems that I am in some way not explaining appropriately for you so what bit of what I'm saying do you not follow?

I can understand you not liking the answers or explanations that I am giving you, however, not liking an answer or explanation that you are being given doesn't make that answer or explanation any less correct...

Please forgive my vehicular analogies but your stance with your replies does seem akin to owning a house with a badly rutted driveway, buying a Ferrari and then complaining to Ferrari that the nose of the car has been damaged as you arrived home then blindly proclaiming that Ferrari should change the design of their vehicle and that their suggestion that you repair the ruts in your driveway is a cop-out...

The simple fact is that if the freebie stuff that your ISP gives you worked correctly and did everything that could be asked of it then there would be no market for aftermarket routers - being able to connect a dozen items to your network and get to websites, mailservers and Windows / Apple / Android updates doesn't mean that your network is "working correctly", just that you happen not to have used the functionality that it doesn't do correctly.

Remember - the *ONLY* reason an ISP gives you (or sells you cheaply) a router is so that they have less support hassles (and in BTs case so that they can syphon off part of the service that you pay for to extend their "cloud" network for all their subscribers) as they then only have to train their support staff to support one preconfigured device and if you stray away from that then you are on your own...

Best Regards

Phil Harris

I guess we will disagree then. If I drove my Ferrari onto such a drive then fair enough it was clear - I guess maybe you should add a disclaimer saying Naim streaming devices are special if they don't work it must be you not the product. Or better still if it does not work a full refund as not fit for real world use.

So maybe Naim will design a router.

The proof is the number of threads littered on the forum and suggestions of fixes due and nothing.