Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Editing - then suddenly all goes offline - FINALLY FOUND WHY

John,

I strongly suggest you create DHCP IP address reservations for all your Sooloos components, especially your storage devices and Control devices.

Mmmm. I guess it is worth doing, certainly if it avoids the pantomime of the last few days, so thanks, I'll do it now.

I fixed all my Sooloos IP addresses way up the range for my network (192.168.1.70+).

Only issue I have is the MS200 that runs via Powerline keeps disappearing off the system, the one that runs via Airport has no such problems.

Unfortunately, many home 'routers' do not have enough non volatile memory that would allow more than 15-20 or so DHCP reservations to survive a reboot. So you may well find that after a 'router' reboot, some of these reservations are lost and you are back to square one.

Its very easy to set a proper fixed IP in a Sooloos device and as long as the IP chosen is outside the 'routers' DHCP pool (which can be obtained from either the router documentation or router itself) and you don't assign a duplicate IP (so keep a list of fixed IPs) then its a permanent fix unless 'router' is ever changed. As well as preventing devices IPs drifting, it also will prevent the issue that some people have seen whereby a Sooloos device drops off the network after 24 hours as it has lost its IP address due to a periodic DHCP refresh request failing.

I'm not suggesting using fixed IP addresses for all devices, just those devices that are non transient like Sooloos devices.

Thanks Ian. Yes I've only "fixed" the Sooloos items - the MS600, the C10 & the 3 TwinStores.

Fingers crossed there will be no further offline dropouts.

Life with Sooloos gets complicated sometimes. Just as well it is worth the trouble & hassles.

Sorry if this is obvious, but your server IP address reservations should be outside of the DHCP range, for example all of my servers have IP addresses under 100, and the DHCP range is 150-225. My AirPort Extreme serves as a robust router and has ample space for reservations. Best of luck .

The argument for static rather than dynamic IP addresses does not appear to be as clear cut as some have suggested. I have had advice both ways from people who know a lot more about the ins and outs of networking than amateurs like me.

My dealer suggests that any static IP address should be set high to get it out of the region where dynamic addresses are allocated. To do this requires entering the dangerous territory on the device manager on the C10/15 where Meridian warn that unless you know what you are doing (and many, like me, do not) you can cause erratic performance or data loss.

So I've adopted a "half way" measure and set the IP addresses as static via configuration on the router. The three TwinStores and MS600 have been set at 10.0.0.x where x = 14, 15, 16 & 17 respectively. That sort of gets them above the lower values for x which are dynamically assigned so hopefully avoids conflict. I also eliminated a lot of devices the router had listed, that were not in common use.

A steep learning curve!

Further comment/advice anyone?

John

Wish I could say the IP problems were over but that is not the case.

Yesterday everything suddenly went off line yet again. Rebooting the system, even powering off the modem/router was not bringing the MS600 on line. The C10 & TwinStores were there communicating to one another but no sign of the MS600.

After an hour or so of this fruitless activity I went in to the modem/router and deleted the MS600 as a networked device, rebooted that modem router and hey presto it found the MS600 and gave it the IP address 10.0.0.1. And of course everything worked again.

It is difficult to draw conclusions from all this. Having the three TwinStores on fixed rather than dynamic IP addresses seems to be a good idea but setting the MS600 that way appears to have been a really bad move. The system seems stable at the moment with the C10 and MS600 dynamic but we shall see.

Maybe this sheets back to the Thompson modem/router - it appears to have given others trouble also. It was a freebie from Bigpond who look after our internet services so if more problems occur then maybe it should be replaced.

John

John, I'm not sure if this is a solution to your problem... I lost my MS600 too some months ago, and the iPad app Fing helped me in finding it back. It's a free network scanner that gives you a list of all devices on your network. Perhaps it will help you too in case you're lost

I've made initial contact with Meridian about getting approval for use of trademarks in this iOS app. I do need to follow this up at some point when I am less distracted.

One of the things that it does is perform Sooloos device discovery and sanity checks on the network and Sooloos devices, including multicast tests. So it should help with spotting problems with Sooloos and helping to track them down. I've still got a few more features to add and a bit of polish, time permitting.

That looks impressive Ian.

With Meridian now heavily into networking there is a need for good diagnostic tools so amateurs like me can discover problems more easily and then rectify them. Previously only savvy computer literate people used networking to any extent so could handle problems relatively easily. But networking is now being used by the unwashed who can get into problems far too easily and, if not careful, can make them far worse.

John