Bugzilla – Bug 12356
Trigger a persistent blue icon on SBC even with firmware r6038
Last modified: 2009-10-18 10:09:39 UTC
From time to time I get the famous blue icon on my SBC(=Squeezebox Controller) which will persist until a reboot or until I let the SBC forget network settings and re-enter them. I figured out that instead of being blue, which means the SBC cannot connect to my SqueezeCenter, it should be red, because the SBC is not anymore connected to my wireless network (I see this on my router status page). So, sometimes the SBC gets confused when it looses network connection. In the past I got a few of these blue icons randomly, but what is more interesting is that I can trigger it. The version of the firmware does not seem to matter, since I tried many and they all showed the same behavior. I have two wireless router, a Netopia 3347NWG and a Netgear 614L running dd-wrt v24sp2 svn12060 (but the exact version does not matter since I tried many). For simplicity, I will call the Netopia "R1" and the Netgear "R2". R1 is on subnet 192.168.1.x and R2 on 192.168.2.x. R1 is set up as access point, R2 is set up as "Repeater" (this is how dd-wrt calls it). R2 connects wireless to R1 and provides itself an access point with a different ssid running its own DHCP server. The access point of R2 is also available if R2 cannot connect to R1, i.e. both networks are independent of each other except for sharing the same channel. Both are WPA2 AES encrypted but use different passwords. My SBC and my SB3 (=Squeezebox 3) always connect wireless to R2. They do not and should not move from one access point to the other. Since the two networks have different SSIDs SBC and SB3 do not care about R1 being available or not. But as you will see R2 does and by this will trigger a persistent blue icon on the SBC. My wireless network problems which I will describe in the following are only with the SBC, the SB3 is rock solid. Let us assume R1 and R2 are switched off. I switch on R2. SB3 and SBC will connect to it and I can play my music. Now I switch on R1. R2 recognizes its availability and connects to it. For this it reinitializes its wireless network and drops all associations from clients. This takes only few seconds and my SB3 reconnects without even stopping to play music. But the SBC shows the blue icon until reboot. This behavior is reproducible, it happens each and every time. I know my setup is unusual and I know I might find a more stable setup. But with all my explanations I try to show that there is a problem with the SBC and that there is a way to trigger it. If I remember correctly, none of the posts in the forum about network problems of the SBC ever showed a quick and reliable possibility to trigger a blue icon which persists until the SBC is rebooted. And I am convinced that I am not the only one suffering from this particular fault, the others just do not know where it comes from. BTW it does not matter if the SBC gets is IP address dynamically via DHCP or I have a static IP reservation made in the router setup or I put a static IP in the SBC setup.
Note: I first posted this in the forum and you will find some (hopefully useful) discussion on this topic there: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=430852&postcount=167
(In reply to comment #0) > Let us assume R1 and R2 are switched off. I switch on R2. SB3 and SBC will > connect to it and I can play my music. Now I switch on R1. R2 recognizes its > availability and connects to it. For this it reinitializes its wireless network > and drops all associations from clients. This takes only few seconds and my SB3 > reconnects without even stopping to play music. But the SBC shows the blue icon > until reboot. This behavior is reproducible, it happens each and every time. While I agree Controller should probably handle this as well as SB3 does, I think the blame may also be in part the R2 router or perhaps the dd-wrt repeater implementation. I wonder what specifically is going on during the "reinitialization". Have you attempted any wireless packet capturing? Also I can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with interference. R2 must be within range of R1 or it wouldn't be able to repeat the signal, and they're on the same channel, and therefor interference must be occurring to some degree. Why are you using the same channel? Have you tried using non-interfering channels (1, 6, 11)?
> While I agree Controller should probably handle this as well as SB3 does, I > think the blame may also be in part the R2 router or perhaps the dd-wrt > repeater implementation. I wonder what specifically is going on during the > "reinitialization". Have you attempted any wireless packet capturing? I am sure that we can blame this behavior partially also on dd-wrt. But I have no idea what is really going on during reinitialization. I have not tried to capture packages. May be I find some time for this next week. > Also I can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with interference. R2 > must be within range of R1 or it wouldn't be able to repeat the signal, and > they're on the same channel, and therefor interference must be occurring to > some degree. Why are you using the same channel? Have you tried using > non-interfering channels (1, 6, 11)? The problem is that dd-wrt does not allow to set the channel when in repeater mode. For its own access point it just reuses the channel which R1 is using. In any case, I think interferences are not the problem, because after a reboot of the SBC the whole setup is stable. As I said at the bottom of my initial post, I do believe that I am not the only one having an "instable" wireless network which triggers the blue icon, i.e. I am not the only one suffering from the SBC being incapable to reconnect. The "advantage" of my setup is just that I know when it happens. If you can convince me that this particular problem only shows up for me, I will be happy to change my network setup.
Ross and Felix: your short-term goal with this is to keep an open mind and try to figure out what we can do to help this situation either by fixing a bug or at least by improving the situation in the long run.
Frank how is 7.4 treating you? Any better in this regard?
Please give me a little more time to try this. I not yet found the time to switch to 7.4. And what is even worse, some time ago I almost killed the Netgear with a bad flash. Hence, I currently run a different network setup which does not show these problems. I already revived the Netgear but still have to change back the network setup. It might take some weeks until I find the time to do this.
O.k. so I finally set up my network as before and it seems to work. I could not repeat this bug. I am running 7.4.1r28781 on my PC and 7.4r7866 on my Controller.