Squeezebox and Slimserver help needed - Page 3

Guys there should be able to help you, they've pretty much seen it all when it comes to Squeezeboxen.

I have lost my wireless connection twice - each time the MAC address got screwed up.

I assume you have checked that the MAC address is the same as the one on the bottom of your SB3?

You mean both the laptop (the one running softsqueeze) and the SB3 are connecting? You're saying the laptop cannot connect at this point?

If I understood your earlier experiments correctly, you earlier had laptop connecting wirelessly, SB3 failing to connect wirelessly but connecting wired. And now you've got SB3 connecting wirelessly and laptop failing to connect wirelessly but connecting wired?

...if I got that right, that's awfully weird (but you knew that). It sounds a bit like the router is allowing only one wireless connection to the SlimServer (or to one of its ports, anyway). I can't think of a good reason for that. What make/model of router do you have?

nabwong, you're likely to think I'm taking the easy way out when I say this, but I am going to say it anyway: I think the router (not its settings, but the gizmo itself) may be the problem. I consider the Netgear consumer-level routers very funky and unreliable these days, and when a friend or family member with one asks me to help them with a networking issue, I nearly always wind up solving the problem by getting them a different router.

I like the Linksys WRT54GS and WRT54GL. They don't give me much trouble, as long as I skip the helpful setup wizards and go straight to the web-based admin tool.

I used to be a huge fan of Netgear, used their stuff both professionally (in modest-sized offices) and personally. But by about two years ago, the consumer-level routers were consistently giving me problems, model after model and unit after unit. They worked decently out of the box when I didn't touch the settings much, but once I started configuring them, weird stuff was always happening: I'd customize some firewall settings, or set up port forwarding, and it would be clear that it just plain wasn't doing what I had configured it to do (and I do think I know what I'm talking about - though I'm not a network specialist, I am Silicon Valley geek by profession and quite experienced with this stuff). And meanwhile, with those customizations in place, other things would fail, things would become weirdly unreliable, connections would be lost. Then I'd emergency-reset the thing back to its default settings and all would be well...until I tried to custom-configure it again.

So at this point I don't trust Netgear consumer goods for anything other than their default configurations with "well-known" ports. Beyond that, no.

I hate to suggest that you go out and spend more money to replace a router that otherwise seems to work OK for you, but if you were one of my friends or family out here, and had gone through this much agony with some weird wireless issue without resolving anything, that is exactly what I'd make you do before we burned any more time on it.

OK, sounds like my anti-Netgear rant is off track in this case.

Sorry I couldn't help. Please do post here when you figure out what the problem is. You've got me intrigued.

I would suggest talking with Slim to see if there's any way to trouble shoot the wireless portion of the SB3 just to make sure there's not something wonky going on with that portion of the device. You also might try and older version of slimserver to see if that helps, I had issues once after upgrading the software to the most recent version. Otherwise you've got me completely stumped, it should be working since you're able to see it on your network .

Nate

[QUOTE=episiarchIf you got that result pinging the SB from the SlimServer computer, it means TCP/IP packets are successfully getting from one device to the other.[/QUOTE]

Technically, no, it only means that ICMP packets can go through. Sorry for being so picky.

To address the main problem, it sounds like a router configuration problem. There are a few points that are not entirely clear from your description of the situation:

-Do you have any port forwarding settings?
-Is there a limit to how many wireless devices your router supports?
-Are you assigning static IP's or getting them with DHCP?
-Are there settings on the router to set the frequency band of the signal?

Najib,

As much of a pain as it will be at this point I really think you need to try the SB3 on a different wireless network if you can.

Sorry you're having so much trouble with this. It's worth it so keep fighting.

Nate

Don't particularly trust Slim's technician

SlimDevices' tech support can be extraordinarily poor. You might as well get all the help you can from them, but don't anticipate that you'll get better advice there than you will on their user-to-user forums.

When I had a hardware problem (wireless simply didn't work) they put me through two full weeks of "we're (still) sure it's your network, try X." This despite the fact that I had THREE more Squeezeboxes in the house, all working perfectly on that same network. Day after day I'd insist there was a real problem and would be told, "try one more thing." When trying one more thing didn't show the network to be the problem, they'd think of one more thing to try. Anything to prove that the problem was my network.

I had to get really insistent on escalating the problem before I could get my hands on someone who would approve issuing an RMA. Once it was approved, the technician sorta kinda forgot to actually issue the RMA until I once again made an issue of it.

I hope their support has improved now that they're selling $2000 units, but my past experience makes me skeptical.