WiFi connection to Firefly on NSLU2 lost after 2 hours

[scotsman]

My Roku SoundBridge M1001 repeatably loses WiFi connection to Firefly on Linksys NSLU2 after 2 hours (of activity or inactivity) since the connection was established. The SoundBridge displays the error “No music libraries found”. WiFi connection from iTunes 7 client on Windows XP suffers the same fate in the same timescales. In both cases, restarting the client restores the connection to the music library for a further 2 hours.

When the SoundBridge disconnects during streaming, Firefly log (debuglevel 5) shows “Write error: Broken pipe”. When iTunes disconnects during streaming, Firefly log shows “Write error: Connection reset by peer”. I see no entry in Firefly log for disconnections when client/server are idle – but perhaps I don’t know what to look for.

Ethernet connection to Firefly from iTunes client is reliable.

I’ve found a thread that describes something similar on different server hardware, but I’m not quite sure how to interpret it. URL below:

http://forums.fireflymediaserver.org/viewtopic.php?t=5320

I’ve tried enabling Multicast on my router and switched off its SPI firewall – neither of which have altered the disconnection behaviour. To my knowledge there is no firewall running on the NSLU2 (at least, I haven’t set one up!)

I would greatly appreciate any specific guidance on what changes I should try on:

1. Wireless router (and/or)
2. Firefly server / NSLU (and/or)
3. SoundBridge

My hardware setup and versions are listed below.

Many thanks

— Fin

Router: ZyXel Prestige 662HW-61 (802.11g Wireless ADSL 2+ 4-port Security Gateway)
ESSID:4312
Channel: 1 (neighbours are on channels 6/11)
WEP: 128-bit WEP
LAN IP: 192.168.1.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

NSLU2 Firmware Version: V2.3R63-uNSLUng-6.8-beta
Server Name: NAS
IP: 192.168.1.6 (static)
Firefly Version svn-1450
Music Library: NAS

SoundBridge (M1001) is running software version 2.7.38
IP: 192.168.1.7 (static)
Connected to: 4312
Signal Quality: 98
Signal Level: -48dBm

[rpedde]

@scotsman wrote:

My Roku SoundBridge M1001 repeatably loses WiFi connection to Firefly on Linksys NSLU2 after 2 hours (of activity or inactivity) since the connection was established.

This sounds very much like you aren’t getting the multicast queries.

Do you have another access point or wireless router you could hook up for the purposes of test? I tend to think that it might be the wireless router. Is there any newer firmware available?

[CCRDude]

Actually I experience something similar every morning. Multicasting imho works fine here, since iTunes works fine all over the house and we’ve got some office applications that communicate through multicast as well.

Here it’s the newest beta firmware on the M1001 and a 3Com OfficeConnect 11g. Can hook it up to an Ethernet wire for a few days to report whether that really happens only over wireless (it’s quite new, so I haven’t played much with it anyway 😉 ).

I do also remember both messages from the log, but couldn’t find them for the last disconnect, may try to keep an eye on this as well.

[rpedde]

@CCRDude wrote:

Actually I experience something similar every morning. Multicasting imho works fine here, since iTunes works fine all over the house and we’ve got some office applications that communicate through multicast as well.

Here it’s the newest beta firmware on the M1001 and a 3Com OfficeConnect 11g. Can hook it up to an Ethernet wire for a few days to report whether that really happens only over wireless (it’s quite new, so I haven’t played much with it anyway 😉 ).

I do also remember both messages from the log, but couldn’t find them for the last disconnect, may try to keep an eye on this as well.

I suppose it’s also possible it’s the mdns — I’m using a fairly old version of it. I suppose I could update it, but seems like macosforge has been down for months, so I gave up waiting for the bsd licensed version to become available again.

I see now it’s up, so i suppose I could merge that in. Worth a shot, I guess.

[CCRDude]

Looks like the connection was not lost when wired, so it actually may be the AP in my case. Too bad the 3Com can’t run OpenWRT, but I’ll see if I can find another device to test (anyway it’s not really a matter to me, since I tend to switch all devices of the hard way over night anyway).

[Author]

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