FreeNAS media gateway conflict

[tgip]

I have as Arris media gateway that i got through WOW cable to connect the computer's/TV's in my house. The TV's each require a small media player box to connect to the gateway in order to watch TV, etc. I recently setup FreeNAS with dlna, firefly, and btsync which has been working beautifully.
However recently the media player's that attach to the TV have been loosing connection constantly to the point where I can't watch TV for longer than 30 minutes without losing connection. I still have internet access when this happens. I have had the cable company come and "fix" the problem and replace the gateway. I spent 24hrs with the new gateway without FreeNAS on and there were no TV problems, then i restarted FreeNAS and the tv goes out again. So it's obviously a problem with my setup. Any thoughts on what could be causing this? I've been thinking there must be a conflict with the dlna/UPnP devices but have no idea's about how to remedy the situation. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[dlavigne]

What is the type of NIC in the FreeNAS system?

 

[tgip]

I'm running FreeNAS from an old hp/compaq 2400 laptop. It has a Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controller.

 

[dlavigne]

Anything related in /var/log/messages of the freenas system?

 

[tgip]

I don't know if its just a coincidence but around the times that things have gone out i have a:

freenas manage.py: [common.pipesubr:57] Popen()ing: /usr/local/bin/warden list -v​

​

Its usually followed by:

freenas last message repeated 3*(or more) times​

​

There are some other messages but those seemed to occur when the connection is lost. What does this python script do?

 

[dlavigne]

That message isn't related and can be ignored.

Did you ever get the issue resolved? It may be the NIC...

 

[tgip]

I don't know about resolved... I've had the my cable provider come back out, they pretty much re-cabled my apartment and boosted signals for both the video and internet. I have also uninstalled bittorrent sync and haven't had a problem since. So my best guess is it was a problem with the NIC, bittorrent sync and my tv's UPnP/dlna recievers. If you have any clues as to why these wouldn't play nice together that would any help would be appreciated, as I liked having btsync running off my FreeNAS box. Otherwise I might just let it be for now.

 

[John B]

You got it! Just got done dealing with the same issue. Although freenas isn't in the picture. I have 3 WOW Arris media players and a media gateway. They would all work just fine until after I opened BitTorrent sync on a computer in my house. Then usually 1 or all the media players would disconnect. Once I shutdown the BitTorrent sync client and restart the media players, within a few minutes everything is back to normal. This of course wasn't figured out until after a weekend long visit from the WOW technician racking his brain trying to figure out why these boxes were randomly disconnecting. My only thought is that the BitTorrent sync client may share a common TCP Port with the media players and steals it though UPNP but it wouldn't explain why it would need to go outside the firewall. Nonetheless I'm gonna mess around with setting manual ports on the BitTorrent client and see if maybe that helps. But that's definitely thee problem. BitTorrent sync & Arris Media Players.

 

[Yatti420]

Anything Bit Torrent related is gonna reak havoc on your network without tuning it.. I'd slow down whatever it's doing..

 

[tgip]

Glad to know I had some idea of what was going on and that I'm not the only person running into that problem, If you have any recommendations to tweak Bittorrent/Bittorrent Sync let me know. I might look into other options for Dropbox-esque file syncing.

 

[Yatti420]

I havent installed it but is there no GUI method for slowing upload etc? If not I'd add a feature request for it.. My guess is it was either uploading docs etc or pulling files from another comp etc..

 

[wolfgang]

Glad to know I had some idea of what was going on and that I'm not the only person running into that problem, If you have any recommendations to tweak Bittorrent/Bittorrent Sync let me know. I might look into other options for Dropbox-esque file syncing.

Same problems here. Any idea what ports the Arris hardware uses to communicate? Maybe if we force BTSYNC to use a specific port that would help? Any luck with simply throttling?