Periodic disconnects during playback

[FranticOrange]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help me - I'm experiencing fairly regular disconnects during playback. This is happening on two separate TVs, and also happens whether they are connected to the network via WiFi or via a LAN cable.

There's a link to the rather large log file below. The log file covers the previous few days (including various disconnected) but a known disconnect happened yesterday (Apr 30) at around the 16:16 time.

Sometimes, I can wait a few seconds and start the playback again. Other times I have to restart the Mezzmo service in order to to continue otherwise the TV just can't see the server.

Any help would be appreciated, or I can provide any further information.

Thank you,
David.

Log file here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/123u5zsC9UbwGNfMzZPpTIDa8_w8hqq3b/view?usp=sharing)

[Peter]

Just before the disconnect from the TV Mezzmo server receives UPnP traffic from your router. Can you please try disabling UPnP in your router to see if this helps?

[FranticOrange]

Thanks for the reply Peter.

Unfortunately, my router doesn't have uPnP as a configurable option. If you think that's a likely cause then I may look at purchasing a different router.

[jbinkley60]

Do all of the wired devices plug into your Wi-Fi router or are they plugged into a separate switch ?

[Peter]

Thanks for the reply Peter.

Unfortunately, my router doesn't have uPnP as a configurable option. If you think that's a likely cause then I may look at purchasing a different router.

Turning off uPnP is a common troubleshooting step, I wouldn't purchase a new router if it does not have a setting to turn this off. Another troubleshooting step is to try replacing the network cable to the device with another network cable to see if this helps. The files are being streamed without transcoding so it is either a problem of bandwidth or it is a problem where the TV does not get a Notify message from the server within the default 30 minutes of the advertise time and goes looking for it again. You can try changing the SSDP Advertisement interval in Media Server Settings in Mezzmo to 86400 to see if this helps.

[FranticOrange]

Turning off uPnP is a common troubleshooting step, I wouldn't purchase a new router if it does not have a setting to turn this off. Another troubleshooting step is to try replacing the network cable to the device with another network cable to see if this helps. The files are being streamed without transcoding so it is either a problem of bandwidth or it is a problem where the TV does not get a Notify message from the server within the default 30 minutes of the advertise time and goes looking for it again. You can try changing the SSDP Advertisement interval in Media Server Settings in Mezzmo to 86400 to see if this helps.

Ah, I went and bought a new router anyway as the lack of diagnostic features available on my ISP's was limiting. Some further information for you:

- There is now no network cable, all of my devices run off the WiFi. The media server was originally connected to the router using TP-Link Powerline adapters (and the TV using WiFi) but I've completely removed those from the setup to eliminate them as a possible cause. The issue still remained.
- I disabled WiFi on my ISP's router, then hooked up the new one (an Asus RT-AC88U) and set up the WiFi on the AC88U. I then tried streaming but got the same results.
- I disabled uPnP on the new router (now that I've got the option), and still get the same results.
- I checked the SSDP Advertisement Interval in Mezzmo and it's already 86400 but as the disconnections can occur within 5 minutes then this doesn't seem like it would be the issue.

I have provided a log file with 3 disconnections.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=118tgjNPUTuSxnsm1mlm7Is3qdEYtfmlJ

I hope you can help, let me know if there's any more information I can provide.

Thank you.

[FranticOrange]

There's some additional information that may help to trace my issue. After posting the above, I left a different TV in another room playing a video. It too disconnected after a time, but was then unable to see the DLNA server at all in order to continue playback. This sometimes happens with the other TV but I haven't had logging enabled when it happens. I don't know if it's another symptom of the same issue, or if it's a different issue altogether but it might be a piece of the puzzle that helps.

I've included a link to this log file below.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dfVgCMCGA-gSsDWOgMjJO956e7ZhBej7

[Peter]

The logs indicate the file is streaming fine until an M-Search message is received from 192.168.1.250 looking for an InternetGatewayDevice then the TV does a browse request on the server and disconnects. The device at 192.168.1.250 is the PC running Mezzmo so there must be some other software on the PC that is sending out the M-Search message looking for an InternetGatewayDevice and this is interrupting the stream.

[FranticOrange]

Interesting, thanks Peter. That is indeed the IP address of the Mezzmo server, I assigned a fixed IP address to it for remote access purposes.

After doing some digging, M-Search seems to be related to uPnP so in additional to disabling it on the router, I'm going to attempt stopping the uPnP windows service on the Mezzmo server, as well as the SSDP service. Then I'll attempt my test again and see what happens.

I've also added the powerline adapter back in to provide a wired link for hooking up the Mezzmo server to the router as running it off a WiFi adapter seemed to stop a couple of the TVs from seeing the DLNA broadcasts.

Out of interest, so that I can investigate my own logs somewhat - what text are you searching for to indicate where the disconnection happens in the log files?

[FranticOrange]

A quick question for you Peter - are you familiar with Wireshark? If so and I'm able to capture a full network traffic log in Wireshark for a few minutes leading up to a disconnection, would that help you at all?

[Peter]

In the Mezzmo log I look for the get /content/ requests to see file requests from the Mezzmo server then I look for the http-get keyword after this which is written at the time the connection is closed. I am familiar with Wireshark but it contains too much information to be able to isolate what is causing the disconnections.

[FranticOrange]

Ok, thanks Peter - that should help me on my quest to get a rock solid media server. I'll report back with any other findings on my current tests.

[FranticOrange]

Update: After stopping and disabling the uPnP service and the SSDP service on the machine hosting Mezzmo, things seems to be much more stable. I left a TV playing a whole folder of videos and after 6 hours there hadn't been any disconnection.

I'm not sure why uPnP requests over the network would cause Mezzmo or the TV to drop the connection but I hope this might help other users. I did a number of things to try to solve this but the likely candidates are to disable uPnP on the router, and then disable the uPnP service in Windows (which in turn automatically disables the SSDP service).

Thanks for your help Peter, stay safe.
Frantic.