Well, not crashing but since we returned from holiday in early September I've been noticing frequent, usually brief connection interruptions on our BT Infinity, which had been faultless. These affected not just wireless devices but the wired PS3 and BT TV boxes too, and affected retrieving music from our NAS array.
So I suspected something inside the house network. I gradually worked out that it didn't happen if I was working alone at home but tended to begin early in the evening, or at weekends. Was there a device or program causing the trouble?
Eventually I dug into the event log of the HH3 and found successions of
out block 65 first packet is invalid (packet not in tcp window)...
with timestamps that matched the times I'd been seeing the connection loss. The IP addresses turned out to be those allocated to the Beestlings' identical Samsung laptops.
This weekend, I tested by elimination and confirmed that having either one connected (wireless or wired) is correlated with dropouts, whereas with both switched off, all is well.
But now I'm stuck. This didn't happen before September, so could a Samsung update (they seem to get an awful lot) have broken something? Googling the message with 'Samsung' turns up nothing useful. Short of banning them from the network, what might I do next?
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Sounds like there's something running on the laptops that doesn't get on with the router. Especially as it's wireless or wired - so rules out a firmware update on the laptop.
The thing I'd try is booting one off a Linux LiveCD to see if it works okay then. If yes then it's Windows/application related.
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Also does it say in the error the port number being used. Might pinpoint an app.
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I'd be contacting BT for a new HH3 and/or asking them to check their end.
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Neither of the laptops running P2P networking are they?
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>> I'd be contacting BT for a new HH3 and/or asking them to check their end.
You'll have more luck phoning your church and asking god to call round,
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Oh OK, didn't realise they were that bad. I suppose I should know that from my experience with Virgin.
On one occasion, the telly and internet both went off at the same time and stayed off. They are on separate cables. I called the tech line and you had to choose which service your issue was with. So first I reported the broadband then the TV (separate calls). Told both of them that all services were down, and that the fault was definitely their end but they both insisted the fault was in my house and therefore on making a (separate) engineer appointment. I did say to the second that I already had an engineer visit booked but that wasn't enough so I made both appointments for the same time and day.
But it was off for a few hours then all came back to life. I didn't bother cancelling the appointments but no engineers showed.
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Thanks chaps. I'll try RTJ's idea, although it may have to wait till the weekend. Ports seem to be nothing unusual; http or https, often to Google addresses. (They use Chrome.)
Z, tell me more about P2P networking. What are you concerned about?
I don't think the problem is outside the house. All the lights on the router stay blue and steady throughout. The log shows the internet connection has been up for days without a break. My guess is that whatever the Samsung machines are doing is overloading the HH3's processor to the point where it can't handle anything else.
BT's community forum is predictably unhelpful here, although I'm far from alone in seeing these errors logged. Various people offer the bleedin' obvious, like try a wired connection or restart the HH, then urge me to recommend their answer. (Don't know what's in that for them.)
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>> Z, tell me more about P2P networking. What are you concerned about?
>
BT throttle you if you have P2P running, they don't tell you, you don't know they have done it, nothing in the router stats show they have, but they do.
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If you mean p2p file sharing - illegal music and the like - then no. They do use Skype, and some online games sites, where they talk to their friends over IP, but they don't have to be actually using these for the dropouts to occur.
I'm beginning to wonder about the HH itself, and whether it's failing to cope with something they ought to be perfectly normal.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Tue 18 Nov 14 at 09:36
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Is it their machines or any?
i.e. if you turn theirs off, but allow other laptops onto the network, does the same still happen?
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Without the Samsung machines, I see no problems. I can work all day while they're at school and it's fine. Connecting one - with no user apps running and nobody even sitting at it - is enough for dropouts to start.
The network also consists of two HP laptops, an HP printer, a Buffalo NAS, two iPhones, two tablets, two TV boxes, two Internet radios and a Sonos music system. And a Wii, but that doesn't get much use. I think that's it, but I may have forgotten something.
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Is it possible to get one of the problem machines and rollback the updates to September or whenever it was you think all was OK? You may be able to restore or just use the history function in the updates section to remove them.
You could then apply the updates to find the offending one.
Last edited by: gmac on Tue 18 Nov 14 at 12:07
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Haven't had time this week to give to this but I'll investigate the updates on one machine and use the other as a control. Not sure whether rolling back is an option, but I could bring one right up to date and see what happens. (For a while I was being summoned several times a week to admin-authorize an update; haven't had that recently so I wonder if there's something pending that might help.)
If none of that helps it might be off to BT to persuade them to send me an HH5 instead. Perhaps if I sign that new contract they keep offering me...
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I "accidentally" did a factory reset on my Android phone this week. Luckily I had made a backup at the beginning of September so it was only apps I'd installed since then that were lost.
All data was retained.
I've now taken to making monthly backups of my phone. How ridiculous does that sound?
Each backup folder is around 1.5GB. My first computer had 32K, my phone has 1GB RAM and 64GB storage built in.
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>>I've now taken to making monthly backups of my phone. How ridiculous does that sound?
Not ridiculous, but probably unnecessary.
My photos replicate to Dropbox
My contacts and other stuff replicate to Google.
A record of my apps and their data is also held by Google and Google Play
I don't think a backup would gain me much. Especially since on an Android unless its rooted, its not a full image back up anyway.
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Mine is rooted and it is a lot quicker doing a recovery through TWRP than sifting through that lot.
Photos are untouched as they are on the data partition. It was Dalvik, System and the Cache I inadvertently reset.
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I just changed from an S4 to S5, and I was quite impressed and how the transfer went automatically once I'd put in my name, password and SIM.
About the only thing I had to do myself was the arrangement of icons on the homescreen.
Ditto upgrading No. 1 from an S3 to my old S4.
However, upgrading No. 2 from an iPhone to an S3 was a royal PITA.
Mine is usually unrooted. I tend to root if I want to do something specific, which is rare.
In fact, I feel a thread coming on....
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Leave me out of it...SWMBO came back from Scotland with one of those God awful iPhone contraptions.
No.1 who I rooted a Wildfire S for is already sniffing around the One V which I'll have to root and lock down if she is to get it.
Which means No.2 will then keep banging into doors and kicking a football around as he has no interest whatsoever in mobile phones, too small. Tablets now yer talking.
Last edited by: gmac on Fri 21 Nov 14 at 21:42
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PCs crashing Home Hub - rtj70
