Hi, maybe someone can enlighten me - I have a very strage problem with networking. I bought a WLAN bridge to connect EMPEG to WLAN, so I started to test things out before I install in the car. Here is whats happening.
I have two MK2's, one old, one new version. When I connect them to my wired lan, they both work fine. The WLAN bridge actually has been confirmed to work by connecting a notebook and talk to the wired LAN, no problem at all, also I can access the bridge.
So now if I connect the EMPEG's to the bridge, one (the NEW) works, the other (old) does get link status OK to the bridge, but the bridge never sees any packages from the EMPEG (counter stays at zero).
How can that be? I confirmed the LAN interfaces on the EMPEG are OK by connecting them to the wired LAN, and both work. The bridge is OK, since it works with PC and new EMPEG. Just the old EMPEG and the bridge dont talk. I surely exchanged LAN cables as well a couple of times to make sure not the cable is 'incompatible' with the old EMPEG. It has stolen two days of my time since I just couldnt see what is wrong. I still dont get it. U guys have an idea?

BTW any good idea for a WLAN car antenna?

Thanks Greets S.

A few random network questions:

Are you using DCHP or fixed addressing? In either case, what are the IP addresses?

Did you try swapping ports to verify that one of the ports are not bad or turned off?

Hi, I tried both, static and DHCP, that was my first assumption that something is wrong there and broadcast dont pass the bridge. Both nogo with the 'old' MK2. The WLAN bridge (Linksys WET11) actually only has one interface. But the interface is confirmed to work because the PC and the new MK2 both work fine via the bridge. Its some sort of issue only between the bridge and the old MK2. I dont get it. But its not important anymore since I decided to use the new MK2 with the bridge and use the old MK2 the 'old way'.

Thanks a lot anyways, greets S.

Try plugging a cheap 10mbps hub between the "no-go" empeg and the wireless bridge. It will probably start working.

There have been reports of the car player sometimes not working when connected to certain brands of hubs, switches, and bridges. The solution is to daisy chain a working hub between the incompatible device and the empeg.

i too have problems with the Linksys WET11.

The LAN connection is flakey in the extreme. I will try the extra-hub-interface to see if this helps the situation.

The WLAN isnt that great either. With very inconsistnet pings. No way would I consider it good enough to install in the car. Is physicallly moving the transmitters / receivers closer together the only way of improving signal strength ?

My only experiences with Linksys wireless gear have been unfavorable ones...

Have you looked at Linksys' web site to check for firmware updates? I had a SMC router that I cured this way. It sure can't hurt.

-Zeke

(Edit: duh, I have an SMC not Linky!)

I've come to conclusion that Linksys gear in general isn't that brilliant. It's okay and reasonably reliable but I prefer Netgear stuff now.
I've got a small 5 port Linksys switch for the devices around my desk. I've always had a transfer rate of around 1MB/s but I recently tried a Netgear switch and the transfer rate went up to 7MB. Put the Linksys back and it dropped again.

- Trevor

My only experiences with Linksys wireless gear have been unfavorable ones...

That statement could be further generalised.

Yes... I've had problems with both Linksys wireless and wired gear. We should all be glad Office Depot and Staples have seen the light and stopped stocking Linksys exclusivly. There was a while there where it was dificult to be a Netgear fan.

Matthew

Thanks a lot for you rcomments - I have tried the extra hub and voila - works. So it is some sort of physical missmatch - I never had this before. Lession learned

I didnt know Linksys stuff is so bad, I was under the impression they are OK, I have three AP's/routers in my house, Tekram, MBO and Linksys, and the Linksys was the only one I never had to reboot since of hangs, so I thought the gear is good, but the WET11 seems bad as u said.

Firmware of the bridge I actually updated first to latest release - no change.Seems to be physical.

I will actually run the (functioning) MK2 over the WET11 for a few days to see how it goes, then I will install in the car eventually.

Thanks a lot for the help and to shed some light

Take care, S.

Hmmm. It's interesting that the network connection didn't work on just the MkII. Was this a documented problem with the MkII that there was a change made for the MkIIa? I've never seen too much discussion of the matter other than to just put a hub in between.

Don't feel too bad about the Linksys issue, they usualy have the best price/features ratio, so they've gotten a pretty good market share.

Matthew

Was this a documented problem with the MkII that there was a change made for the MkIIa?

I have no idea. I'm just making a guess that the 2a units got slightly newer versions of the ethernet chipset.

Not that I know of; there was no change in ethernet circuitry between mk2/mk2a and I don't think there was a chiprev either, as the smsc91c96 was fairly mature by the time we started to use it.

As for why one works and one doesn't... search me!

Hugo

On my network here, I've given up on using DHCP with my players.. it just doesn't work more than half the time.. pretty random, dunno why. tcpdump shows the requests, and the server's replies -- but the players ignore (or don't see) the replies. Weird.

All of the other (12) computer devices here are plugged into the same (only) switch, and handle DHCP with no problems.

Perhaps I oughta look into this some more.

Cheers

since we can run tcpdump from the empeg now, why not confirm if it ignores or doesn't see it. in my experience, some switches are over sensitive to broadcast storms and cause problems by dropping packets such as dhcp ones... might be a cause.

Cannot run tcpdump easily in this situation -- I think the DHCP client is in the player binary, so the player has to be running. And tcpdump has difficulty with monitoring an interface that's not "UP" yet.

But I could run tcpdump on another machine, on a shared hub with the empeg, rather than on a switch. Anything the other machine sees, then the Empeg must also see since all traffic would be shared.

Cheers

yeah, the hub between a switch and target interface works well also. i use that to sniff incoming/outgoing traffic thru the NAT router at my work, having a hub between the router and primary switch.

as for the com port interface disabling the player software, can't you just restart it in the background as soon as you get to the shell?

now that Cisco have bought them, lets hope the product quality improves, not to the point of traditional Cisco prices though!!

Are you kidding? Cisco? Improve Quality??

Oh.. you are kidding. Ok, nevermind.

If you aren't - don't hold your breath. Cisco has a tendency to make things worse when they buy up a company - not better. Oh well.. just my experiences...

-Ben