10-08-2018 10:49 PM
Hey peeps,
I’ve got a slightly complex issue, but hoping someone can help. About 3 weeks ago, I had a technician come out to my house and move the ONT Fibre box. Long story short, when I bought my house last year, the previous owner had tossed all the equipment onto the floor of my living room in a big mess. I had Ethernet run through my house and did a final connection to my office. The techs I had come, moved everything to my garage - the ONT, the battery backup, and the T3200. I use two Boost units for my wifi, one directly to the modem in the garage and one in my office connected through the Ethernet. In my office, I swapped a 5 port switch for an 8 port one, due to the number of devices I wanted to connect. Since switching to an 8 port, whenever I record shows and try to watch TV, my network stability is trashed. TV freezes, internet connection is gone, and I’m struggling to understand where the issue is. I had a tech come out, he replaced the Ethernet jack in my garage, then blamed it on my switch. I bought a different switch but I’m still having the issue. The way things are run looks like this:
Garage:
- T3200 connected to ONT, Boost and jack to office
Office:
- Jack to switch
- Switch to second jack
- Switch to wired Optik box, Xbox, Mac, Printer, Apple TV, Boost
Living room:
- Jack to switch
- Switch to Apple TV, Optik PVR, TV
Unplugging the printer seemed to help. Two of the other devices aren’t on. I’d be surprised if the printer would be the issue. That said, I can’t figure out what else it may be. Any thoughts?
10-08-2018 11:11 PM - edited 10-08-2018 11:15 PM
I had a switch in the past that worked fine for a while then went bad in a very subtle way. All devices except the TV worked fine. The switch was not passing traffic properly / cleanly to the Optik box and it was freezing and pixelating randomly, especially if recording. Replacing the switch in my case fixed the specific issue. I doubt it will be a common occurrence though. Which of the many switches did you replace? My bad one was right behind the PVR and most of the traffic it got was the PVR as the Roku / BluRay and PC were very rarely used. There's still a small possibility that one of the connected devices may be conflicting, even if not fully powered on. I can't say in regards to the printer since mine is wireless.
10-08-2018 11:26 PM
I’m pretty convinced it’s the printer, but I threw it on wifi now. I had a TP-Link one, and switched to a Netgear one...both had the same issue. Originally, had a 5 port Zytec that I moved downstairs. When I was using that, I had some devices running through a time capsule. The printer seemed to be disruptive then as well, once I went from the 5 port to the 8 port. Thanks for the tip though. That sounds like a likely culprit.
10-09-2018 10:32 AM
Are all the devices that connect to the switch capable of running at gigabit speeds?
10-09-2018 03:31 PM
A switch can drop packets if the cpu is overloaded or the internal RAM buffer becomes full. The cause of an overloaded cpu is usually a bad cable. Buffer exhaustion is caused by very high traffic loads or an environment with a multicast traffic (IP TV) and a mix of high and low speed devices.
You could run a test by disconnecting all the cables feeding the non TV devices, starting as many TV HD streams as possible (recording and live tv) and see if you get pixilation. If you do not get pixilation then reattach one of the detached cables and rerun test. Repeat for each detached cable.
If you still have the 5 port switch, another test you do is reinstall it in your office and use it to support the tv feed and link to living room. Connect the 8 port switch to other devices and the 5 port switch.
10-09-2018 06:53 PM
10-09-2018 06:55 PM
10-09-2018 08:05 PM
Any clues in the system log and interface stats on the router?
Not sure what else to recommend, too bad managed switches are expense.
The boost units may drop their Internet connection if they loose the wired communication path between them. If one looses connection to the Internet then both do.