MVP and Powerline Networking: Incompatible?

[mdnttoker]

You can get it to boot from a hard power pull consistenly Bob?

Without the intervening DELL switch, GB-PVR would load about 30% of the time across the HDX's. With the switch, it's ~100%.

What does the rest of your network topology look like Bob?

-Dan

[RangerBob]

Yes, tested most of last evening, and it was consistantly booting from both cold and warm starts. The HDX101's are giving me a consistant ~180 Mbps on diagnostics. The MVP shows no signs of stuttering or dropout and I am showing very little to no packet loss. I left the HDX's to prioritise UDP packets. The HDX's firmware is: spirit_dh10p_9010_v2 s2_0_21_NG_03_cvs, I don't know if this is the latest.

My topography is as follows (hope the ascii art works!):

| = Cat5
|| = Powerline


BT DSL line
|
|
Router & DHCP (Netgear DG834PN Wireless rangemax ADSL router)
| |
| +------- (various other PCs)
|
HDX101(1)
||
(downstairs ring main)
||
||===(upstairs ring main)======== HDX101(2) ------ GBPVR server box
||
(downstairs ring main)
||
HDX101(3)
|
|
MVP

I am running an older version of GBPVR as I have just finished moving house, and the system has been packed away for a while, the version is: v0.96.12. I tried both the dongle.bin and the gbpvr.bin, both work. I moved back to dongle.bin for testing.

I will hopefully try updating once sub releases his new version.

The mistake I made was whilst testing the tuners for signal level, I was running the Hauppage software. I had somehow accidentally run the Hauppage MVP software. Whilst both this, and the GBPVR server were running, I was getting similar results. Once I killed the Hauppage software, everything sprung to life.

Hope some of this information helps! If theres anything else I can help with, let me know!

[Kristan]

What revision is your MVP? I'm guessing it's not an H series by the fact gbpvr.bin works for you. Perhaps it's something hauppauge have changed ethernet chipset/firmware or something with the newer MVPs?

[RangerBob]

Erm, at work now so can't check it, but checking back my old posts here, I think its a D3A revision unit.

[RangerBob]

Ok, i tried at the weekend to upgrade to version 97.13, and things were not good.

Using dongle and gbpvr dongles, I got maybe a second of playback before the MVP would go to the "contacting servers" screen.

Using the dongle-3.0.24088 it lasted for a while, for anything up to about an hour. Then it crapped out to the "contacting servers" screen. Restarting the services and unplugging and replugging the MVP bought it back each time, until the last time I tried, where it just would not connect again no matter what I did. Gave up after an hour or so, I'll try again later.

I did try using Hauppagues latest dongle from their website, but it didn't seem to improve things, and had the annoying yellow bars.

I also tried a rollback to the older version, but system restore seems to be useless for that, I couldn't get the old version running again, something seems to have gone badly wrong on it during the restore. Bah!

Just to see if there was any improvement, I set the HDX's to prioritise TCP/IP. Didn't seem to do anything. I'll check later to see if there is any firmware updates for them.

Thats it so far, I'll keep playing around with the setup and see if I can get anything solid going.

[Kristan]

I've bought myself a £20 netgear switch on fleabay to replace my expensive baystack (well free as it's ex-work, but would have been expensive originally ). It should work as it's the same as one I've already tried the MVP with which seemed to work, but I'll post back with the results once it arrives.

I think this is the only solution that's workable, unless sub resurrects gbpvr.bin (even that may make no difference) or hauppauge do something about it.

[mdnttoker]

Just thought I'd update this thread.

I've now updated to 98.13, and the MVP is now connecting and loading just fine over the HDX101 powerline adapters.

Just a note: I also improved the connection by enabling Spanning Tree Protocol on the router. I noticed on Wireshark that the Netgear powerline devices were generating these packets, so I thought I'd enable it on the router. Seemed to help a bit.

-Dan

[bpowell555]

Powerline HD foopin rocks! I use an intermedate gigabit switch twixt mvp and dhcp adsl router and the switch is connected to the HD box. No more stutters or crashes and all is snappy - huzzah!