Help Please - Tivo network problem

[turner228]

Hi
I have a (UK) Tivo with SiiconDust Cachecard installed. It has been working fine up until a week or so ago. when it dropped off the network. I only noticed because on returning from a holiday the EPG was starting to fail.

The cachecard has the link light on, as does the port on the switch it is connected to. I have swopped the cable anyway. I am unable to detect it on its normal IP address or any other in the 192.168 range

Any ideas or suggestions welcomed !

Thanks

kevin

[PhilG]

Have you tried the "fix all" power off/power on reboot??

That's always my first try - watch when it powers up to make sure there are no odd errors reported by the cachecard

[turner228]

Yes tried that, several times, no errors noted on startup. Everything works, but no network even though I have the link lights

Kevin

[PhilG]

I'm surprised no-one else has chipped in

I'd be surprised if the cachecard had suddenly decided to change IP address, and instances of cachecard failures seem to be pretty low too so I am wondering if there is some other network problem.

Can you change the configuration of your pc to have a fixed IP address (such as 192.168.x.2) and then connect the pc DIRECTLY to the tivo to see if you can ping it that way?

I've also used look@lan (www.lookatlan.com) to see which devices are active on my network - it seems to be able to scan a huge range of IP address in double-quick time

[Automan]

Originally Posted by turner228

Hi
I am unable to detect it on its normal IP address or any other in the 192.168 range

Any ideas or suggestions welcomed !

Thanks

kevin

Kevin, what is the actual IP address of your Tivo?
what is the ip address of your router and the pc you are trying to access it from?

When you say you are unable to detect it which method of discovery/testing have you used?

Automan.

[staffie2001uk]

I have a D-Link modem/router and I have to specifically add my TiVo's IP address as a lan client in the router set-up for it to be able to communicate or be seen on the network. I'm not sure if this is neccesary with your router, but it is the sort of thing that could have gone wrong without upsetting DHCP enabled kit on your network.

Cheers.

[turner228]

Thanks for the responses so far

More detail then:-

my network is on the 192.168.253.n subnet
normaly I use a mask of 255.255.255.0
The Tivo is normaly on a fixed address of 192.168.253.251, ie outside the DHCP range of my Netgear FVS318 router which is 192.168.253.1

When scanning the IP addressses I have used a laptop with a fixed address and a mask of 255.255.0.0 and software called Netwokview to scan the complete range.

Networkview uses ping to detect devices then scans that devices ports to see what services are available.

The laptop was plugged in directly to the same switch as the Tivo

There has been no network configuration changes recently and the setup has been working just fine until I noticed that the EPG was failing

Kevin

[a_tivo_noob]

Originally Posted by turner228

my network is on the 192.168.253.n subnet
normaly I use a mask of 255.255.255.0
The Tivo is normaly on a fixed address of 192.168.253.251, ie outside the DHCP range of my Netgear FVS318 router which is 192.168.253.1

When scanning the IP addressses I have used a laptop with a fixed address and a mask of 255.255.0.0 and software called Netwokview to scan the complete range.

why don't you use the 255.255.255.0 when you scan the network?... or is that a typo?

[turner228]

Ah no, not a typo
When I scanned the network I wanted to scan from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.255.254, so the mask had to match for the wider range.....

With a mask of 255.255.255.0 I would only be able to scan (ping) the 192.168.253 network from a pc on that subnet

Kevin

[PhilG]

Originally Posted by turner228

Thanks for the responses so far

More detail then:-

my network is on the 192.168.253.n subnet
normaly I use a mask of 255.255.255.0
The Tivo is normaly on a fixed address of 192.168.253.251, ie outside the DHCP range of my Netgear FVS318 router which is 192.168.253.1


Kevin

I know you said this was working "before", but one thing I had bother with was giving Tivo an address outside the DHCP range of my Netgear DG834G - it didn't want to know about an address outside it's range

SO, I had to "reserve" Tivos IP address (via it's MAC address) even though it wasn't being allocated by DHCP

Perhaps worth a try?

[Automan]

Other thoughts
Card has lost it's ip config data or perhaps defaulting to factory which if I recall is in the 192.168.1.x range.

Any other programs, etc set to load on tivo startup?
If yes, perhaps one of these has upset it.

Automan.

[turner228]

Thanks for the ideas..

Phil
My Tivo has a mac address of 00:0B:AD:8B:AC:C4 which I have now reserved as you suggested in the Router config, but to no effect.

After the reservation I have rebooted the router but still no luck

Automan
I guess siince the link lights are lit you may be close, but not sure what you mean by programs, it has TivoWeb running, and a couple of rss feeds, but again this has all been running for some time without change and without problems until now

If the IP config is stuffed, how do I get to access the config to check it and fix it?


Kevin

[PhilG]

Originally Posted by turner228

Thanks for the ideas..



If the IP config is stuffed, how do I get to access the config to check it and fix it?


Kevin

Manually configure your pc to 192.168.1.2
Wire the pc DIRECTLY to the Tivo
Run your network scan across all 192.168.1.x addresses - if it's back to factory default, it'll be in there somewhere
Then you can telnet in to Tivo and run nic_config to put things right

[verses]

Originally Posted by PhilG

Wire the pc DIRECTLY to the Tivo

Using a cross-over cable.

Ian

[a_tivo_noob]

my laptop is a bit clever and doesn't care whether you use a cross over or not

(edit: actually, i may be lying there... ignore me!)

[PhilG]

Originally Posted by a_tivo_noob

my laptop is a bit clever and doesn't care whether you use a cross over or not

(edit: actually, i may be lying there... ignore me!)

No, I think you are right - I didn't use a crossover cable to configure my Tivo either - the NIC in the pc works out what's going on (I have no idea how, but I am not as clever as my laptop )

Phil G

[verses]

Originally Posted by PhilG

No, I think you are right - I didn't use a crossover cable to configure my Tivo either - the NIC in the pc works out what's going on (I have no idea how, but I am not as clever as my laptop )

Phil G

Some more modern network cards are clever enough to work out what's going on and auto-switch as appropriate, but I thought it was worth spelling out to use a cross-over cable just in case

Ian

[turner228]

Thanks for all your help and suggestions, this is now resolved

When I connected my laptop to the Tivo with a crossover cable , I found that the Tivo was not on the 192.168.1 network but was on its original 192.68.253.251 address. It would appear that the switch is stuffed, replaced it and the Tivo reappeared on my network and made a daily call. Not sure what happened here because other devices were visible through the switch

Anyway normality is resumed !

Thanks again

Kevin

[BrianHughes]

I've had individual ports on a switch die in the past. I remember I had one in the house here & because all the other ports were working I didn't see the need to replace it. I would regularly cause myself no end of grief as I plugged something into that port and re-discovered that it was faulty - eventually

[Ian_m]

The other network pain at home I have suffered from is accidently incorporating a cross over patch lead and auto crossover sensing switch which of course works fine....However couple of years later you come to rewire things and you plug your long forgotten cross over lead into non auto crossover sensing device and suddenly things stop working

My cross over leads are now locked away to stop this type of thing re-occuring.