Every recording is interrupted

I have an OTA antenna and an HDHomeRun which have have been using for years. Occasionally, I would get a message that a recording was interrupted. and I could see the interruption during playback.

Since the last update, over 90% of the recording are marked that the recording has been interruption, but I do not see any problems during playback. Did you change the sensitivity setting of what it considers an interruption?

Logs have been submitted as 3f7ad93d-9530-4132-8874-91acfd0cdf01.

Having every recording interrupted must be very frustr

What do your logs say? Dont post everything just look for the error and copy and paste like 10 lines before and after..

What does your network topology look like between your HDHR and your DVR?

From one of your recent recordings I see network errors which indicate that the HDHomeRun had to drop data because the DVR was not receiving it fast enough.

ss=94%-95% snq=100% seq=100% bps=11687672,2140192-13460800 pps=973,0-3900 neterr=15%

This would generally indicate congestion on the network, which would either be a failing ethernet cable or switch, or that WiFi is being used between the HDHomeRun and the DVR (which we recommend against due to issues such as this).

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The same topology has been in place for the last 2 years with no problems. The interrupts just started when the latest version was release. I can try replacing all the LAN cables with the exception of the one from the Loft to the Basement. That was pre-wired when they built the house.

I can also put a laptop in the loft and test the LAN speed to the server.

Thanks for the diagnostic. I will let you know what I find.

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Is the TP-Link Deco mesh unit being used as a switch, router, dhcp server, etc.

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Im curious why your routers last octet is .2. Also to troubleshoot i would move your dvr near the hdhr and plug it into the same switch. Then see if the problem is still there. If it is, then you know the issue is not anything connected to the basement. If it works great then you know the issue is between the router and the basement.

The Deco is a mesh system. The unit connected to the cable modem is .1. The other two units are satellites and are .2 and .3.

Wired backhaul? Either way i would move the server as a test to rule out a portion of the network. It could also be the hdhr as well. Moving the server will help yiu to troublshoot.

Another thing you can do is run a test on your DVR server to the HDHR to check for network issues or packet loss. It requires streaming from one of the tuners.
https://info.hdhomerun.com/info/troubleshooting:network_packet_loss
You should see a series of dots. “n” indicates network packet loss. “t” indicates a reception error. “s” is informational (sequence error).
Example output:

............n...............................n..........ts..........
-- Video statistics --
46998 packets received, 0 overflow errors, 2 network errors, 1 transport errors, 1 sequence errors

Here is something weird. I do not have the HRHomeRun software installed on the Channels server. When I moved to this server 2 years ago, Channels automatically found the HDHRs, so I never installed the software.

The Firmware is also dated. Firmware: 20210624

I am also wondering if it is time to upgrade to the FLEX 4K

Uh, yes. Very much so.

You're missing many MANY updates from when SD actually did some development, which seems to have nearly ceased in the past year or so.

@eric

Changes I made:

  • I replaced the HDHomeRun with a FLEX 4K
  • Replaced the cable from the HRHomeRun to the Switch
  • Replaced the switch with a new Netgear switch
  • Replaced the cable from the switch to the wall jack

And I am still geting recording interrupted. Can you take a look and see if I am still getting the same error.

Thanks

Logs have been submitted as 65496dfa-f288-4121-8301-78a99ca473d1.

The good news is that it doesn't appear you're running into the network buffering issues that we were seeing before.

Unfortunately the stats we have are pointing to signal reception issues. You can enable the debug flag on your HDHR, rescan your channels and then email [email protected] and they should be able to give you more details.

@eric

Thanks for checking. I just turned on Diagnostic info and will wait for a problem and then report it to them.

Thanks for your help.

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@eric

Silicondust has been monitoring my logs and says there is no sign reception issues. This is what they initially said:

No reception issues noted. Something is causing Channels to stop receiving data, and when that happens, it restarts the stream, which would account for the interrupted message. How are the HDHomeRun and Channels server connected network-wise? This is most likely a network issue.

I sent them all the changes I made to the network and this was their response:

There aren't any network issues most of the time, it's like it's perfectly fine for however long, then something goes wrong and data stops getting through, and Channels detects it and abandons the stream and starts over. Not sure if there's something that can be adjusted in Channels settings somewhere to make it wait longer to see if things recover or what, that might be a question for them. In terms of troubleshooting, the big thing would be to temporarily move the DVR server to the loft and run it off the GS105 in order to eliminate the in-wall cabling as a potential issue.

I did a number of test recordings for them. You can see in the playback what he is talking about. It is like someone cut 10-15 seconds from the recording. I uploaded one of the recordings so you can see. The interrupt occurs at about the 5 minute mark. The recording was made on Tuesday (9/10) at 2pm EDT.

Also, the problem is only happening about 50% of the time now.

Moving the server to the loft is not an option at this time. Is there a LAN network monitoring tool I can install to monitor the traffic between the switch in the Loft and Basement?

What do you think of PRTG?

Interesting that they aren't seeing anything. We're seeing a timeout where we haven't received data for multiple seconds (which would mean that there would have been dataloss due to the very small size of the network buffers and TCP window).

On Windows/Mac I tend to suggest PingPlotter. On Linux I suggest smokeping in a docker container.

@eric

First a new diagram.

I ran PingPlotter from the DVR Server (.40) to three different devices:

  • HDHR (.77)
  • NAS (.50)
  • Office PC (.35)

In all cases there was packet loss. So the problem looks like it is the cable to the DVR Server or the 16 port switch. I will try replacing the cable first. :wink:

Here are the PingPlotter graphs.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18Wnt_Q_MN0gYleK3fRhK-l584A9IBevT?usp=sharing

BTW...GREAT TOOL!

Hmmm, typo on the IP?
brave_screenshot_community.getchannels.com

@chDVRuser The image is wrong

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