# Network: Incoming connections go down



## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Am I the only one with this problem?

I can reboot the TiVo, and then I am able to ping it, connect to the web interface, use KTTMG, and use the Android apps with the Premiere.

But in less than 24 hours, I lose all incoming connections to the Premiere. No ping response, no tablet/phone access, etc. The TiVo still operates normally- can still see TiVo's servers, can talk with PyTiVo running on my Linux desktop, and shows no network errors. Same IP address, same network, nothing wrong with my router, no problems with any other device (and no, I am not connected using stupid wifi).

I am not sure I understand what is going on. I don't remember this being a problem in the past, but it seems like the TiVo is just shutting down all incoming ports after a [short] while.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

Sometimes the web interface goes down and you have to reboot the Tivo.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

ThAbtO said:


> Sometimes the web interface goes down and you have to reboot the Tivo.


I can deal with sometimes, if that means once every few or several months or something. But every day????


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

crxssi said:


> I can deal with sometimes, if that means once every few or several months or something. But every day????


Dead horse beating time again.

You do have everything on your network that doesn't travel assigned a fixed IP address from outside of your router's DHCP address pool, right?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

_Damn, it looks like I accidentally edited my last posting instead of replying to it, so important info was lost when I had originally responded to unitron. So this was actually written at 11:56pm with some info I retyped from memory from the 9:45am posting._

The jist of the long message was that I have 7 devices on the network. I use static on all of them and they are all wired; except the Android devices and Wii- which are all wireless and DHCP in a totally different network range (150+). There are no IP conflicts, ever.

The TiVo was rebooted this morning and then nmap showed the TiVo with ports 80 and 443 open (on a quick scan). I could ping it, connect with Android client, etc.

And now, several hours later, I can't ping the TiVo at all.... again:

Starting Nmap 5.51.6 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-06-30 23:29 EDT
NSE: Loaded 58 scripts for scanning.
Initiating Connect Scan at 23:29
Scanning tivo (192.168.1.4) [1000 ports]
Completed Connect Scan at 23:29, 5.61s elapsed (1000 total ports)
Initiating Service scan at 23:29
Nmap scan report for tivo (192.168.1.4)
Host is up (0.0045s latency).
All 1000 scanned ports on tivo (192.168.1.4) are filtered

Yet it is on the network because the Premiere can talk to PyTiVo and TiVo's servers just fine.

I have learned nothing.... other than this TiVo Premiere is shutting out connections after less than 15 hours after rebooting. And it never used to do that. *Incredibly* frustrating.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Continues to get more interesting: Verified I still could not ping the TiVo. So just for giggles, I went into network settings. I stepped through the settings, leaving everything exactly as it was (I changed nothing). At the end, I could once again ping the TiVo. Wonder if it will last only several hours like a reboot does....


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

crxssi said:


> Continues to get more interesting: Verified I still could not ping the TiVo. So just for giggles, I went into network settings. I stepped through the settings, leaving everything exactly as it was (I changed nothing). At the end, I could once again ping the TiVo. Wonder if it will last only several hours like a reboot does....


Now that we've established that you know way, way more than I about networking, I will play Watson to your Holmes and hope that my ignorance adds to your knowledge by somehow triggering something.

I would go into each and every one of my router's setup pages and look for anything with a time element.

And speaking of time, are you using a cable modem and if so how often does your cable company change the IP address by which the rest of the world sees your network, or how often does the cable modem change the address at which it finds the router?

I ask because of the way TiVo seems to have mingled internet access into the Premiere operating system the way MS got Internet Explorer parts tangled up inside Windows.

I'm thinking maybe some interruption of the Premiere's apparently constant and ongoing dialogue with the mothership screws up stuff on which it shouldn't have any effect, but nevertheless does.

(which sci-fi work was it that said never trust anything if you can't tell where it keeps its brain?--that's how I view the "needs the internet for stuff for which it shouldn't need the internet" Premiere)


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

crxssi said:


> I have learned nothing.... other than this TiVo Premiere is shutting out connections after less than 15 hours after rebooting. And it never used to do that. *Incredibly* frustrating.


 Is loss of ports perhaps correlated to net connects to TiVo server? When you can't connect to any port is TTG=a,a,a in System Information screen?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

unitron said:


> Now that we've established that you know way, way more than I about networking, I will play Watson to your Holmes and hope that my ignorance adds to your knowledge by somehow triggering something.


LOL. Well, I am a professional sysadmin with 25 years of experience; so not to worry.

The outside network should not affect this particular problem, but I will tell you that my cable modem does not change IP address more than maybe once a year. And the router has nothing time related set. I don't think there is a correlation with it "calling home" for the daily updates, but that is a good idea.

In fact, you spurred another idea too. I wrote a quick program that will continuously monitor the TiVo Premiere so I will know exactly when it loses incoming connections. Knowing this could be extremely valuable in troubleshooting. I just started up that program, and went through network setup on the TiVo again which brought it back to life for incoming connections. Now I will go to work (job). Nobody will be interacting with the TiVo. Let's see what happens....


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

crxssi said:


> LOL. Well, I am a professional sysadmin with 25 years of experience; so not to worry.
> 
> The outside network should not affect this particular problem, but I will tell you that my cable modem does not change IP address more than maybe once a year. And the router has nothing time related set. I don't think there is a correlation with it "calling home" for the daily updates, but that is a good idea.
> 
> In fact, you spurred another idea too. I wrote a quick program that will continuously monitor the TiVo Premiere so I will know exactly when it loses incoming connections. Knowing this could be extremely valuable in troubleshooting. I just started up that program, and went through network setup on the TiVo again which brought it back to life for incoming connections. Now I will go to work (job). Nobody will be interacting with the TiVo. Let's see what happens....


Okay, so we're probably more like the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce version, where Watson is considerably older, than the original print characters, who were more nearly contemporaries.

It just seemed like your problem was a little too regular not to be something timing out somewhere.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Take a look at this thread

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=489048

and see if there's anything in common.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

unitron said:


> Take a look at this thread
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=489048
> 
> and see if there's anything in common.


Good find- Yes, once you get past the incorrect stuff at the beginning of the thread. Just to make sure, I did check with my TiVo account and both "video sharing" and "video downloads" are enabled. MAK is correct and enabled. It sounds like he has the exact same problem and just didn't realize it until later in his troubleshooting.

And the first results from my monitoring program are in. From the time I get incoming working on the Premiere by going through network config to the time it stops accepting incoming connections is almost exactly 4 hours. Hmm. Now I need to repeat this to see if it is the same, and under actual use to see if that changes anything.


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## Jorel (Jun 20, 2012)

Followed the link over. You mentioned there was incorrect stuff at the beginning of my thread. Am I mistaken about some of the things I said? Am I right about there not being any ports to open on a LAN? I am about a year in to learning networking and my understanding is that there is no firewall on a LAN. However TiVo says to make sure certain inside ports are unrestricted. Not even sure what that means. No ego here just want to learn. So if I have said anything that is not correct please inform me. I am sure I can benefit from your knowledge and experience.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

crxssi said:


> And the first results from my monitoring program are in. From the time I get incoming working on the Premiere by going through network config to the time it stops accepting incoming connections is almost exactly 4 hours. Hmm. Now I need to repeat this to see if it is the same, and under actual use to see if that changes anything.


Second test complete. Ports open at 21:39 and go down at 04:45. 8 hours 6 min.

BINGO! Guess what time the TiVo made it's last daily connection to TiVo's servers for guide data? 4:40am!! So why is the Premiere refusing all incoming connections after it's scheduled connection to TiVo's servers???


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

crxssi said:


> Second test complete. Ports open at 21:39 and go down at 04:45. 8 hours 6 min.
> 
> BINGO! Guess what time the TiVo made it's last daily connection to TiVo's servers for guide data? 4:40am!! So why is the Premiere refusing all incoming connections after it's scheduled connection to TiVo's servers???


 I'd say it's a configuration problem for that TSN number in your account. Of course getting TiVo to admit that and fix it will be a challenge.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

moyekj said:


> I'd say it's a configuration problem for that TSN number in your account. Of course getting TiVo to admit that and fix it will be a challenge.


I didn't see that one coming, but I was going to suggest seeing if you could isolate it and any other TiVos and at least one computer and router from the internet to see if just being on a sandboxed home network makes any difference.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

moyekj said:


> I'd say it's a configuration problem for that TSN number in your account. Of course getting TiVo to admit that and fix it will be a challenge.


That is EXACTLY what I was thinking.

I performed one last test when I got home today. I wanted to see if I could force a connect to TiVo's servers and then determine at what point in the process that incoming connections go down.

Preparing.... still up entire time
Connecting.... still up entire time
Getting info.... OMG stuck on "downloading forever" Then connection "Interrupted N11"! Never seen that before.... ever. And I have forced connections many times before in the past.

Still pinging fine. So I tried it again. Same thing! N11! Before I tried this, I had been monitoring the automatic call-home connections, and they were succeeding the last few days.

So I tried it again. (Why does it have to do "preparing" forever each time? Yeesh) . Downloading forever. Same thing.

So I tried it yet again, but this time I stopped pinging the TiVo, just to make sure that wasn't upsetting it for some stupid reason. It went through??!! I was only pinging it once per second- ONE PACKET in a second. How could that possibly interfere with anything????

So as soon as it got past "Getting Info", and quickly through "Disconnecting", I immediately starting pinging it again and the pinging was successful as it started "Loading info". That took longer than forever. And when it was done, it was still pinging. *AND* I was told why so much hoopla.... "pending restart".

Yep, right in the middle of my troubleshooting, it decided it was a perfect time to download a new TiVo software update in multiple pieces. Yeesh. My pinging probably had nothing to do with anything. I went ahead and rebooted it. Yep, upgraded from 20.2.1.1-01-2-746 to 20.2.1.2-01-2-746. Flash from 20-2-1-mr/2012.04.06-0501 to 20-2-1-mr/2012.06.04-1505. HDUI from b-iris-2-1-mr/2012.04.05-1655 to b-iris-2-1-mr/2012.05.23-1542.

I will keep the test logging program (1 ping per min) running until I see it not work again and see if the next automatic call-home triggers the ports to shut down again. Next scheduled call is Jul 3 at 7:17pm.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Playing Watson again, here's something I just posted in that other thread I mentioned

"Maybe the Premiere software got upgraded to IPv6, and now it's too snooty to have anything to do with the IPv4 S2s."


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

unitron said:


> Playing Watson again, here's something I just posted in that other thread I mentioned
> 
> "Maybe the Premiere software got upgraded to IPv6, and now it's too snooty to have anything to do with the IPv4 S2s."


Well, the introduction of the new software version right in the middle of all my testing has ruined my plans. But it is quite possible the update changed something. As usual, we will never know, because TiVo does not release detailed changelog and release notes.

Ever since 7pm last night after the reboot, I am still successfully pinging the Premiere every minute. AND it has performed one automatic "phone home" procedure. That is 20.5 hours so far....

In my case, there is only one TiVo, a Premiere. Plus IPV6 vs IPV4 should not be part of the picture, since I am only talking about my internal network, and that is only IPV4.

I will keep the thread updated if there are any changes.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Jorel said:


> Followed the link over. You mentioned there was incorrect stuff at the beginning of my thread. Am I mistaken about some of the things I said? Am I right about there not being any ports to open on a LAN? I am about a year in to learning networking and my understanding is that there is no firewall on a LAN. However TiVo says to make sure certain inside ports are unrestricted. Not even sure what that means. No ego here just want to learn. So if I have said anything that is not correct please inform me. I am sure I can benefit from your knowledge and experience.


Sorry, I missed your posting in all the flurry. "Incorrect stuff" was not the correct wording, I meant more like "irrelevant stuff".... I was quite sure (99.99%) that the problems that I was experiencing had nothing to do with my router or network before I first posted this thread.

You are also correct that there is no "Firewall" on a the inside of the LAN, unless you are running that type of software (which is not really a firewall) on your computer. And even in such a case, that would have nothing to do with one TiVo or an Android device not seeing your other TiVo.

If you are using a static IP, unable to ping a Premiere, and yet that Premiere can still make the daily "phone home" calls and the Discovery Bar and search still works, it likely has nothing to do with your network and everything to do with the Premiere, itself.

If you can use the TiVo with PyTiVo AND and Premiere can still make the daily "phone home" calls and the Discovery Bar and search still works, yet still cannot ping the TiVo from that same computer (running PyTiVo), then go through the network settings on the Premiere and change nothing, and suddenly CAN ping the TiVo afterwards, you can be positive it has nothing to do with your network equipment and everything to do with the Premiere, itself.


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## Jorel (Jun 20, 2012)

Thanks crxssi,

However I solved the problem by forwarding the TiVo LAN traffic through my hub instead of the router. See below:

Problem solved. I connected all my tivos to my hub and low and behold I can see the premiere. On the first floor I still am connected to the Netgear WNR 2000 that is acting as a wireless access point and then to the hub. In spite of this it still works fine. So the problem was with the main router the linksys.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Jorel said:


> However I solved the problem by forwarding the TiVo LAN traffic through my hub instead of the router. See below:
> 
> Problem solved. I connected all my tivos to my hub and low and behold I can see the premiere. On the first floor I still am connected to the Netgear WNR 2000 that is acting as a wireless access point and then to the hub. In spite of this it still works fine. So the problem was with the main router the linksys.


Of course, it could be your problem is not the same as mine. But there could be some confounds in there....

For example: When did you get your last TiVo software update? Mine is STILL pinging now, since the moment I got the update. Just for giggles, you might want to put your stuff back the way it was and see if it still works.

I am not ready to call my problem solved just yet.


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## Jorel (Jun 20, 2012)

NY last update was a couple of months ago. It was the update that had the Netflix updates. Like I mentioned before one of the TiVo techs said that I have to open ports on my router. They send out a list of the ports that I am to open. I talked with 3 people who are more expert in the IT field than I do. They all said that it was a software conflict and there are no ports to open for the LAN traffic. Now that it works by forwarding my LAN traffic through the hub instead of the router, I think they may have had something. Perhaps the premier does something different in dealing with LAN traffic then other devices. Also someone posted that maybe updating my router's firmware would help. I have not done that yet. In any case this set up seems to make the most sense. Ideally I should have a larges enough switch to handle all my devices.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

crxssi said:


> Mine is STILL pinging now, since the moment I got the update. Just for giggles, you might want to put your stuff back the way it was and see if it still works.
> 
> I am not ready to call my problem solved just yet.


Yet another 24 hours of continuous, successful pinging...

One of the following has occurred:

1) Some TiVo rep saw my posting and corrected something on their server that was telling my Premiere not to allow connections and it would shut them down after the daily "phone home" settings were downloaded.

2) There was some other problem on the TiVo, Inc server side that was fixed.

3) The software update to 20.2.1.2 had a fix in it for this issue.

4) Just the *act* of updating fixed it, with nothing to address it actually contained in the update.

Or perhaps I just have not waited long enough for it to recur. On my side, I have changed absolutely nothing and continue to use it the same way I always do.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Now 8 days of continuous successful pinging, 24 hours a day, every minute.


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