# Minis taking down my home LAN



## Kremlar (Jan 22, 2009)

I've been troubleshooting this over the past few months but have had no luck so far other than narrowing the cause down to my TiVo Minis. 

Intermittently my LAN will become unusable. Internet connectivity stops and access to devices on the LAN stops as well. Through trial and error I've found the issue is caused by my TiVo Minis. If I unplug devices one at a time from my network switch until things become usable again, it's always a TiVo Mini that is the culprit.

Originally I thought it was just a freak occurrence, then perhaps one of my Minis was just having a hardware issue, but since then I've found that it happens with multiple Minis - it's not always the same one causing the trouble. Pulling the network cable from the Mini brings everything back to normal. Power cycling the mini also brings things back to normal. Until the next time.

This only started happening I'd say around 6 months ago. Most of my Minis are older (pre-Bolt), but I have 1 or maybe 2 that are newer. So far it's been the older Minis, never a newer one causing the issue. My switch is an older Netgear 48-port gigabit that I've had forever. I'm not sure what triggered this, but it has become quite annoying.

Before I blindly try replacing this expensive switch, has anyone else experienced anything similar and/or have a fix?

Thanks!


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

I have experienced the exact same thing, there is another thread if you search where there is good information. The gist of it is that if you use DHCP reservations for your TiVo mini, it most likely will resolve the issue. Seems like they are broadcast storming the network and or traffic is looping causing the issue. I dealt with this for a while before figuring out that reserving IPs on my router seems to have resolved the issue for me. I had a Sony Bluray player that would do the same thing also. I don't think they test as well as they should and so this is a side effect of poor QA at TiVo. This never happened on my Bolt Mini or Roamio units, only Mini V1.

Good luck.

Jared

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk


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## Kremlar (Jan 22, 2009)

Linking that other thread here:
Tivo Mini periodically launches DOS attacks on my network....

Thanks, I will try setting a DHCP reservation for each Mini.


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

Just happened to me, again. I completely forgot about this issue, it happened about a year ago.
EDIT: No wonder I didn't remember its been 2.5 years: YouTube app crashes

My Tivos haven't had a network connection since Friday, I was just about to purchase a new router when I decided to check my Minis that rarely get used, and sure enough one of them was completely frozen. Rebooting the Mini solved the network issue.


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## Kremlar (Jan 22, 2009)

No crash since I set the DHCP reservation, but not convinced yet.


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

Kremlar said:


> No crash since I set the DHCP reservation, but not convinced yet.


I am the person who started the other thread. For what it is worth, it only happens once in a while - sometimes months apart - possibly related to fact that this mini is not frequently used. Last two times it happened, I was able to link it to someone watching YouTube earlier that day, and at least a few people in my house have a tendency of not hitting "Tivo" when done watching, leaving whatever it is playing active. I strongly suspect it is a combination of older Minis and YouTube app - though I have no idea why this would be happening. DHCP thing sounds almost plausible, but not really - it only makes sense if you have other problems on your network....

Do you use YouTube when this happens?


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## Kremlar (Jan 22, 2009)

Not related to YouTube on my side, that I'm aware of.


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

Kremlar said:


> Not related to YouTube on my side, that I'm aware of.


Damn, there goes that theory. Do you get the black screen of doom on it by any chance?


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

Hichhiker said:


> I am the person who started the other thread. For what it is worth, it only happens once in a while - sometimes months apart - possibly related to fact that this mini is not frequently used. Last two times it happened, I was able to link it to someone watching YouTube earlier that day, and at least a few people in my house have a tendency of not hitting "Tivo" when done watching, leaving whatever it is playing active. I strongly suspect it is a combination of older Minis and YouTube app - though I have no idea why this would be happening. DHCP thing sounds almost plausible, but not really - it only makes sense if you have other problems on your network....
> 
> Do you use YouTube when this happens?


Yes, we use YouTube when this happens and believe it or not DHCP and this issue in my house are directly related, I can reproduce it.

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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

jaredmwright said:


> Yes, we use YouTube when this happens and believe it or not DHCP and this issue in my house are directly related, I can reproduce it.


Can you let me know the steps to reproduce it? I am curious if I can figure out what is going on (unless you already know)


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

Put YouTube on a mini with DHCP on and make sure there is no reservation set on your router. It seems like if YouTube is running when DHCP releases and renews is when it happens for me. Your lease time may vary from 1 day to multiple or only few hours. 

Once I put a reservation in on my router, it doesn't happen any longer. It doesn't make sense to me, but those are the symptoms and results I have found. A static IP on the TiVo mini may do the same and resolve, but I didn't try since it is annoying managing and entering network info. By reserving it tells the TiVo to never release the IP and so it seems to solve it for me.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

jaredmwright said:


> Put YouTube on a mini with DHCP on and make sure there is no reservation set on your router. It seems like if YouTube is running when DHCP releases and renews is when it happens for me. Your lease time may vary from 1 day to multiple or only few hours.
> 
> Once I put a reservation in on my router, it doesn't happen any longer. It doesn't make sense to me, but those are the symptoms and results I have found. A static IP on the TiVo mini may do the same and resolve, but I didn't try since it is annoying managing and entering network info. By reserving it tells the TiVo to never release the IP and so it seems to solve it for me.


Fascinating. I totally believe you, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. Typically a reservation is invisible to the DHCP client. A reservation just makes sure that any time a DHCP request is made, same IP is issued and that that IP is not issued to someone else if the box is offline for a while. If you have a reservation and DHCP lease time of 1 day, it will still request a new IP every 12 hours, it is just that it will always get the same IP. Static IP is different, but reservation should not matter. My gut feeling on this one is that it is a resource issue. YouTube chews up too much resources or somehow interferes with DHCP completion, and it gets into a loop - but that would not be fixed by reserved IP... Like I said, fascinating... I will try to recreate..

Last 2 questions - did you by any chance get a chance to capture the traffic storm to see what is going on? And what is your DHCP server? By any chance are you using Google Wifi? Thanks.


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

Hichhiker said:


> Fascinating. I totally believe you, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. Typically a reservation is invisible to the DHCP client. A reservation just makes sure that any time a DHCP request is made, same IP is issued and that that IP is not issued to someone else if the box is offline for a while. If you have a reservation and DHCP lease time of 1 day, it will still request a new IP every 12 hours, it is just that it will always get the same IP. Static IP is different, but reservation should not matter. My gut feeling on this one is that it is a resource issue. YouTube chews up too much resources or somehow interferes with DHCP completion, and it gets into a loop - but that would not be fixed by reserved IP... Like I said, fascinating... I will try to recreate..
> 
> Last 2 questions - did you by any chance get a chance to capture the traffic storm to see what is going on? And what is your DHCP server? By any chance are you using Google Wifi? Thanks.


I totally get what you are saying and I wouldn't believe it either since what you described is what I would expect. I am using Google Wifi with three pucks connected over Gigabit wired network, not WiFi mesh and multiple (3) gigabit switches throughout the house. When this happens, my network is slammed, all devices wired go offline but WiFi devices continue to work fine. It could be something to do with Google Wifi also, not sure. I did not take a tcpdump yet since I found this as a workable solution fairly quickly. Another interesting thing is only the TiVo minis. The Roamio and Bolt don't exhibit this behavior so I doubt it is a resource issue, but more of a network stack/driver issue with the Mini and hardware and software. I work in tech also, FYI.

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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

jaredmwright said:


> I totally get what you are saying and I wouldn't believe it either since what you described is what I would expect. I am using Google Wifi with three pucks connected over Gigabit wired network, not WiFi mesh and multiple (3) gigabit switches throughout the house. When this happens, my network is slammed, all devices wired go offline but WiFi devices continue to work fine. It could be something to do with Google Wifi also, not sure. I did not take a tcpdump yet since I found this as a workable solution fairly quickly. Another interesting thing is only the TiVo minis. The Roamio and Bolt don't exhibit this behavior so I doubt it is a resource issue, but more of a network stack/driver issue with the Mini and hardware and software. I work in tech also, FYI.


Like I said, I totally believe you and you seem to have done your homework, I am just trying to figure out how it is possible and compare notes. What is most interesting is that I have pretty much same network setup with Google Wifi (I wonder if Google Wifi + TiVo Mini combination is why this is happening). On Tivo front I got a Vox-Mini, non-Vox mini(A93), and a Roamio. As far as I can tell, this only happens on non-vox mini - which happens to be connected to a switch right next to main Google puck. Just like in your case, my wired network goes dead and wireless is fine, which kind of makes sense, except if it was a broadcast storm, I would have expected it bridged to wifi - though it may be that Google Wifi is smarter than that. BTW, I also noticed it dead with black screen, but I usually attributed that to a bad HDMI connection, though I always fixed it with a reboot of mini - so now I am guessing it was the same issue. It was less noticeable because most visible things on my network are wireless, which is why I didn't always notice the DOS...

@Kremlar , any chance you have Google Wifi too - just trying to see if this is a common thread...


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

Hichhiker said:


> Like I said, I totally believe you and you seem to have done your homework, I am just trying to figure out how it is possible and compare notes. What is most interesting is that I have pretty much same network setup with Google Wifi (I wonder if Google Wifi + TiVo Mini combination is why this is happening). On Tivo front I got a Vox-Mini, non-Vox mini(A93), and a Roamio. As far as I can tell, this only happens on non-vox mini - which happens to be connected to a switch right next to main Google puck. Just like in your case, my wired network goes dead and wireless is fine, which kind of makes sense, except if it was a broadcast storm, I would have expected it bridged to wifi - though it may be that Google Wifi is smarter than that. BTW, I also noticed it dead with black screen, but I usually attributed that to a bad HDMI connection, though I always fixed it with a reboot of mini - so now I am guessing it was the same issue. It was less noticeable because most visible things on my network are wireless, which is why I didn't always notice the DOS...
> 
> @Kremlar , any chance you have Google Wifi too - just trying to see if this is a common thread...


My Mini when this happened also have a black screen and are unresponsive in this state, the light is solid white if I recall, but it's been a while. I had to power cycle the Mini which leads me to believe that it is a TiVo issue and not Google Wifi. Additionally, I would expect Google to resolve any issues quickly with their update mechanism where TiVo is very slow to respond to anything non revenue generating...

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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

One other thing I have noticed. I have a Mini in the garage where I have a TV, I do not use YouTube on it, but I do use Plex and Pandora. It has happened on this device as well when running apps, which matches the issue with YouTube. This leads me to believe that it is something related to when apps are running vs normal DVR functions and it switches modes.

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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

jaredmwright said:


> One other thing I have noticed. I have a Mini in the garage where I have a TV, I do not use YouTube on it, but I do use Plex and Pandora. It has happened on this device as well when running apps, which matches the issue with YouTube. This leads me to believe that it is something related to when apps are running vs normal DVR functions and it switches modes.


I am guessing it is a resource issue. We know these boxes run out of memory/cpu when running apps. Which is why they take forever to load. In comparison, the Vox Box is blazing fast and can load multiple apps because I suspect it has a lot more memory. Maybe if it runs out of memory, it starts sending out corrupt DHCP packets which ends up causing a network storm. But that does not explain why DHCP reservation works... I wonder if Google WiFi does some sort of a ping before issuing a non-reserved IP, to make sure it is not in use, something that triggers this bug? That could be the issue....


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

Hichhiker said:


> I am guessing it is a resource issue. We know these boxes run out of memory/cpu when running apps. Which is why they take forever to load. In comparison, the Vox Box is blazing fast and can load multiple apps because I suspect it has a lot more memory. Maybe if it runs out of memory, it starts sending out corrupt DHCP packets which ends up causing a network storm. But that does not explain why DHCP reservation works... I wonder if Google WiFi does some sort of a ping before issuing a non-reserved IP, to make sure it is not in use, something that triggers this bug? That could be the issue....


If you do a packet capture, would be interested to see what you find if anything interesting. Good luck!

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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Two random notes about bugs that existed in the distant past. Just things to watch out for, in case they are in any way tangentially related to the subject problem.

A) There was at one point a bug where the Tivo software itself would hang. When it hung, it did so in such a way that the ethernet port was still operating, still accumulating packets, but the kernel was not pulling them out of the receive buffer. The buffer would fill up, and in response someone (it was never confirmed whether the kernel was doing this, or the ethernet adapter firmware itself) - would send a ethernet global-pause frame on every packet it saw. This was a pain to catch, because the switch itself was consuming the PDU's, not propagating them out to other devices on the network. Essentially, it killed the switch it was plugged into, without killing any other switches (as global pause frames are not retransmitted), and without making it to any other nodes on the network to capture. It was finally caught by reproducing the issue while connected to a hub.

B) There was at one point a bug where the DHCP renewal engine, if it saw a packet it didn't like at renewal time, would go into an infinite loop and just seize up completely. I have no idea what 'real world' conditions would trigger this, but you could trigger it when running your own dhcp server with certain typos in dhcp.conf, especially in the dhcp_server field. Synptoms would be simple, you'd be fine on boot, fine on IP address acquisition, but at lease renewal time you'd hang.

And B could cause A. (Although it was far from the only source of causes of A at that time).

*** Memories very fuzzy. If any of these look relevant, I can go dig up the email chains in question...


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Also, any time DHCP renewal is a suspect.. You can always try to make the problem *worse* for the sake of troubleshooting by cranking the renewal interval down to 5 minutes.


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

kdmorse said:


> Two random notes about bugs that existed in the distant past. Just things to watch out for, in case they are in any way tangentially related to the subject problem.
> 
> A) There was at one point a bug where the Tivo software itself would hang. When it hung, it did so in such a way that the ethernet port was still operating, still accumulating packets, but the kernel was not pulling them out of the receive buffer. The buffer would fill up, and in response someone (it was never confirmed whether the kernel was doing this, or the ethernet adapter firmware itself) - would send a ethernet global-pause frame on every packet it saw. This was a pain to catch, because the switch itself was consuming the PDU's, not propagating them out to other devices on the network. Essentially, it killed the switch it was plugged into, without killing any other switches (as global pause frames are not retransmitted), and without making it to any other nodes on the network to capture. It was finally caught by reproducing the issue while connected to a hub.
> 
> ...


Ok, A makes perfect sense as my mini was connected to a switch that sits between the Google WiFi and the rest of my home network... Killing that switch should produce exactly the symptoms I saw. Not sure about B, as in theory DHCP would be the same regardless of reservation..... Do you know if A was ever fixed? I should be able to find another switch to recreate this problem without breaking my home network...


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Hichhiker said:


> Ok, A makes perfect sense as my mini was connected to a switch that sits between the Google WiFi and the rest of my home network... Killing that switch should produce exactly the symptoms I saw. Not sure about B, as in theory DHCP would be the same regardless of reservation..... Do you know if A was ever fixed? I should be able to find another switch to recreate this problem without breaking my home network...


That is going to take some email diving to dig out.

In the end the user visible problem was fixed. But I do *not* remember if they changed the behavior of how the Tivo ethernet port reacts to the unit hanging - or just fixed all currently known causes of hangs making it semi-moot...


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

kdmorse said:


> Also, any time DHCP renewal is a suspect.. You can always try to make the problem *worse* for the sake of troubleshooting by cranking the renewal interval down to 5 minutes.


Not work Google WiFi, it has crappy customization options for DHCP (and most things)

But your other post is probably spot on. I've been wondering how can a single device produce enough data to jam a switch - but turns out it doesn't have to...


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

kdmorse said:


> That is going to take some email diving to dig out.
> 
> In the end the user visible problem was fixed. But I do *not* remember if they changed the behavior of how the Tivo ethernet port reacts to the unit hanging - or just fixed all currently known causes of hangs making it semi-moot...


If they didn't for the issue, we may be hitting it via other ways... Apps crashing the box, for example


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## Kremlar (Jan 22, 2009)

Hichhiker said:


> Damn, there goes that theory. Do you get the black screen of doom on it by any chance?


I don't suspect YouTube in my case because the app is used very infrequently. I'm not sure anyone ever uses it besides me, and the issue occurs randomly and on Minis that are used very infrequently.

I have seen issues with the YouTube app where the Mini will get hung and need a reboot. I assume that is what you mean by the black screen of death?


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## Kremlar (Jan 22, 2009)

Hichhiker said:


> Like I said, I totally believe you and you seem to have done your homework, I am just trying to figure out how it is possible and compare notes. What is most interesting is that I have pretty much same network setup with Google Wifi (I wonder if Google Wifi + TiVo Mini combination is why this is happening). On Tivo front I got a Vox-Mini, non-Vox mini(A93), and a Roamio. As far as I can tell, this only happens on non-vox mini - which happens to be connected to a switch right next to main Google puck. Just like in your case, my wired network goes dead and wireless is fine, which kind of makes sense, except if it was a broadcast storm, I would have expected it bridged to wifi - though it may be that Google Wifi is smarter than that. BTW, I also noticed it dead with black screen, but I usually attributed that to a bad HDMI connection, though I always fixed it with a reboot of mini - so now I am guessing it was the same issue. It was less noticeable because most visible things on my network are wireless, which is why I didn't always notice the DOS...
> 
> @Kremlar , any chance you have Google Wifi too - just trying to see if this is a common thread...


No, I am on FIOS. I am using a Verizon-supplied router (Quantum Gateway) with an older Netgear 48-Port gigabit switch (and a couple other small dumb switches around the house). I have a TiVo Bolt, 6 Minis (5 older and 1 newer). I have a couple of UniFi WAPs for wifi. When I experience the issue pretty much everything goes down, hardwired devices and wireless.


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## ozzman73 (Nov 27, 2006)

I've experienced the same issue just two weeks ago. Thru trial and error I was able to narrow it down to either Youtube being Chromecasted on the network or the Tivo Mini. Disconnecting the Tivo Mini from the router solved the issue.


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## Kremlar (Jan 22, 2009)

Just happened to me yesterday, even with DHCP reservations for my Bolt and Minis. No Chrome-casting or YouTube involved (no one was even home).

What a pain in the butt.


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## Fugacity (Oct 1, 2004)

Hichhiker said:


> A reservation just makes sure that any time a DHCP request is made, same IP is issued and that that IP is not issued to someone else if the box is offline for a while. If you have a reservation and DHCP lease time of 1 day, it will still request a new IP every 12 hours, it is just that it will always get the same IP.


So I had some of these issues and in the case of my network setup, this wasn't working as intended as a result of the mesh extender. The mini is connected to a Nighthawk X6S extender. It ends up proxying the MAC addresses so that the first 6 numbers in the MAC address were F0:AF:85 but become 02:0F:B5. But it doesn't change the packets the way a proxy server would so the DHCP requests come from F0:AF:85 and the router reserves it but then notices that 02:0F:B5 is using it, so when the request comes out again it won't give the same address again, which causes the mini to not find the DVR, weird things going on the network, etc..

I have to reserve its IP on the actual MAC address on the mini and it all works and there are no more issues with mini's not connecting, etc.

So wifi extenders are nice, and keep everything on the same network. However, they can cause some things to not work as intended. That being said the mini or DVR really shouldn't care that a mini keeps getting a different IP address and absolutely shouldn't be taking down networks when initiating DHCP requests. But unfortunately that appears to be the state of things.


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## MikeMacMan (Sep 16, 2006)

I also just had this issue. I have a wired gigabit LAN connected to gigabit fiber. My network was acting stranger than I've ever seen. First, my router was failing to PPPoE authenticate with CenturyLink. I switched routers and continued to have weird issues. My internet connection seemed to be randomly cutting out. I also noticed that the connection between my computer and router was intermittent. I was wondering if both routers were defective or if there was something wrong with my Ethernet wiring. Eventually I found that my Tivo Mini was hung. Unplugging it from my network resolved all of my issues.


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## MikeMacMan (Sep 16, 2006)

MikeMacMan said:


> I also just had this issue. I have a wired gigabit LAN connected to gigabit fiber. My network was acting stranger than I've ever seen. First, my router was failing to PPPoE authenticate with CenturyLink. I switched routers and continued to have weird issues. My internet connection seemed to be randomly cutting out. I also noticed that the connection between my computer and router was intermittent. I was wondering if both routers were defective or if there was something wrong with my Ethernet wiring. Eventually I found that my Tivo Mini was hung. Unplugging it from my network resolved all of my issues.


This just happened to me again. My Tivo Mini locked up and completely took down my home network. Extremely frustrating.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Assuming it's the known problem... an isolation switch should solve it. Try tossing a cheap 5 port Gig switch in between the Mini and your real switch, and the problem won't cross the barrier from the isolation switch to your real switch. You Mini of course will still be hung. 

Rigging up a means to detect the hung switch, and power cycle the Mini automatically is left as an exercise to the reader. (Although there are devices that will do that automatically, intended to bounce a router if the path to the internet goes out. Plug it into the isolation switch, and when the switch gets paused, it might be enough to tell it to reboot the mini)


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

MikeMacMan said:


> This just happened to me again. My Tivo Mini locked up and completely took down my home network. Extremely frustrating.


What @kdmorse said(I was just about to say same thing) it won't "solve" the problem, but at least it won't take down your network in the process.


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## mmmm_beer (Apr 18, 2002)

Just had this issue last week. I notice every device on one segment of my network was failing or running so slow that many timeouts occurred. I tracked it down to the TiVo Mini, I didn’t think to capture network packets, but at least now I know it is a problem. I have had this mini (and 4 others) for at least 6 years now and it never happened until now. No streaming with that mini, it is unused most of the time. I will reserve IP addresses for all of them and hopefully that should clear it up.


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

I really don't think the mini's are the root cause of your network issues, I would be willing to bet the problem is elsewhere and the mini's just exasperate the problem.

A few basic facts -
1) The mini connects at 100Mb/s (MoCA on the mini is slightly faster)
2) a live TV stream takes almost 20Mb/s (or 20% of the 100Mb/s connection)
3) The mini uses TCP for video streaming (UDP would be a better choice but that's for another day)

Most likely you problem is substandard ethernet wiring and/or a switch that has issues. I am running 2 tivo's and 2 mini's for quite some time, at one point it was 3 tivo's and 2 mini's. I do not use DHCP reservations and I have never had a problem with streaming or pixilation of any kind. I am running everything over ethernet and when I ran the ethernet cabling in the walls I verified that every run met CAT 5 (5e wasn't out when I ran most of my wiring) and then later tested to 5e utilizing a cabling tester.

The Mini is very sensitive to network errors, and these errors will be seen as pixilation and freezing. The mini will put a much higher demand on your network than a PC that is simply browsing. (browsing uses very little bandwidth). If errors occur on the network, the more errors you have the throughput will go down exponentially. Because the mini's are using TCP for their data transfer any packet dropped or bad MUST be retransmitted. The more retransmissions you have the higher the utilization on the network, the higher the utilization the more errors you have causing more utilization.... 

Some of the common mistakes I have seen that need to be checked -
1) cable bend radius, yes there is a minimum bend radius, if you don't know what it is assume it is no less than 5x the wire diameter 
2) broken RJ-45 connectors (wire pulling out of the connector, broken tabs, etc)
3) poorly run ethernet, if you need to run near electrical wiring keep 2 ft from it and cross is as close to 90degrees as possible (cable kinked? toss it, jacket cut? toss it)
4) multiple devices working as MoCA bridges - pick 1 device to be a MoCA bridge (FiOS routers are typically MoCA bridges) modern TiVO's can be bridges too, make sure only 1 device is a bridge! (2 or more bridges between the same MoCA and ethernet networks is probably the fastest way to bring down a network I've seen)
5) substandard ethernet, do not use the flat "telephone" type cable with RJ-45's it is not ethernet! Make sure your cable is at least Cat 5 or 5e for 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s respectively (anything rated higher will work too but there is zero advantage so unless the cost is the same stay with 5e and save the $$)
6) stay far far away from CCA ethernet wire (Copper Clad Aluminum) it does NOT meet the requirements for ethernet.
7) I've seen people use RJ-45 wall jacks with screw terminals, they don't even meet CAT 3, get rid of them
8) if you are using an RJ-45 wall jack, make sure the twist is kept all the way to the punchdown point and they are punched down properly and trimmed flush (a proper punchdown tool will do this automatically)

One note on these cheap consumer grade switches, just because they have 8, 16, or a gazillion gig ports, it does not mean the switch is capable of driving all those ports at line rate, then again you probably don't need anything close to line rate.

You don't need to follow my recommendations above but keep in mind I've been running for years with no issues following my own advice and I ran the ethernet wiring in my house over 20yrs ago.

-TL


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

Time_Lord said:


> I really don't think the mini's are the root cause of your network issues, I would be willing to bet the problem is elsewhere and the mini's just exasperate the problem.
> 
> A few basic facts -
> 1) The mini connects at 100Mb/s (MoCA on the mini is slightly faster)
> ...


I disagree, reason is that this also happens when using Moca or Ethernet equally. This is definitely a TiVo bug, depending on your usage you may not hit any issue. If I only use Live/Recorded features of a mini they are Rock solid, if I use any apps all hell breaks out as others have seen as well. I suspect a memory leak or something else.

I also work in IT and was a cable installer, your recommendations are good and I second them, but I can assure they are not the root of the issue, I have tested and verified all my cables and switches with my professional testing equipment and they all pass properly. Similarly, no other devices exhibit this odd behavior as the Minis on the network.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

What causes a mini to hang, dunno. Some days they're just cranky.

Once a Mini does hang however, it will absolutely spam the connected switch with a IEEE 802.3x global pause packet directed at 01:80:C2:00:00:01 - the 802.1D bridge control address, for every packet it receives. This will absolutely suppress, or at least badly degrade all traffic on the first connected switch. These packets have been caught, and, well, cursed at, because there's not much more you can do but power cycle the offending Mini.


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

Time_Lord said:


> I really don't think the mini's are the root cause of your network issues, I would be willing to bet the problem is elsewhere and the mini's just exasperate the problem.


Appreciate you trying to help, but the situation here is on a much deeper level than quality of ethernet cables or some pixelation. We are talking the entire network switch dying. I think @kdmorse nailed the issue we are seeing - and it is not likely to be fixed (ever) - but a cheap switch WILL help you keep the network from being killed by mini. For what its worth, this seems to only happen on older Minis, not the Vox ones.

-HH


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

All I can say is I've been using the original Mini for several years now and the mini vox for 6+ months and have not had a single hint of any type of network issue. I used the original mini for a few weeks on MoCa just to try it but otherwise it has always been on ethernet. To make things even more interesting I'm powering the Mini via PoE via the use of an PoE adapter.

As I said, take it or leave it but my experience network wise with the TiVO devices has been fine.

-TL


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## Oldphile (Apr 25, 2016)

I've had my mini (RF remote) for 3+ years. Last week, I lost internet connection, but still had LAN. Tech support for my 9 month old router, asked me to Ethernet connect my computer to the router. The easiest way to do that was to pull the Ethernet cable from my MOCA adapter and connect it to my computer. Bang, internet was back, but as soon as I reconnected the MOCA adapter to the router, the internet was gone. Pulled the power on the mini and the internet was restored. During the no internet time, my router was showing all zeroes for WAN IP address, DNS server and Gateway. The mini was powered, but hasn't been used in months. TIVO Bolt and mini are on a MOCA network. BTW, every time (which is seldom) I want to use the mini, I have to power cycle it. I have no problems with the Bolt.


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## chart (Sep 4, 2001)

+1 happened on two different tivo minis. unplugging each ethernet cable 25 of them one at a time and watched pingplotter until the network recovered,,,,, I can say 100% it was a mini each time. One infrequely used one and one that I used ever few days.
Network would go down if I plugged the Mini back in... odd. only a Tivo Mini power cycle woud stop the issue. Will try to capture packets next time.


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