# Tivi Mini crashing internet access



## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Ever since "upgrading" to TE4 earlier this year my router will lose its internet connection to the cable modem from time to time until one of the Mini's is unplugged. It's not always the same Mini. When we lose internet I start unplugging the Mini's one at a time from the switch and when the offending Mini is unplugged the router instantly reconnects to the modem. Plug that Mini back in and the internet connection is gone within 30 seconds. Tivo has given me a cumbersome procedure to reset the Mini and it may last a while but the problem always returns. 
We travel a lot and when this happens not only does nothing record but I have no access to my home network to access files, cameras or anything else. Short of reverting from TE4 - which means losing all recordings - has anyone heard of this issue and a permanent fix? Worst case, I can put all the Mini's on a seperate switch and turn it off when we travel but that shouldn't be necessary.
Customer service says I'm the only one with the problem but I don't believe that for a minute.
FWIW, I have Comcast service coming into my own Motorola DOCSIS 3.0 modem connected to an ASUS RT-AC1750_B1 router with all ten Mini's and the Roamio Plus connected via Ethernet to a Cisco 24 port unmanaged gigabit switch.


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## sender_name (Feb 12, 2005)

Have you FORCED an IP address for the Mini in the network settings? Your router will assign the mini and IP but maybe this is conflicting with something so try setting it to something like 192.168.1.99...I put all my tivo devices in the fixed IP 90's


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## ramiss (Jan 30, 2014)

A few things:

1) Are you absolutely sure that the router is disconnecting from the modem? I am not aware of any LAN traffic, no matter how ridiculous, that would disconnect the WAN side of a router. If that is truly the case, then it may in fact be your router.

2) my house has 6 minis connected through MoCA adapters to our router and every now and then some or all minis lose internet connection. Resetting the minis one at a time until the culprit is found will cause the others to connect again.

However..... When this happens to me:
1) my router is still connected to the modem. I can still access the internet from all non-mini devices.

2) what seems to be happening is that the culprit mini is causing the others to lose their DHCP (ip address). Not sure how exactly, perhaps it is spamming the MoCA network.

3) it is very frustrating.

4) my theory is this is DHCP related. Possible workaround that I haven't tried yet... Set all minis with static IPs. 

So, our issues seem similar, but apparently not related. You should show this post to Tivo and point out that others do have these issues, we just know that Tivo support is useless and won't provide a fix. The proof is the many posts over the years that minis freeze up when streaming (Hulu especially) with no fix. I just reset my mini every few days to thwart off the memory leak.


Good luck!


Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

sender_name said:


> Have you FORCED an IP address for the Mini in the network settings? Your router will assign the mini and IP but maybe this is conflicting with something so try setting it to something like 192.168.1.99...I put all my tivo devices in the fixed IP 90's


Good thought! I do that for my webcams but haven't for the mini's. Certainly worth a try. Until TE4 I never had that problem in the 4 years they've been here. I just wish TIVO would acknowledge the issue and fix it. I'll switch them to static IPs and see what happens. I can go weeks or months with no problem so it may be hard to know if it helps right away.


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## sender_name (Feb 12, 2005)

brobin said:


> Good thought! I do that for my webcams but haven't for the mini's. Certainly worth a try. Until TE4 I never had that problem in the 4 years they've been here. I just wish TIVO would acknowledge the issue and fix it. I'll switch them to static IPs and see what happens. I can go weeks or months with no problem so it may be hard to know if it helps right away.


I have TE4 and a mini and a mini vox. Old school mini couldn't find the host bolt until I forced static IP's and then rebooted the BOLT


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

ramiss said:


> A few things:
> 
> 1) Are you absolutely sure that the router is disconnecting from the modem? I am not aware of any LAN traffic, no matter how ridiculous, that would disconnect the WAN side of a router. If that is truly the case, then it may in fact be your router.
> 
> Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


Absolutely sure. From a PC in the house I can log in to the router and instead of seeing the WAN IP it says Disconnected. Within seconds of unplugging the offending Mini the WAN IP appears. If I plug the Mini back in, within 20 seconds the WAN IP changes to Disconnected. In my 30+ years of IT experience I've never seen anything like this and wouldn't have even thought it possible.


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## ramiss (Jan 30, 2014)

That is weird indeed. Almost the exact same symptom as me, like the minis are blocking DHCP , but for you it's on the WAN side.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## sender_name (Feb 12, 2005)

Your mini shipped with a ddos virus that's attacking your own router  If you look at your routing and assigned IP's are there any conflicts? I really think the only thing that could do this is if you forced the same local address to multiple devices...


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

In my case there were no double entries. I've excluded the static IP groups from the DHCP pool.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

DAMN! It happened again today with a different Mini. At around 9AM we lost internet. Started unplugging cables for the Mini's one at a time from the switch and found the culprit. They are all set up with static IP addresses now but that didn't solve the problem. TIVO still has their head in the sand and customer service won't escalate the issue "because no one else is reporting it."
We're going to be away for the next couple of weeks so I'm putting all the Mini's on one 16 port switch with nothing else and my home automation system will turn it off when the home is in "vacation mode" so my network will stay alive. The Roamio Plus will stay plugged into a different switch so it'll still record shows.
In the 6 years I was running TE3 this never happened even once but under TE4 it's a constant aggravation. When I read the Dilbert comic strip I imagine that he works for TIVO. Incompetent customer service or maybe they just don't care. As much as I like the autoskip feature (which is the ONLY thing I like about TE4) it's looking like the only fix is to revert to TE3.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Sounds like you need to wireshark your Minis and see which one is bombarding the router with packets that cause it to freak out. Another thing to try is to load alternate FW on the router such as Merlin. See post #3 in this thread for details.

DD-WRT Forum :: View topic - Asus RT-AC1750 - New/locked down version of RT-AC66U?

I have an older AC68U running Merlin with 3 Minis on MoCA and no issues. All of them are DHCP, my Roamio Plus is the bridge.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Thanks for the suggestions. I used to use Merlin but reverted to factory FW to take advantage of the AiMesh feature. I'm using two RT-AC1750_B1 AiMesh routers for seamless coverage throughout the house. The thing is that the Mini's behaved themselves under TE3 but not under TE4. If I used Wireshark I don't think I'd see much unless the Mini went into "freakout" mode. Here's the thing though. When a Mini freaks out the intRAnet still works fine. IOW, I can use my PC to connect to the router's homepage and see the WAN status which I watch as I unplug each Mini from the switch. Within 10 seconds of unplugging the offending Mini, the router shows the WAN connection restored. Plugging the Mini back in kills the WAN connection within about 30 seconds.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

So downgrade to TE3, not like you're losing anything other than auto-skip (which can be done on TE3 with kmttg) and you don't get their stupid ad rollout. You can offload all your recordings with kmttg before you downgrade and not lose anything.

Or beat your head against the wall with TE4.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

I didn't know about kmttg. That sounds like a great solution - I'll look into it. Thank you!


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Another easy download-first solution: pyTivo Desktop. (And it can be used to re-load the shows after as well.)


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Thanks, I'll look at that too. I started setting up kmttg earlier today and it's copying all my recordings now. Does pyTivo have autoskip too? Is one "better" than the other? Appreciate the guidance!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

brobin said:


> Thanks, I'll look at that too. I started setting up kmttg earlier today and it's copying all my recordings now. Does pyTivo have autoskip too? Is one "better" than the other? Appreciate the guidance!


Kmttg has way more features. pyTivo Desktop, in my opinion, is much easier to use.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

I like easy. Does PyTivo have auto skip? Couldn't find anything about it at the site or on github.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Nope--pyTivo (and esp. pyTivo Desktop) really is for the easy downloading and uploading of shows. For more "complex"/specialty matters (e.g. downloading and re-loading thumbs, Season Passes, etc.), I'll move to kmttg.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Thanks for that info. I'll spend some time learning kmttg before reverting to TE3 to make sure I don't cause myself more problems. The AutoSkip is the only reason I "upgraded" to TE4 so if I can get that with TE3 I'll be thrilled. In the meantime, I'll still move all the Mini's to their own switch tonight and go through the procedure of setting them up again. Oddly enough, TIVO has a procedure to fix (at least temporarily) a problem they won't acknowledge exists!


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

kmttg / Wiki / AutoSkip

Works great, been using it ever since Kevin added the feature. Have to run kmttg as a service somewhere on your network so it can do auto-skip, and have setup a job to get the skip points every night (I use a Windows server in my house).


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Update: For the time being I've put all the Mini's on a 16 port switch which turns off when we're away. Since putting them all on a separate switch I haven't had any more crashes. The switch is a 10/100 Netgear which is plugged into a 24 port 10/100/1000 Cisco. The Mini's used to be plugged into the Cisco.


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## harjon (Oct 30, 2017)

Hey guess what, this EXACT same scenario has been happening to me the last 2 days. My internet cut out and came back, etc.. while trying to work from home. I thought it was comcast. I was going batty. Eventually I tore my whole network apart until I discovered the tivo mini has been causing it. I had it plugged into a gigabit switch and it just randomly killed the connectivity of all devices attached. I've never seen that before. I plugged it into the router. Same exact thing - including it killed my wifi. What? I unplug it and within 10 seconds, everything returns to normal. I've been networking connections for at least 25 years. I've never seen or even heard of this. My tivo mini is now completely useless.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Don't give up! There is a fix albeit not necessarily permanent. Disconnect the mini from the switch, cold reboot the mini (pull the power plug for 30 seconds) then plug the power and Ethernet cable back in. You should be OK at that point. If not, do a Clear & Reset on the mini the go through the guided setup. When complete do a forced connect from the Tivo as well. Let us know if that works. Are you running TE4?


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## harjon (Oct 30, 2017)

Thanks for responding. Cycling the power was the first thing i tried. 30 seconds after it rebooted the network died again. I'll have to try guided setup again. Thankfully I won't lose anything but time. Also yes, latest tivo "experience".

I sent a support request to tivo. Hopefully they respond, maybe with a newer unit or discount or something.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

They did a replacement on one of my units and the same thing happened again. The guided setup followed by the Tivo connection seemed to be the most effective. But also see my latest brouhaha here which seems to be resolved now: All my Mini's failed at once!


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## ramiss (Jan 30, 2014)

I've had significantly less issues once all of my minis were changed to static IPs.

It does seem like one of them can start hammering the ability for the others to contact DHCP.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Did that years ago... still had the issues. Never had as much as a hiccup till "upgrading" to TE4. Things are OK now but next time they go south I'll go back to TE3 and call it a day. The only thing I like about TE4 is Auto-Skip but I think (don't know) that TE4 maybe putting too much demand on the Roamio's processor.


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## rrkessler (Dec 9, 2003)

brobin said:


> Did that years ago... still had the issues. Never had as much as a hiccup till "upgrading" to TE4. Things are OK now but next time they go south I'll go back to TE3 and call it a day. The only thing I like about TE4 is Auto-Skip but I think (don't know) that TE4 maybe putting too much demand on the Roamio's processor.


Ok so I've been gone for a month and this same thing happened. I have 3 a93 minis and 1 a95 all connected to a bolt. The bolt is on a separate switch But the minis are connected to my 16 port switch along with my NAS and other devices. Once something freaked out I had no access to any device on my 16 port switch. I had a friend go into our house and cycle power on the switch which helped for a day but then it crapped out. I had my daughter do it as well and same thing. When I got home you could tell looking at the lights that the network was super hammered. Instead of blinking they were on almost steady. So what is your solution? Put the minis on their own switch and turn it off when you leave? Do you have any of the newer minis? Maybe the vox one doesn't have the issue. Finally I need to look at the logs to see if we maybe lost power or networking before it went down. I have a feeling that it was part of the booting back up process that things started to go south. Thanks


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

I have only A92's & A93's all plugged into one 16 port switch with the switch plugged into a 24 port switch which serves the Roamio Plus. When we arm the alarm in away mode my home automation system turns off power to the 16 port switch. The Roamio isn't affected. I think that sometime over the past year a f/w update may have fixed the problem as it hasn't happened again in over 6 months. That said, I'd still like to sidegrade to TE3 but now the rat bastards at Tivo have broken the ability to revert the A92/93 minis to TE3 with only a vague promise to fix it maybe, sometime, or maybe not.


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## rrkessler (Dec 9, 2003)

Hum....

Thanks!! Not sure what to do at this point. Using home automation is a great idea. I had thought of putting a switch on my 16 port so I could reboot remotely. Since it seemed to be the culprit but if it’s the minis I could go with your solution. I proved today it was a mini as I could disconnect it and my other devices worked and then reconnect and it failed. I’ve been a tivo user forever and it feels like it’s all been going down hill for a while.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

I agree. Everything was running fine till some Elbonian software engineer at Tivo got the bright idea to "improve" things and convinced his pointy haired boss to greenlight it. He forgot the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Since I did a Clear & Delete followed by a Guided Setup on all the mini's, topped off with a forced connect of the R+, it's been OK.


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## rrkessler (Dec 9, 2003)

First. What do you mean clear and delete. I’ll try that first. Second I was thinking of switching the minis to mocha. All my minis are in places with both Ethernet and cable so that seems like another option. Thanks.


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## brobin (Feb 14, 2014)

Go to: Settings & Messages > Help > Reset to Defaults > Clear & Delete Everything
I don't know if MoCa would solve the problem but I don't see why it would make a difference as all you're changing is the wiring method of reaching the router. I'd think it just adds another layer of complexity but others can chime in on that as I've never used it.


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## figsys (Jul 15, 2018)

I have a similar problem. Just happened today and has happened 4 times in the past year. Did not happen in the previous year. Seems to happen more often on the 1st of the month. Here's my network
Tivo Bolt
2 Minis connected via MOCA. At least one was not static
FIOS MI424WR Rev I router
2 Actiontec WCB3000N MOCA extenders. Using to connect an access point; Mini's are on MOCA. Don't have Ethernet in the house only coax.

When this happens either the whole network or just the MOCA goes down. Need to disconnect Mini's then reboot whole network then attach Minis. I think the "evil" one was dynamic IP. Reset both to static and see ...
Might be related to Tivo pushing out software updates. Or perhaps Verizon resetting routers / IP. Very strange problem.
Also planning to upgrade to FIOS G1100 soon.


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