# Anyone getting an N13 error when setting up?



## alee (Mar 24, 2002)

The HD TiVo keeps getting a "service is not answering (N13)" error. This is on a wired Ethernet.

The other TiVos in the apartment are able to connect w/o a problem (just did a forced network connect).


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## SoBayJake (Feb 6, 2002)

alee said:


> The HD TiVo keeps getting a "service is not answering (N13)" error. This is on a wired Ethernet.
> 
> The other TiVos in the apartment are able to connect w/o a problem (just did a forced network connect).


I don't remember the error number (maybe N22?) but mine kept failing on "configuring." I reboot (pulled the plug) got it back and working.


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## alee (Mar 24, 2002)

So weird... I ended up having to use a spare router to get things going. After that, regular connections through my Cisco PIX have gone fine.

Now I just have to occupy myself until the cable guy comes tomorrow.


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## minckster (Aug 31, 2006)

I get that error when I plug the ethernet cable directly into the ethernet jack. I can only connect successfully using a USB-ethernet adapter. The ethernet jack _should_ work, shouldn't it?


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## mikebridge (Sep 18, 2000)

minckster said:


> I get that error when I plug the ethernet cable directly into the ethernet jack. I can only connect successfully using a USB-ethernet adapter. The ethernet jack _should_ work, shouldn't it?


yup. S3's ethernet jack into the wall, which runs into an el'cheapo 8 port switch, into my cisco 800 series, to the cable modem, out into the wild wild intar-web.


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## SoBayJake (Feb 6, 2002)

minckster said:


> I get that error when I plug the ethernet cable directly into the ethernet jack. I can only connect successfully using a USB-ethernet adapter. The ethernet jack _should_ work, shouldn't it?


Mine kept failing for ethernet errors. Turns out I had either a bad cable or bad port on my switch.

Swapped to new ones, and its fine (no reboot required).

It seems the built-in ethernet jack can be quite picky.


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## minckster (Aug 31, 2006)

minckster said:


> I get that error when I plug the ethernet cable directly into the ethernet jack. I can only connect successfully using a USB-ethernet adapter. The ethernet jack _should_ work, shouldn't it?


Thanks for the confirmation mikebridge! I finally got it working.  What worked is plugging the ethernet cord into my phone router instead of the wireless router. The two routers are daisy-chained. I can't imagine why one router works and the other doesn't, but it's temporary until I get a wireless bridge. (I'm gonna lose a lot of hair setting _that_ up - and I don't have any to spare.)


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## alee (Mar 24, 2002)

In my case, it seems the TiVo will NOT work with the Cisco PIX 501E. No matter what, it will consistently throw an N13 error. I can consistently connect via a wired Linksys router, so like minckster, I've daisy chained my routers for now.

I consider this a fairly severe bug. Until I dug out the older Linksys router, I would have been unable to complete the initial guided setup.


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## montivette (Sep 7, 2006)

With any network issues I would suggest setting up the TiVo network settings manually so you can specify the IP address, subnet, default gateway, and DNS server address. This allows you total control to make sure the settings are correct and consistent with your network.

Depending on the other devices the Series 3 is plugged into, your Series 3 may configure the network settings incorrectly. The IP address of the unit may not be correct, or it may specify the wrong gateway or DNS server IP.

Also, read carefully when it comes up with error messages during setup pertaining to lack of connection. One message which pops up states there is a unrecoverable error and you should unplug the Series 3, and then run setup. If you miss that message it won't matter how many times you run setup again, it just won't work.


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## SoBayJake (Feb 6, 2002)

montivette said:


> Also, read carefully when it comes up with error messages during setup pertaining to lack of connection. One message which pops up states there is a unrecoverable error and you should unplug the Series 3, and then run setup. If you miss that message it won't matter how many times you run setup again, it just won't work.


Mine had that same error as well. It was able to continue just with hitting "Try again now." I figured one try was still quicker than a reboot, so I tried it, and it worked.

Later, the port started giving me grief.


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## kb7oeb (Jan 18, 2005)

minckster said:


> Thanks for the confirmation mikebridge! I finally got it working.  What worked is plugging the ethernet cord into my phone router instead of the wireless router. The two routers are daisy-chained. I can't imagine why one router works and the other doesn't, but it's temporary until I get a wireless bridge. (I'm gonna lose a lot of hair setting _that_ up - and I don't have any to spare.)


Maybe a problem with doing doubleNAT. Why do you need to daisy chain?

I was able to make my wireless router a bridge by disabling DHCP and connecting my LAN into a LAN port instead of the Internet port.


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## Bodshal (Jan 4, 2005)

Random thought. Is your PIX doing stateful inspection of HTTP? Or proxying it? Tivo uses non-standard HTTP-like requests on port 80 for many things and it anything that intercepts port 80 may confuse it - my transparent squid did until I fixed it.

Chris.


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## alee (Mar 24, 2002)

Bodshal said:


> Random thought. Is your PIX doing stateful inspection of HTTP? Or proxying it? Tivo uses non-standard HTTP-like requests on port 80 for many things and it anything that intercepts port 80 may confuse it - my transparent squid did until I fixed it.


Unless the S3 is doing something different than the S2, I doubt it (the other S2 devices in the apartment that pass through the PIX work fine).

The S3 was tested against each of the 4 integrated switchports on the 501e, and then again on another switch with no luck. It works absolutely fine on the Linksys.


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## minckster (Aug 31, 2006)

kb7oeb said:


> Maybe a problem with doing doubleNAT. Why do you need to daisy chain?
> 
> I was able to make my wireless router a bridge by disabling DHCP and connecting my LAN into a LAN port instead of the Internet port.


I doubleNAT only because that's the only way I could get two routers and one cable modem playing together. When I tried disabling DHCP, I did not change any cabling. I'll try that again. Thanks for the advice!


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## TiVo-rific (Mar 23, 2002)

alee said:


> In my case, it seems the TiVo will NOT work with the Cisco PIX 501E. No matter what, it will consistently throw an N13 error. I can consistently connect via a wired Linksys router, so like minckster, I've daisy chained my routers for now.
> 
> I consider this a fairly severe bug. Until I dug out the older Linksys router, I would have been unable to complete the initial guided setup.


I had the same problem with my PIX501.  It is not the switch ports as I have two S3 TiVos and one of them is over a wireless bridge with the same problem. As soon as I replaced the PIX501 with a Linksys BEFSR41 router both TiVos started working fine. I suspect that the PIX501 is blocking something that the S3 expects. Its worth noting that I first tried an old Linksys BEFVP41 and it had the same problem. Thats when I headed to CompUSA for the BEFSR41.
Thanks for the help!! I was getting very uptight since the cable guy is due here in the morning.
Anyhow, when I have some time I will break out the sniffer and try to figure out whats going on.


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## alee (Mar 24, 2002)

TiVo-rific said:


> I suspect that the PIX501 is blocking something that the S3 expects.


Ah, another PIX user! Excellent!

Daisy-chaining the Linksys --> PIX --> Cable modem seemed to help, so I don't think the PIX is necessarily blocking anything. I tried both static and dynamic IPs, so it's not how the PIX manages DHCP either.

If you find anything, let me know!


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## TiVo-rific (Mar 23, 2002)

alee said:


> Ah, another PIX user! Excellent!
> 
> Daisy-chaining the Linksys --> PIX --> Cable modem seemed to help, so I don't think the PIX is necessarily blocking anything. I tried both static and dynamic IPs, so it's not how the PIX manages DHCP either.
> 
> If you find anything, let me know!


PIX 501 Rules!  Although I am waiting for the ASA5505 to become orderable.  
Not sure, I did notice some odd stuff when doing a sh dhcpd bind on the PIX501. Both S3 units had odd entrys. I'll fool with it after this weekend.

BTW, I did call TiVo about this and the tech said that they were seeing this problem with a few people and that it would be fixed in a future release of software. Whatever that means.


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## Steve Richards (May 6, 2004)

During the network setup the S3 attemps to ping your Domain Name Server and some Tivo IP addess. If it does not get a response to the ping you will get the N13. It will try to ping each address up to four times on each attempt, but may ping less than that if successfull. 


Your network has to be setup to allow ICMP packets to come and go to the device for the setup to work.

So if you have a firewall make sure the pings can get through.

There may be other reasons for the N13 but this is what I found on my network trace.

Steve


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## bigkatuna (Jan 31, 2006)

I am too experiencing troubles with my 501 and my two tivos <192.168.0.110 + 192.168.0.111> it appears as if the tivos use multicast. Anyone experience this?

710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/5353 to inside:224.0.0.251/5353
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/5353 to inside:224.0.0.251/5353
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.111/5353 to inside:224.0.0.251/5353
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.111/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190


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## marksimons (Oct 12, 2006)

The TIVO needs to ping the Tivo Service for it to be correct. On my Pix 501 I followed this :

Pings Outbound
There are two options in PIX 7.x that allow inside users to ping hosts on the outside. The first option is to setup a specific rule for each type of echo message.

For example:

access-list 101 permit icmp any any echo-reply
access-list 101 permit icmp any any source-quench 
access-list 101 permit icmp any any unreachable 
access-list 101 permit icmp any any time-exceeded
access-group 101 in interface outside

This allows only these return messages through the firewall when an inside user pings to an outside host. The other types of ICMP status messages might be hostile and the firewall blocks all other ICMP messages.



to enable ping replies and it worked.


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## TiVo-rific (Mar 23, 2002)

marksimons said:


> On my Pix 501 I followed this :
> 
> Pings Outbound
> There are two options in PIX 7.x that allow inside users to ping hosts on the outside. The first option is to setup a specific rule for each type of echo message.
> ...


Are you running 7.x software on your PIX 501?
I didn't think that was ever available for the 501.


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## TiVo-rific (Mar 23, 2002)

Well, I thought the idea of adding an access list line for echo-reply made sense to me so I connected my PIX back up. I went to try dialing one more time to make sure and noticed that it was pending-restart. I restarted the S3 and when it returned I had software 8.0.1b-01-2-648. The software before the reload was 8.0.1a-01-2-648. Anyhow, I dialed out and it worked fine without any modifications to the PIX config. 

Problem solved.


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## Mali0049 (Nov 2, 2006)

I have a S2, sorry didn't see the N13 error anywhere else.
I am using a Netgear RangeMax DraftN router.

I have had this set up of a little over a month. But now all of the suddent I am getting this N13 error. I have tried use the Tivo's IP address and opened port 80 just for Tivo. I can still share files between my two S2's but neither will connect to the internet.

Anyone have any Ideas?


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## Mali0049 (Nov 2, 2006)

Solution:
Udate the Firmware on your Router


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## demon (Nov 15, 2006)

bigkatuna said:


> 710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
> 710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
> 710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/2190 to inside:192.168.0.255/2190
> 710005: UDP request discarded from 192.168.0.110/5353 to inside:224.0.0.251/5353
> ...


The newer TiVo software does incorporate support for Apple's Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous), aka Zeroconf; part of that is multicast DNS, which does use 5353/udp. Apparently port 2190 is a multicast port used by the TiVo software itself, for the TiVos to discover one another on a network.


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## ashu (Nov 8, 2002)

minckster said:


> it's temporary until I get a wireless bridge. (I'm gonna lose a lot of hair setting _that_ up - and I don't have any to spare.)


[OT]
See my sig. Its the best home networking decision you'll ever make 

I have 4 Belkin 7230-04 all over the home, and it's like having a 16-point, multi-point wired network. I don't reboot them for months at a time!

Minimal hair-loss during setup (of course, the new Belkins lack bridging in the G routers, and the N's are EXPENSIVE but supposedly can bridge; or buy something else, preferably Linksys WRT54GL).


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## Thos19 (Dec 31, 2002)

I was trying to do the guided set-up on my new Series 3 last night in anticipation of Comcast's visit this Wednesday.

I was hard wiring the Tivo via ethernet directly to my Belkin router, but get the error messages saying that the router can't be contacted. I have a series 1 with a turbonet adapter which has always worked with the same router with no issues.

I've tried assigning an address manually, and automatically, but fail each time. Tried plugging and unplugging, restarting both the Tivo and router, but to no avail.

What is strange, my router can see the IP address I assigned the Tivo, and have no problem pinging it. It's the Tivo that seems blind.

Is this a software issue? Do I need to get an ethernet/usb adapter and use one of the USB ports either temporarily or permanently? Unfortunately I do not have a land line.

I guess I will also sit on hold with TiVo again today to try to get an answer. 

Thos.


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## CharlesH (Aug 29, 2002)

Thos19 said:


> I was trying to do the guided set-up on my new Series 3 last night in anticipation of Comcast's visit this Wednesday.
> 
> I was hard wiring the Tivo via ethernet directly to my Belkin router, but get the error messages saying that the router can't be contacted. I have a series 1 with a turbonet adapter which has always worked with the same router with no issues.
> 
> ...


I got this error, but Google gave me a pointer to a thread that said to try using a wired USB/Ethernet adapter. I plugged in the one I use on a Series2, and the initial setup then went through just fine. I removed the USB adapter and re-connected the direct ethernet cable, and ran the daily call just fine. In both cases, it was going to the same port of a Linksys switch, hooked to a Westell DSL router/modem, so I don't see how firewall issues could apply.


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## 2farrell (Jul 12, 2002)

I keep getting Unable to get Account Status (N15) on my Series 3 but not on my two Series 2.
It sometimes works though.
This must be an issue with the TiVo Servers is all I can think since it has only been happening to me with in the last week.


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## Thos19 (Dec 31, 2002)

Well, the same contractor from last time came out again today, but had the cards with him along with an actual Comcast tech.

The install was smooth. The only hang-up was trying to get Comcast on the line. All in all, the process took about 30 minutes. Spent the downtime discussing my DVD collection with the tech. Bid goodbye to my 8300 DVR. Won't be missed.

Had borrowed my brother's wireless TiVo adapter to do the setup. I'll be re-trying the wired ethernet method, per Charles H's recommendation.

So far, so good.  

Thos.


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## WeBoat (Nov 6, 2002)

Steve Richards said:


> During the network setup the S3 attemps to ping your Domain Name Server and some Tivo IP addess. If it does not get a response to the ping you will get the N13. It will try to ping each address up to four times on each attempt, but may ping less than that if successfull.
> 
> Your network has to be setup to allow ICMP packets to come and go to the device for the setup to work.
> 
> ...


Just wanted to bump this. This was my issue with the TivoHD Tivo Wireless adapter. Firewall was blocking all pings. Added rule for ping and it came right up.

Thanks!


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## ari14850 (Sep 12, 2010)

This problem has been plaguing me for months. And I finally found a solution.

I have a tivo series 3 hooked up to a netgear wndr3300 router via ethernet cable. This router is connected via a motorola sbg6580f cable modem to road runner.

My TIVO has NEVER been able to get a DCHP address from the netgear. It just fails (n13) and then I try manual assign, and that fails too.

The only way it will set up a network connection is to use "let tivo assign itself an address". I've called tivo several times about this (because I want to assign this thing a static ip so it plays well with all the other items on my network) and they just say "there is no difference between the 3 methods, and we don't know why 2 of the 3 don't work, but just leave it alone.

The problem is, by leaving it alone

a) I'm having ip address conflicts since the tivo is taking a ## that the router also tries to assign

b) I often get "guide is about to run out" message. Even though it connects and gets the guide info (with self assigned ip), the guide info is somehow corrupted. I've had lots of weird symptoms such as guide data download but an empty "find programs" directory, messages that say the guide is up to date, but then show the index as being in the past. Index to dates months ahead in the future.

So last night I hooked up a blu-ray netflix player and it too could not get a DHCP address. But it's error message was more descriptive (ping error) so I started researching that. My netgear router had all the firewalls open. So I tried to run ping on my Mac (on a mac go to utilities/terminal and type "ping w w w.google.com" (remove the spaces, I had to add them for this article to post) on windows go to command line and use the same command)

What I found was very strange. I could not ping ANY outside computers. Anything in my house (192.x.x.x) would respond, but outside addresses didn't. (I also pinged numeric equivalents in case you were wondering if my DNS was bad). As a matter of fact, I could not even ping the gateway that the router was connected to (the motorola cable modem). So I knew something was up.

Called time warner, told them I thought the motorola was blocking wan ping. They did some tests, and then changed the block wan ping setting (unless you can get into the modem's settings, which I can't because they changed the password from the default, you cannot change these on your own) .

And lo-and-behold, my wan pings started working. I ran to the tivo, tried to get it to get a DCHP lease, and -drumroll- success! The blu-ray player also connected to netflix.

So the moral of the story is, try a wan ping from your computer if you are having dhcp or n13 or guide data problems with your tivo. If it does not succeed, call the cable company and get them to fix the setting.

P.S. The guide data also turned out to be corrupt (perhaps because of all the failed connection attempts due to the ping block). TiVo support suggested re-running guided setup, first with the WRONG zip code to clear out all the data, then with the right zip code. This did indeed fix the indexing issues I had been having.

So there you have it. Hope this saves you some time. I wish I knew this a few months ago...


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