Firefly, Belkin F5D7132UK WURE and multicasting problem

[be4con]

I’m delighted to say that the new antenna on the Buffalo seems to have solved the network problems. 😀

I wish I’d tried it first as the antenna only cost me £3.49 plus P&P and the Belkin was £30. I guess you live and learn.

I’ve decided to keep the Belkin and just plug it in occasionally when I want to go online with my PS3 which is the other end of the house to the router now, but to keep it unplugged the rest of the time so that the SB doesn’t ever try to connect to it.

Thanks for all the help trying to get my setup to work with Firefly though.

[Anonymous]

Hi,
Did you be4con or anyone else ever resolve this issue?
I have the same range extender, and a soundbridge, with FireFly running on a LinkStation Live connected to the main router by wire. As per the above posts, if the sb connects to the WURE, it cannot ‘see’ the firefly server but can connect to internet radio, whereas directly connected to the router there is no problem (other than rebuffering due to noise). I see that Belkin have not updated the firmware for the extender and guess they are unlikely to do so now as the device is a few years onto the market. In testing, I set my router to refuse connection from my laptop, so that the laptop would only be able to connect to the WURE to get onto the network. I then accessed the firefly interface on port 3689, and then ran the DAAP applet and it streamed music to the laptop fine, so I’m not quite sure why the SB can’t see FF when connected to the WURE. I’m not sure if this is a valid test, but I assume the applet runs locally so must be receiving the data via the correct ports…

[rpedde]

@jpcwebb wrote:

Hi,
Did you be4con or anyone else ever resolve this issue?
I have the same range extender, and a soundbridge, with FireFly running on a LinkStation Live connected to the main router by wire. As per the above posts, if the sb connects to the WURE, it cannot ‘see’ the firefly server but can connect to internet radio, whereas directly connected to the router there is no problem (other than rebuffering due to noise). I see that Belkin have not updated the firmware for the extender and guess they are unlikely to do so now as the device is a few years onto the market. In testing, I set my router to refuse connection from my laptop, so that the laptop would only be able to connect to the WURE to get onto the network. I then accessed the firefly interface on port 3689, and then ran the DAAP applet and it streamed music to the laptop fine, so I’m not quite sure why the SB can’t see FF when connected to the WURE. I’m not sure if this is a valid test, but I assume the applet runs locally so must be receiving the data via the correct ports…

The issue is multicast, which is the discovery mechanism that the soundbridge (and iTunes) use to discover other itunes servers. The WURE passes tcp okay, but not multicast. Which means that the soundbridge can’t locate the server, and no music. 🙁

[Anonymous]

Well, in an effort to get a repeater working, I discovered that another Access Point on my network will operate in repeater mode, and I know that it does support multicast as I have used it to pick up Wake-on-LAN signals set as a multicast signal (an Edimax EW-7206APg). However, whilst is seems to work fine with my laptop, the SB seems to want to connect to it in wireless B mode instead of G, so of course the WPA encryption fails. This is weird behaviour. I’m going to try to switch the repeater to protected (G) mode only tonight to see if it will connect, but I am confused as to why the SB would try mode B first and not recognise that it can use wireless G…
Might try RokuLabs forums to see if they know what’s wrong.

Incidentally, why doesn’t this forum like the word ‘d e t e r m i n e’?

[rpedde]

@jpcwebb wrote:

Incidentally, why doesn’t this forum like the word ‘d e t e r m i n e’?

Ah, just admit you are a spammer. 🙂

Truthfully, there were a bunch of spammers spamming ermine coats or something and I plonked the word, but apparently the spam word thing was a little *too* aggressive.

Lol.

Wonder how many unsuspecting people that has hit. 🙂

Fixed now.

— Ron

[Anonymous]

Well, I had some success last night – I got the SB to connect through the Edimax repeater and to Firefly!! I had to force this by blocking the MAC address of the SB on the router. In doing this, I discovered that there is quite a long delay before the connection takes, so initially it appears that the SB has not connected. But 5 minutes or so later it spontaneously connects. I think there must be some settings on the repeater that is affecting this, although I had a bit of an email tennis match with Edimax support yesterday who insisted that WPA security is not possible via a 11b wifi connection (SB obviously does this, so not sure where the discrepancy lies – Edimax suggested that the SB actually has a 11g capable chip but is forced to use 11b connectivity in order to get a stronger signal, but it’s not something I could confirm with them). I guess the slow connection is what was making the SB preferentially connect to the router before I put the MAC filter block in place, due to a connection timeout.

Anyway, the point it that it is possible to connect to Firefly through this particular repeater, even if connection is very slow (once connected the device works well and streams from firefly with no breaks/ rebuffers – but if the signal is blocked, it could be annoying that you have to wait a few minutes before connection re-establishes). This is worth noting to those who are having problems with Belkin or other devices.

[Author]

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