This is a very technical (and therefore probably quite boring for most people) question, largely aimed at daveh75 but if anyone else has any specialist knowledge in this area it would be much appreciated.
I'm investigating an issue a friend has with Sky's On Demand service on both of her Sky+HD boxes (she has two).
Sometime last year, about 6 months ago, I put the boxes online for her using a couple of TPLink PoE adapters as her Sky boxes are at one end of the house and her broadband connection is at the other end and it wasn't possible to run ethernet cables all the way down (not without making a hell of a mess at least) and they've been working fine for 6 months or so but recently both boxes have been failing to record live programs (record info just says "Technical Fault") and it's not possible to do an advanced search on the on demand channels as it says the broadband connection is not available.
The PoE at the far end of the house that the Sky boxes are plugged into also has a Wireless access point which is configured to mimic her normal wi-fi (actually an Airport Express), so I connected to that and ran a speedtest. Initially the first test showed up an almost non-existant download speed (in the low tens of Kbps and I mean Kbps, not Mbps!) but the upload was ok. Next I moved to the other end of the house, connected to the AE wireless, re-ran the speedtest and got 20Mbps, as expected. Moving back to the PoE WAP I ran the test again but this time got 18Mbps, and several re-runs all gave perfect d/l speeds of the same speed (I know I was connected to the PoE WAP as the AE wireless isn't accessible from the other end of the house). I don't know why the first one was so bad, at the moment I'm working the assumption that something is causing interference with the PoE adapters, but she wasn't using any equipment at the time, she was sat on the sofa talking to me. I'll ask if she's bought any new electrical items recently that might be injecting crap into the mains.
The one stat that was consistently bad was the ping time, the BEST ping time I saw was around 800ms, the worst was over 1 second! This, I believe, is because due to the remote location, she is using satellite broadband, which has very bad latency, so I'm wondering whether the Sky On Demand service requires a lower ping time to work reliably? Could it be timing out communicating with the On Demand servers? Of course this doesn't explain why it was working fine for several months previously.
One other point, last week her broadband was stopped because she breached a download limit that she didn't know she had (it's supposed to be unlimited but apparently isn't in reality) and I'm wondering whether the Sky boxes have got upset due to being disconnected for a while. I'm going back tomorrow and I'll power them both fully off and restart them, I'll also give them a planner rebuild but I don't really want to reset them completely as she's got a lot of stuff she hasn't watched yet.
She can now get fibre broadband where she is, which she's going to look at but I'd like to investigate this in the meantime. It could be the satellite broadband but I'm not convinced due to it being fine for the previous 6 months. Any ideas would be be appreciated.
I'm investigating an issue a friend has with Sky's On Demand service on both of her Sky+HD boxes (she has two).
Sometime last year, about 6 months ago, I put the boxes online for her using a couple of TPLink PoE adapters as her Sky boxes are at one end of the house and her broadband connection is at the other end and it wasn't possible to run ethernet cables all the way down (not without making a hell of a mess at least) and they've been working fine for 6 months or so but recently both boxes have been failing to record live programs (record info just says "Technical Fault") and it's not possible to do an advanced search on the on demand channels as it says the broadband connection is not available.
The PoE at the far end of the house that the Sky boxes are plugged into also has a Wireless access point which is configured to mimic her normal wi-fi (actually an Airport Express), so I connected to that and ran a speedtest. Initially the first test showed up an almost non-existant download speed (in the low tens of Kbps and I mean Kbps, not Mbps!) but the upload was ok. Next I moved to the other end of the house, connected to the AE wireless, re-ran the speedtest and got 20Mbps, as expected. Moving back to the PoE WAP I ran the test again but this time got 18Mbps, and several re-runs all gave perfect d/l speeds of the same speed (I know I was connected to the PoE WAP as the AE wireless isn't accessible from the other end of the house). I don't know why the first one was so bad, at the moment I'm working the assumption that something is causing interference with the PoE adapters, but she wasn't using any equipment at the time, she was sat on the sofa talking to me. I'll ask if she's bought any new electrical items recently that might be injecting crap into the mains.
The one stat that was consistently bad was the ping time, the BEST ping time I saw was around 800ms, the worst was over 1 second! This, I believe, is because due to the remote location, she is using satellite broadband, which has very bad latency, so I'm wondering whether the Sky On Demand service requires a lower ping time to work reliably? Could it be timing out communicating with the On Demand servers? Of course this doesn't explain why it was working fine for several months previously.
One other point, last week her broadband was stopped because she breached a download limit that she didn't know she had (it's supposed to be unlimited but apparently isn't in reality) and I'm wondering whether the Sky boxes have got upset due to being disconnected for a while. I'm going back tomorrow and I'll power them both fully off and restart them, I'll also give them a planner rebuild but I don't really want to reset them completely as she's got a lot of stuff she hasn't watched yet.
She can now get fibre broadband where she is, which she's going to look at but I'd like to investigate this in the meantime. It could be the satellite broadband but I'm not convinced due to it being fine for the previous 6 months. Any ideas would be be appreciated.
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