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e1.31 bogs down wireless


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Posted

I'm having trouble keeping my e1.31 traffic from bogging down my wireless, so hoping someone can help me out.

My setup is this: show computer with on-board wifi and on-board GbE connections. I've also added a GbE card that I will dedicate to my e1.31 network for my pixels. I plan (hope) to use the wifi to connect to my home network. On-board GbE is unused. Wifi is assigned its IP address from my home router via DHCP. GbE card is assigned a static 10.10.10.2 IP address. All my e68x hardware is at 10.10.10.x and is running unicast.

I can play a sequence from LOR and get it to operate my lights just fine, so I've got everything set up correctly from that perspective.

The problem is that, when Comm Listener is running, my wifi runs very slowly, so it seems that the pixel traffic is also being transmitted on the wifi network, in addition to the hardware connection from my PC to the controller.

I've set up a route within the Windows routing table (running Win7 64-bit) in an attempt to send all the traffic to the GbE card and keep it off the wifi connection. The command I used was:

route add 10.10.10.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.10.10.2

Here's a screenshot of the route print command, so it appears to me like adding the route should have worked, but the wifi is still bogged down.

Clearly I'm missing something. Anyone able to help? 

 

post-7398-0-65867900-1377786834_thumb.jp

Posted

Two issues. If you are using multicast e1.31, you need to add the route for multicast, and you might not need to add the management ip route, as it is probably already there and correct. Another possible issue that you may need to force the weight. Let me see if I can dig up one of my old posts.

Posted (edited)

Kevin,

 

I'm running unicast.  And everything on the e1.31 network behaves just like I think it should.  The trouble is that the wifi in the house grinds almost to a halt.  And this is on all devices.  Not just my show computer.

 

So, it seems as though, somehow, the traffic is also getting pushed out onto the wifi network as well.

Edited by Aaron Maue
Posted

It almost sounds like there is still some multicast traffic going out. You could try to look at the traffic using wireshark...

Posted (edited)

In order to see if something weird was happening with LOR, I emulated the traffic that was being sent by LOR by running multiple instances of SACNView and transmitting a bunch of unicast traffic in that way. Exact same results. Bogs down the wireless. So, I think that (mostly) rules out LOR as the culprit.

Having duplicated the clogged wifi in that way, I next downloaded and ran Wireshark so I could try to see what was happening. Looking at my the results, I can now see that the e1.31 traffic is going out both my wifi card and the GbE card. I can see both sources (192.168.0.64 - the DHCP-assigned IP for my PC's wireless card, and 10.10.10.2 - the static IP for my GbE card) with the same destinations - the addresses of my e682 hardware (10.10.10.101-10.10.10.104). Note that I don't see any multicast IPs in the traffic.

With a grand total of 5 minutes of experience with Wireshark, I'm wondering if someone can tell me if there's any significance to the colors in the packet list pane. Each line of traffic being sourced from the wifi is a light blue color. Each line of traffic from the GbE card is black. I took a quick scan of the manual (very quick, so I probably missed it), but I didn't find the section that told me why the colors might be different.

Edited by Aaron Maue
Posted

Black is usually a perceived error condition. In this case, most likely it believes it is a duplicated packet.

This is not a behavior I personally have seen with Windows, but I a no longer surprised with how stupid it can be.

Can you send the output from:

netstat -rnv

Also check to see if updated drivers exist for your wireless interface?

Posted

Kevin & Vienna - thanks so much for your willingness to help.

 

Short story:  Woohoo! It's working!

Longer story:  So, it was partially my ignorance. Partially some stupidity. And partially some bad luck.

In then end, what I realized when looking more closely at the Wireshark capture is that NOT ALL of the e1.31 data was going out on the wifi. The way LOR Comm Listener works is that, for all universes defined in the Network Configuration, it sends out updates for all universes constantly. Even when there's no data being sent to the Comm Listener from the Sequence Editor or Show Player. So, because I have my entire e1.31 network defined (the stupidity part), and because I only had one of the e682s in the network (here's the bad luck part - I removed the other controllers and the switch in order to isolate my problem), there was traffic that was trying to find hardware that wasn't connected to the e1.31 network. So, not finding those IP addresses there, Win7 was sending it out on the wifi. That was my ignorance part. I didn't realize this would be the behavior I should expect. Have I mentioned I'm not a networking guy? shy.gif

When I removed the universes from the Network Configuration that didn't actually have hardware associated with them (at least not connected right now), everything worked just like I thought it should. e1.31 traffic out the GbE NIC. And general network traffic over wifi. And nothing crossing over.

Again - a debt of gratitude to all. It's been a pain-in-the-butt to figure it out. But I think I've finally got it.

Posted

I have been following this thread with interest to see how it resolved itself. I will be hooking up 5 682's in the next few months.

 

Question, I to will be using 2 nic cards. Is the

 

"route -p add 224.0.0.0 mask 240.0.0.0 <ip of correct pc interface to use> metric 5 "

 

command necessary if you are using unicast? Or is that needed for multicast only.

 

Thanks for posting everything you did here, it will defiantly help others.

Posted

Multicast only. But I'm guessing that the partly configured universes were probably still set to multicast, causing this issue. So it might be good for protection from partly complete configurations.

Posted

All universes were set to unicast. But since Win7 couldn't find some of them on the preferred route that I had set up, it sent the traffic out the wifi - through the default route.

Kevin's way smarter on the networking thing than I, so if he says you only need the route command in multicast, then I'd trust it.

If I hadn't been generating traffic that was supposed to be going to e682 controllers that weren't connected to the PC yet, I'm guessing I wouldn't have needed the route command because it would have just worked. Unless I'm mistaken, the route shouldn't do any harm, so I'm just gonna leave it.

Posted

Connected really doesn't matter. Sounds like you had them configured to unicast, but not configured to ip addresses on your network for e1.31, which does matter. Partial configurations have lots of ways to get you. And guessing how much partial configuration was done has lots of ways to miss.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Just wanna say thanks, been trying to also figure out why my wireless and work computer get bogged down when Ctrl Panel is started :)  My universes are all unicast on dedicated NIC card on show computer but yet it still does it.

 

That must be it :)  I dont really need to startup Ctrl Panel most the time yet anyway.

Posted (edited)

BTW... More progress on my setup has confirmed the issue. So long as there are controllers out there, receiving the 10.10.10.x traffic, there's no problem. The control panel runs, sends out e1.31 traffic and controllers respond. All while the home wifi is still operating perfectly.

The moment the controllers aren't there to receive the e1.31 traffic, however, the wifi becomes unusable. Last Sunday night, after testing my pixel megatree outside, I disconnected the cable from my laptop to the switch, came back in the house, and turned on the TV. 5 minutes later, the wife informs me her ipad won't work. Translation: she couldn't connect to the Pinterest sever. :) Checked my laptop and realized I'd forgotten to shut down the LOR control panel, so it was, once again, flooding my wifi, since it couldn't "find" the e682 controllers. Unloaded the control panel and all was good.

Edited by Aaron Maue
  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Thanks again Aaron.  I havent yet setup all 6 of my E1.31 devices outside yet but good to know it will hopefully come right when I do.

 

When showtime starts (Nov/Dec) I wont have the internet on showPC so thats fine, but till then I want to be able to sit outside testing with my laptop.  I havent been able to do that due to this problem.

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