I have been having a problem with one of my STBs for the past few weeks. When I press "Info" or "Guide," I get the box or the guide, but they say "Program info not available" or something similar to that. I tried to do a search for something one night and I got "search not available right now. Try again later."
I reset the box and everything is fine. But I have had to do this three times a week in the past few weeks. We have four boxes, but it is only happening on one of them.
Any ideas? Should I trade in the box for a new one?
@JanetInNJ wrote:I have been having a problem with one of my STBs for the past few weeks. When I press "Info" or "Guide," I get the box or the guide, but they say "Program info not available" or something similar to that. I tried to do a search for something one night and I got "search not available right now. Try again later."
I reset the box and everything is fine. But I have had to do this three times a week in the past few weeks. We have four boxes, but it is only happening on one of them.
Any ideas? Should I trade in the box for a new one?
Make sure there are no devices on your network that have a static address in the 192.168.1.100-110 range. Check all your coax connectors on the cable going to that STB. It sounds as if something is causing a loss of internet access to that STB.
@prisaz wrote:Make sure there are no devices on your network that have a static address in the 192.168.1.100-110 range. Check all your coax connectors on the cable going to that STB. It sounds as if something is causing a loss of internet access to that STB.
How do I check a static address? I will check all the connectors on the cables. Thanks for your response.
There is a known issue with IMG release 1.7. A small amount of people that have QIP2500-3 STBs are losing connectivity with the outside world, WAN, however the box remains connected to the internal network.
Please forward to FiOS Advanced Technical Team:
Bug issue with IMG 1.7 on limited number of QIP2500-3 STBs.
1. After 12 hours the box will lose all connectivity with the WAN
2. Other boxes, such as DVR 6416 will remain connected, no problems.
3. QIP2500-3 still has access to internal LAN - can access MR DVR and IP is renewed within the router
4. Customers will notice the problem after 12 hours if they try to access any EXTERNAL resources such as VOD, Widgets, etc. Others will notice when the guide data runs out.
5. Box respond to ping, health check and can be reset remotely.
6. Issue perhaps is related to a production run bug
7. Customers reporting the issue use Actiontec routers, some use DLINK - likely not related at all to router since all connectivity to STB and LAN is up - IPs are also issued new leases. Again, ONLY EXTERNAL connectivity is lost after 12 hours.
8. Please, advise customer care, this is not related to splitters or other typical flow chart trouble shooting. A service call to the CP is a waste of time and money. The STBs, have an issue.
9. Investigate, find a relation to the serial numbers being reported by customers. Were the STBs made at the same time? Do they share same hardware revisions? What do all customers reporting this issue share in common?
10. Extensive notes and shared experiences by customers having this issue have been documented at DSL Reports, see this thread: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r23490027-IMG-STBs-require-a-reset-every-24-hours-Since-the-IMG-upda...
My QIP2500-3 cable boxes had been loosing guide data daily for weeks (necessitating a power cord pull to reset them and get guide data back). I followed hints from the dslreports thread and, as far as I can tell, I have managed to get the problem to go away by enabling "multicast streams" on my router. My setup is ONT->actiontec (as a MOCA bridge)->D-Link DGL-4100 router -> actiontec (as a MOCA bridge) -> cable boxes via coax. Here's the description of the setting:
Multicast Streams
The router uses the IGMP protocol to support efficient multicasting -- transmission of identical content, such as multimedia, from a source to a number of recipients.
Enable Multicast Streams
This option must be enabled if any applications on the LAN participate in a multicast group. If you have a multimedia LAN application that is not receiving content as expected, try enabling this option.
My guess is that Verizon began disseminating guide data via multicast packets in their last Motorola software update. This is a much more efficient way for them to send out guide data to many boxes at once, but it doesn't work if your router won't support it. Essentially your router needs accept IGMP join requests from your LAN devices (like your Motorola boxes), forward the join request upstream (this tells upstream routers "I want to receive data for multicast group x"), and accept incoming multicast packets for all joined groups. Some routers disable this support by default (like mine did), and I wouldn't be surprised if many home routers lack multicast support or implement untested and/or broken code for it. Multicast is largely unused in the commercial world due to lack of support in backbone routers (it's usually left turned off on those routers).
In all likelihood, the motorola boxes retrieve guide data via conventional unicast packets when they start up, instead of waiting for periodic multicast guide updates. This would explain why a power cycle solves the problem in the short term. I have noticed that the problem doesn't occur on my HD fios QIP 7100, which is probably because the software on it is different, and it's smart enough to retrieve unicast guide data whenever it runs out. What Verizon probably needs to do to the QIP2500-3 boxes is update the software so that it also uses unicast when guide data runs out. If they were to do that, anyone whose router blocks multicast traffic would still have working guide data. This whole issue probably never affects users with a later-revision actiontec router left with the default settings from Verizon (since multicast support would be enabled in that case). One user posted that "IGMP support was added in the Actiontec 4.0.16.1.56.0.10.11.6 firmware release," but I can't confirm that myself.
It's also important to realize that if you can't get Video On Demand to work on the box with no guide data, you don't have a multicast problem (it's something else). The motorola boxes initiate Video On Demand requests via unicast, so if that's not working, your MOCA connection to the Internet just isn't working at all. Look for other threads on this forum to remedy that problem.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
