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    rkettridge
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Congo Jnr with Cobalt breaks network

We've recently upgraded our old Congo Jnr to Cobalt and now whenever we plug the console into the theatre network (which it's always been attached to) it completely stops the network working. Nothing can join the wireless network, everything on the network cannot access anything anymore. During troubleshooting i've reduced the network to just the wireless router and the desk. Soon as you unplug the desk, everything works fine again. 

The desk isn't set as a DHCP server, there's no IP address conflict. It's almost as if it's just spamming the network with so much data that it saturates it to breaking point. 

Running out of ideas here. Is there anything in the system settings that uses the ethernet port to output data?

The other half of my job is as an IT admin for our office building so i understand networks but this has me stuck.

Any thoughts?

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  • 0

    Good Morning Rkett,

    1.) Which Network Protocols are active on the Congo Jr? (sACN, ACN, Artnet)

    2.) If Arnet is active, how many universes are patched?

    3.) What are the complete Network Address Details of the Congo Jr?

          For example:

           IP Address: 10.101.81.101

          Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0

           Windows Gateway: 10.101.1.1

     (You can post a photo of these to be easier)

    4.) Above the IP Address is the check box "Obtain IP Address Automatically" checked?

    5.) Please Change the IP Address of the Congo Jr to another available address, and see if that changes the Situation.

    6.) Can you make a Wireshark scan of when the Congo Jr is connected?- Then we may see what exactly is going wrong.

     

  • 0 in reply to corey cascio
    6) Scan log here https://www.dropbox.com/s/19afkwbtigz96yo/Congo%20Cobalt%20Capture.pcapng?dl=0

    Desk is now on ip 192.168.0.9, and 192.168.0.19 was the laptop i was using.

    Thanks

    Rob
  • 0 in reply to rkettridge

    And when this was just made - only Thing in Network was Congo Jr + Laptop and WLAN Switch? ... Because I see your Laptop going into Internet on the same Network.

    And with this wireshark scan - your Network is frozen? What are the exact symptoms?

Reply Children
  • 0 in reply to corey cascio
    Only things on were the wireless router (which is connected to the internet), the desk, and my laptop. Symptoms are basically that you can't connect to anything, i.e. all web requests time out, you cannot connect to any other devices on the network when there are more etc. The minute you pull the cat5 out the back of the desk everything connects. I tried to use a blank login to do the scan but couldn't get any interfaces to show in wireshark so apologies for the extra traffic.

    Thanks

    Rob
  • 0 in reply to rkettridge
    Can you try disconnecting the Internet cable to Switch and see if it works then?
  • 0 in reply to corey cascio

    Same problem. Here is the log for this occasion

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/q37n7tgqx0cpdef/Congo%20Cobalt%20No%20Internet.pcapng?dl=0

    This was just the desk plugged into one of the LAN ports of the WIFI router, nothing else plugged in or connected other than the laptop via WIFI.

    With the desk plugged in i tried to ping the router.

    Then unplugged the desk from the router and tried the same again...

    Thanks

    Rob

  • 0 in reply to rkettridge

    Hi Rob,

    Looking at your network captures, there really isn't much traffic going on for a network that is connected to the internet. The most frequent communication happening is the multicast traffic to 224.0.0.28. This traffic is the console telling the multicast subscribers on the network that it is alive and (presumably) running as a server.

    Looking at the data rates in your captures for this multicast communication, it is actually less frequent than my test Congo Jr running 6.4.1 or my Congo Kid running 7.1.1. From all of my testing, it doesn't appear that we've increased the frequency of this communication in any significant manner between Congo and Cobalt.

    So, what's happening in your system... Well it could be a number of things. Congo and Cobalt have always sent the multicast communication described above. It is possible that your router may have developed an issue with multicast traffic routing. This could be affecting its ability to perform other switching/routing tasks. There can also be significant issues when ARP requests aren't answered. As you probably know, when an ARP request isn't answered, the address table on the device requesting (in this case your computer) is updated to remove the address which can create no known route to the host. In your last capture, this would seem to include your router's address in the unresponsive ARP requests. This tells me that your router isn't always responding to your laptop when asked who is assigned to which address. (Unresponsive ARP requests are also showing up for devices with IP addresses 192.168.0.2 and 192.168.0.4).

    Things to try next:

    • Reset the router settings to default and see if there is any improvement or further degradation in performance
    • Check with the manufacturer of your router to see if a software update is available
    • Try a different router

    Finally, because I don't see it mentioned anywhere previously in this thread, ETC strongly discourages you from connecting your lighting console to the open internet. Amongst other traffic related issues, it also has no virus protection and no firewall to prevent malicious code from being installed and/or run. We highly recommend that you keep your lighting network separated (either physically or via VLAN) from the open internet, office intranets, and any other high traffic network.

     

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