Sky Stream only works with WiFi hotspot, not Virgin Media Business braodband

[Guy_42]

Had a puck for around a year now and been working fine until a few weeks ago where it would start to say can't connect to the internet. Using wired connection to a gigabit switch by the TV (TV is Smart and Netflix, etc on the same wired connection all work fine) connected by Cat6 cable to a gig switch in the loft connecting to a Dlink WiFi router , which provides DHCP & DNS via Cloudflare, that connects to Virgin Media Business Broadband cable modem in modem only mode. Everything else - DNS and connection wise is fine on my LAN. Broadband download speed averages around 440Mb/s.

Found that if I did the recovery procedure on the puck (apply power source with power button pressed until LED goes non-white) then it would work fine until next cold boot. Same if did factory reset from menus. Would see white sky logo on black screen for a few seconds, LED would flash white for a bit more and then the screen and LED go blank and don't come back unless power cycled. Got fed up of doing reset every day so called support & been sent a new puck but that's even worse in that it says it can't connect to the internet during setup. That's on wired or connected to a guest wifi SSID on the router which isolates it from everything else in the house (which all my smart devices are on which all work fine). IPv4 and IPv6 working fine for everything else like my VMware lab.

Use a wifi hotspot on my phone so it goes over cellular and it doesn't have a problem.

Main questions for Sky:

1) Why is this new puck even worse than the old one?

2) Why did the  old puck always work fine after recovery/factory reset but then stop working after cold boot?

If I knew what FQDN/IP address and ports it was trying to connect to, I could run the same tests (Test-NetConnection in PowerShell is great for this) from a Windows laptop plugged in to the same switch. I'm going to dig out a switch I have that can do port monitoring so I can see what the puck is trying to do but I'd rather not.

@Sky - why not have a web app that simulates what the puck does when booting so that customers can test at home on the same network?

Is it some kind of security "feature" that Sky have implemented to try and detect geographic abuse maybe? I'm in mainland England and my IP address from Virgin Media rarely changes and tracing it puts it in close to where I live.

PS. I'm an IT consultant for what it's worth.

[Exiled-in-HH]

Have you reported your issues to Sky?

Some community guidance...

https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/About-Sky-Community/ct-p/Members

[Guy_42]

Not with the new puck yet as I don't have the time to sit on the phone and hoped someone might have experienced the issue and know a workaround or at least what it's trying to connect to that fails on broadband but works ok on a hotspot

[Chrisee]

@Guy_42 have you raised this with Virgin Business? There have been a number of issues reported by Virgin Media's customers after some network changes at Virgin's end which Sky and Virgin appear to have resolved.  Given Stream is sold for domestic use not many customers will be on the same isp as you but the symptoms are similar.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Guy_42 wrote:

connects to Virgin Media Business Broadband

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As @Chrisee indicates, that's certainly a strong potential suspect.

[Guy_42]

Virgin Media Business support is absolutely useless in my previous experience - no option other than to ring them and then they can't help. Guess I might have to bit the proverbial bullet ☹️

[Guy_42]

Although if it was a problem at the Virgin Media end, why did the previous puck work fine for many hours - that's the bit that doesn't fit

[Chrisee]

@Guy_42 IIRC the VM issue came and went. Not saying that this is your issue but given as far as I am aware there have been no hardware changes but while your new puck can be on a different firmware version than the old one. Sky's release schedule has not fully returned to normal following the Christmas code freeze.. 

[Guy_42]

I put some monitoring in place on my Microsoft DNS Server and I can see it doing a lookup of AAAA records (IPv6) for devicetime1.sky.com followed by devicetime1.glb.it.isp.sky which are resolved by Cloudflare anyway so don't go near Virgin Media's DNS servers. 

Next step is to find the network switch I have that I can do port monitoring on to see what the Sky puck is doing network wise

[Guy_42]

It's now working fine hotspotting off another phone I have but that phone has data turned off and is using the house wifi which the puck didn't like when it connected to it directly. So it's using the Virgin Media business broardband which the now returned puck would also work fine with after a recovery or factory reset. Strange! I've had this D-Link 878 router for many years and it's been fine - puck was working with it for the best part of a year before it started misbehaving. 

[Exiled-in-HH]

@Guy_42  afte you have completed your investigation request your discussion is escalated the the Community Messaging Team ... if you are not prepared to contact 😉

[Guy_42]

Plugged the puck into a managed switch last night, configured port mirroring and ran Wireshark on my laptop conencted to the mirror port with the Sky puck's port set for ingress and egress mirroring. First cold boot and it booted up fine which the new puck has never done on a wired connection. Second cold boot ended in failure - white Sky logo seen briefly, white LED flashes then everything goes dark although Wireshark still shows some network activity during that "dead" time. Back to not working at all this morning when plugged into the original unmanaged switch, which it was working fine with for 10 months or so.

Wondering if there is anyone at Sky who can look at the Wireshark traces - I will phone in later FWIW.

 

 

[Exiled-in-HH]

Hopefully you'll be able to get through to second or third line support, i.e. past the script readers😉

[Guy_42]

Just rang in and asked for it to be escalated which I'm told it is now

[Exiled-in-HH]

One of the community Superusers needs to escalate this discussion ... a Sky CS agent can't🤔