On demand download failure Sky+ on 2 boxes

[MogwaiSatTV]

@monkeynuts1952  By the look of you just need to click options to the right of the thread title where you should see the Unsubscribe option

[Mark39]

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@monkeynuts1952 wrote:

I've finally given up waiting for Sky to sort out this download issue and have bitten the bullet and ordered Sky Q.

As the originator of this thread how to I stop receiving notification of all new posts without closing down the whole discussion?

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If you're receiving them because you're subscribed to the thread, you can unsubscribe via the Options dropdown at the top.

[Mr+Burger]

I am unable to ping either of those IPs which basically means that Sky have a firewall rule on ICMP packets. Needless to say though, this doesn't prevent my downloading their online content via a box.

Do you have an absolute path to both the successful and unsuccessful files?

One wonders how Sky authenticate their media files..

Do they rely on the box connecting to their servers first in order to register the IP/MAC before files can be served or (surely not) is it a free for all for any inbound requests. One would expect some kind of handshake to authenticate the transfer as this would allow for devices on dynamic networks (mobile networks for example) when using Sky Go.

Just thinking outside of the box here (so to speak), in case of any firmware/file corruption on a box, has anyone tried forcing a firmware reflash?

[Mr+Burger]

BTW, has anyone looked at this thread?

https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Q/Sky-Q-On-demand-downloads-fail-with-quot-remote-network-problem-q...

Either turn them off or turn them on and then off again..

I know it's for Q but it's more than likely Sky are inserting tailored ads into their streams (which other services don't) and perhaps there's a link? Long shot I know..

Again, it's something to rule out while Sky continue to chase their tails looking for an answer (in place of actual diagnostic engineering).

2 domains you want to confirm you are able to resolve correctly are adm.sky.com and cdn.sky.com

(also worth whitelisting if you're using decent networking hardware)

Looking at a Wireshark log kindly provided to me earlier, it's clear that program data (synopsis etc) and stream data (including NDS encryption data) is being received from Sky to the box, so we can rule out a simple firewall error.

It's interesting they claimed CGNAT might be the issue. Looking at the Wireshark log, I don't know why they claimed that as they're using port 80 (HTTP port that works over just about anything).

Hell, even when I've been stuck behind some nonsense portal that is restricting just about everything, I've been able to tunnel out over 80 or 443 in order to do something their systems clearly tried to prevent lol.

Speaking of CGNAT though, although it does use a designated subnet range, it's not exclusive, so if you want to check it fully, run a trace to your WAN IP. It should list your router/gateway and then the destination. If there are more hops, it's a CGNAT'd WAN.

Regardless of that though, most 3/4/5G mobile data networks use CGNAT and Sky Go works just fine over them so that excuse was just desperation me thinks.

Upon reading this thread again I note one contribution from a user with 2 boxes, one ok and one not, so the problem is clearly beyond the config of the end user and their ISP.

Time for the YTS engineers over at Sky to fully investigate what is really happening and why their servers are failing to serve the files that the boxes are requesting. What's even worse is that people were able to pinpoint a date when everything changed and yet nothing seemed obvious to their sys admin around that date that could help identify the issue 😕

Whatever it is, I do hope they reach out to someone that has a known issue and work with them in order to pin point it (and by that, I mean asking them for something other than their box's LAN IP lol).

I mean, what was that all about...? Perhaps they were worried the LAN IP conflicted with an internal IP on their CDN, but surely that would only apply if their were a VPN between them.

I hope they get it sorted as I'm certain nothing anyone at home will do anything to resolve it 😕

[MogwaiSatTV]

I can ping and get a reply from cdn.sky.com but for adm.sky.com it resolves to an ip address but give Request timed out.

[thegfb]

@Mr+Burger 

As I said a few weeks back, I solved my problem (download fail on both boxes) by upgrading to Sky Q but I'm still following this discussion.

Thanks for providing detailed and reasoned responses, refreshing to read as opposed to pointless cheerleading for Sky 😂

[Complain+to+Ofcom]

Frankly Sky's lack of response sow a complete disregard for paying customers, I have been with them for years, literally paid thousands in subscriptions, 
Sky are happy to laud how they have the lowest complaint levels in the industry. Well it's time to turn the tables and let ofcom know

[removed]

Moderator note: removed lobbying as per Community Rules

[Mark39]

@Complain+to+Ofcom I doubt OFCOM will be interested until you've exhausted Sky's formal complaints process and have a letter of deadlock from them.

[Complain+to+Ofcom]

A dead lock letter is  not required prior to complaining to OFCOM. This only applies to Ombudsman complaints. Everyone is free to complain to OFCOM. OFCOM compile and publish a quarterly complaints report which the whole industry pays attention to 

[Mark39]

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@Complain+to+Ofcom wrote:

A dead lock letter is  not required prior to complaining to OFCOM. This only applies to Ombudsman complaints. Everyone is free to complain to OFCOM. OFCOM compile and publish a quarterly complaints report which the whole industry pays attention to 

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OK, fair enough.

[PocketDog]

Ok, not sure if this is going to help but I have some more info. Sorry this is a bit of a long one, might wanna grab a cuppa.

When I took out Sky YEARS ago, I paid for the 2TB box to be added to the sub, as a result I got the regular HD Box plus the 2TB box.  At the time, the installer 'activated' both boxes but Ive only ever used the 2TB version.  So today I thought as I'm off shift for a few days, I would dig out the un-used HD Box, which will have the original software on it, and see if that makes any difference to this problem. 

However, before doing that, I tested everything was the same and yes, I still cannot download Sky content.  When digging out the 2TB box, I found a different router/modem from PlusNet that we do not use. This is their newer 'Hub Two' version, we don't use this as we needed to periodically disable Wifi and this Router had an issue doing this. Regardless, I thought it might be worth testing, just in case. 

Low and behold, after plugging the Hub Two in and waiting about 10 minutes for it to finally settle down, the sun started to shine, the angels started to sing and yes, I could successfully download Sky content again!  

Specs:

Old router - Technicolor TG588 v2

New Router - PlusNet Hub Two model GRV9517UWAC34-A 

For clarity, we have Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) however with these routers, we do not need to use the Openreach Modem box that we used to with a different Technicolor router we previously used from PlusNet, we just use the above hardware (i.e the router). 

So this is a bit strange, as I have no clue why one box would work, and the other (which used to work until late Jan) now does not.  

Hopefully that may point someone in the right direction with the issue and it does mean I have a way to make it work, albeit using hardware I have a different issue using. 

However, I still wanted to test the UNUSED Sky HD box, to see if that worked.  So I set it up and swapped the viewing card from the 2TB box to the HD box and it's asking me to pair the card to the box. It says to go to sky.com/quickfix and it appears I will be able to pair the card to this other box (although I have not tried). 

I am somewhat hesitant to re-pair the card to the new box as a) I dont want to pair to the new box and then not be able to re-pair it back to the 2TB box, as I have quite a bit of content I'd like to keep, and b) I might lock my account out completely from both boxes and I'll wish I never tried!   

Does anywone know if there is a limit to the number of times you can pair a card to a box, or number of boxes it can pair to, or what constraints there may be?  It says on the sky website that you should not turn off the HD box for 4 hours after pairing, which also worries me as ideally I just want to test this and not permanently change over to the HD box from the 2TB - what would happen if I didnt wait the 4 hours?!  

[Zeus79]

I gave up to, but cancelled altogether

[RogerC43]

Don't know if anyone from Sky is still monitoring this thread or have given up and are just waiting for people to switch to Sky Q..

Ok... so whatever Sky did when they first caused this problem obviously does not like my BT wholehome wifi for the initial request.  If I move my sky box to within wifi distance of the router itself and connect, downloads work again.   The funny thing is that if I switch wifi back to the mesh network, the download continues,  however if I start a new download, I get the usual error.

The concern I have about switching to Sky Q is that I would still need to connect to the mesh network to connect to the router, since the main Sky Q box would be on the other side of the house from the router.

[Annie+UK]

@RogerC43 Have you tried connecting your box via Ethernet, our BT smarthub 2 is connected via CAT5 and downloads work as they should

BTW, Our hub is the other side of the house from the Sky box and on a different floor

[MogwaiSatTV]

ANyone know why this thread was just marked as having an answer as it is not fixed yet