Dish Anywhere, can't connect.

[JeffN9]

Hi,

I'm no stranger to Dish with the exception of Dish Anywhere that I decided to try for the first time. I downloaded the DA app on both my Samsung S8 phone and Samsung S3 tablet. Both bring up the user guide just fine but when I try to watch anything I get a popup that says optimizing family room(name of my Hopper 3) 0%. After 10 seconds or so it says connection failed. A few times it started playing something only to quickly freeze up and then go to a black screen or say connection failed again. The Hopper is connected to my router via ethernet cable. I get consistent speeds using ethernet around 215mbps download and 30mbps upload. WIFI(2ghz network) signal in the house is consistently strong and speed runs 50-80mbps download and 11-13mbps upload. I also tried using the 5ghz WIFI network which is faster but had the same problems. I also downloaded the software on my PC which is connected to the router via ethernet and I was able to watch everything no problem there.

I would think my WIFI speeds would be adequate but that seems to be the difference. Is there anything else I'm missing?

 

[Tony S]

Your download and upload speeds appear to be adequate. Is your router set up to allow multi-channel communication for WiFi? My router has options to set the bandwidth for both the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels with choices like 'up to 54Mbps, 347Mbps, 800Mbps' for 2.4 GHz', and 'up to 347Mbps, 800Mbps, or 1733Mbps' for the 5GHz channel. Do you have that set correctly? Do you have WMM enabled on your router? Also, channel interference from neighbors or other devices using the same channels might be the issue. Have you tried different channels with your 2.4 and 5 GHz radios?

I only have iPhones and iPads, and I do not have any problems streaming with Dish Anywhere. In fact, it usually works better on my iPhones than it does on my PC (which is hardwired).

 

[JeffN9]

Couldn't find any bandwidth settings or WMM. What is WMM? I have a Linksys EA7400 router if that helps.

I didn't try changing channels. Everything else including streaming works just fine on the two devices.

 

[Tony S]

WMM is Wi-Fi Multimedia. It is a standard that defines quality of service (QoS) in Wi-Fi networks. It is meant to improve audio, video and voice applications over Wi-Fi.

I am not familiar with that router, but many Linksys routers have a setting called 'channel width' that works like I described in my first post. Linksys routers also have 'Media Prioritization' which lets you set which devices and applications have top priority for your network traffic. You might be able to use that.

Also, if you have QoS enabled, turn it off. Many have found that enabling QoS actually slows down some connections in order to leave bandwidth available for other connections. With your very fast download and upload speeds, you really do not need QoS at all.

 

[mwdxer1]

Hi,

I'm no stranger to Dish with the exception of Dish Anywhere that I decided to try for the first time. I downloaded the DA app on both my Samsung S8 phone and Samsung S3 tablet. Both bring up the user guide just fine but when I try to watch anything I get a popup that says optimizing family room(name of my Hopper 3) 0%. After 10 seconds or so it says connection failed. A few times it started playing something only to quickly freeze up and then go to a black screen or say connection failed again. The Hopper is connected to my router via ethernet cable. I get consistent speeds using ethernet around 215mbps download and 30mbps upload. WIFI(2ghz network) signal in the house is consistently strong and speed runs 50-80mbps download and 11-13mbps upload. I also tried using the 5ghz WIFI network which is faster but had the same problems. I also downloaded the software on my PC which is connected to the router via ethernet and I was able to watch everything no problem there.

I would think my WIFI speeds would be adequate but that seems to be the difference. Is there anything else I'm missing?

I have Dish Anywhere on my Fire Box and the other night all channels showed "Locked", I had to remove the app and added it back and re-signed in. Then it worked fine. I have had to do that a couple of times in the past.

 

[JeffN9]

WMM is Wi-Fi Multimedia. It is a standard that defines quality of service (QoS) in Wi-Fi networks. It is meant to improve audio, video and voice applications over Wi-Fi.

I am not familiar with that router, but many Linksys routers have a setting called 'channel width' that works like I described in my first post. Linksys routers also have 'Media Prioritization' which lets you set which devices and applications have top priority for your network traffic. You might be able to use that.

Also, if you have QoS enabled, turn it off. Many have found that enabling QoS actually slows down some connections in order to leave bandwidth available for other connections. With your very fast download and upload speeds, you really do not need QoS at all.

SUCCESS! I found WMM and downstream bandwidth settings under media prioritization where I didn't look before. WMM was turned on but downstream bandwidth was set to 0kbps. I bumped that up to 100,000kbps and added my two devices to the priority list. Couldn't find QoS anywhere. Anyway I'm now watching a live local channel on my phone. Thanks Tony!

I wonder why this didn't affect any other streaming that I have done on these devices??

 

[Tony S]

I'm glad that Dish Anywhere is working for you, and happy to help! From your description, it sounds like media prioritization is Linksys' name for QoS.

 

[JeffN9]

I'm glad that Dish Anywhere is working for you, and happy to help! From your description, it sounds like media prioritization is Linksys' name for QoS.

I played around with the settings some more and found that the two devices did not have to be on the priority list to work with DA. The only requirement was that media prioritization had to be turned on. Unfortunately with MP turned on it cut the download speed on my PC from 215mbps to 75mbps. I think this is the problem you brought up with QoS. I know that 75mbps is still fast enough for most applications but having the fastest speed on the PC is more important than using Dish Anywhere.

It's always something.

 

[Tony S]

Yes, it does seem like there is always a compromise with issues like this.

The only other suggestions I have is to connect using the 5GHz radio rather than the 2.4 GHz radio (5GHz is faster), and check your 'channel width' settings. Channel width is usually set to Auto which works fine in most cases, but you might try setting both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz radios to the highest channel width available.

 

[JeffN9]

Yes, it does seem like there is always a compromise with issues like this.

The only other suggestions I have is to connect using the 5GHz radio rather than the 2.4 GHz radio (5GHz is faster), and check your 'channel width' settings. Channel width is usually set to Auto which works fine in most cases, but you might try setting both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz radios to the highest channel width available.

For channel width settings on the 2.4GHz network my router has only two options, auto and 20MHz only. The 5GHz network has auto, 20MHz only, 40MHz and 80MHz. Switching them to 20MHz only and 80MHz respectively and using the 5GHz network did not help. What I did discover was that bumping the downstream bandwidth setting up from 100,000 increased the speed on my PC with media prioritization turned on. Since 215mbps is equivalent to 215,000kbps I added a zero and bumped the setting to 1,000,000kbps. This gave me my 215mbps back on the PC and DA works on the two devices. I did read somewhere that having the setting up too high could cause prioritization problems. How high is too high?? I don't have anything on the priority list and everything seems to work ok for now.

Anyway I hope all this might help someone else that's having similar problems. I sure have learned a lot more about router settings