SB3 constantly dropping connection

[jo-wie]

Disable the Bridge Mode and try again. I suppose recent changes of the firmware to keep Rhapsody decryption causes this effect.

[ovonrein]

Sorry, I don't understand. I had these problems all along, even before the bridge mode. It is only since I enabled the bridge mode that these problems out themselves as *unrelated* to the physical layer. From what I can gather, there is no way for the user to tell the difference between a "Can't connect" because there is no "wire" and a "Can't connect" because there is no server (s/w response).

I guess my question is this: what would make a running server inaccessible to a physically connected client? all the while the server responds normally to access via :9000, for example?

[jo-wie]

Do you have a break in the audio stream when the message is shown? I do not know anything about the underlying protokoll used by the SBs to communicate with the server, but it could be time critical and, different to the buffered streams, a short break can have an impact on it.

[ovonrein]

It is absolutely weird. I wasn't gonna post for a few days before I had some tentative conclusion on my latest test. I am working on the assumption that the physical layer is - and always has been - ok and that there is some protocol problem further up the network stack. My Win XP server is one busy beast and I thought "hey, how about I try assigning HIGH priority to Squeezeserver.exe"? Did this and the SB performed w/o any "Can't connect" all day ... until that evening it was going absolutely mental with "Can't connect". Basically alternating non-stop for 1hr between "Can't connect" and a good time. During that episode, I was able to stream a video via the network bridge. In the end, I pulled the power on the SB. That was 24hrs ago and the SB has not blinked since.

So ...
Upping the priority on the server process seems to help prevent the problem from arising. (Why?) Once the problem is there, only a power-cycle on the SB will fix it. (Why?)

PS: While the SB is on the "Can't connect" blink, it is impossible to navigate (via the remote) or to play anything (local music, web streams - anything).

[ovonrein]

It gets goofier still. While the Nintendo Wii is perfectly happy streaming video all the while the SB is saying "Can't connect", the PS3 actually drops its connection to PSN. How can this be? (Wii, PS3 and SB all connect to the same switch which hooks up to the WLAN via the SB's bridge.) The only weird thing about the Wii is that it will not drive our LAN adaptor as a "wireline connection" but we can only make it work as a "ireless connection". So the Wii ends up talking 802.11 over the CAT5 wire. Whereas we told the PS3 to disable its WLAN adaptor so it will be talking genuine 802.3. But why does any of this matter?

[ovonrein]

Interesting. SB totally refused to connect to server earlier today. Not even power-cycling would fix it. That's never happened before. In the end I decided to restart the server. Before I did so, I double-checked that it was still running with HIGH priority. It did not. Perhaps the server had fallen over some time and restarted? Anyway, reset the priority back to HIGH and the SB immediately connected. There is clearly something going on with the scheduling for Squeezeserver.exe.

QUESTION: Could anyone advise where I might change a startup script etc to run the Squeezeserver on HIGH priority, such that it covers all (or most) startup options (like Start Menu, Taskbar, Squeeze Console, startup, ...)? Thanks.