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golke53
Guest
ok I try stage 1, maybe we need more stages to get things clear. But the information you provided above is already pretty helpful. (Briain, I have not heard from you since ages and I would be happy if you could jump in when I am not safe). Your Netgear box is a switch (as per Google) and this implies it does not assign IP addresses. That is good because it narrows the issue down to the router and/or the cables between router and switch. An IP address is just a number pattern that is assigned to each device in an IP-based network (your home e.g.) as an identifier. If you look at all devices at your home that are connected to one router they typically have an IP address like this: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx or even often 192.168.0.xxx. A router has a side I would call upstream and another side I would call downstream. The downstream side is called a local area network or LAN. The 192.168.0.xxx is a typical LAN IP address or WLAN (Wireless LAN) address. Please note that the numbers don't get bigger than 255 ever. This is because a Byte is 8 bits and in one Byte you can only present 2 **8 = 256 different combinations of 0 and 1 in a binary. string. (00000000 = 0, 11111111 = 255). Since many routers have a local range like 192.168.0.xxx for a unique global(=worldwide) address this LAN IP needs to be concatenated with another IP address string which identifies your router to the WWW internet (=upstream side). This upstream IP address is provided by your IP provider company (or telephone company if you like) . The concatenated string of IP addresses identifies your device globally unique in the Internet. For our discussion the only thing you need to care about is the downstream=local side. All devices in your LAN talk to each other using the local (LAN) IP address only. Usually when 2 devices share the 3 first number groups of an IP-address then they are called being in the same subnet. Example: 192.168.0.4 and 192.168.0.15 are in the same subnet (normally=99% of all cases). Whereas 192.168.0.4 and 192.168.128.4 are not. It is sometimes complicated for applications to communicate over subnet boundaries and that is why is it safer to have all 3, your NAS, the DS and your Controlpoint Software device in the same subnet. End of chapter 1.golke, can you explain this in laymen's terms please as I don't understand it. All this stuff about 'IP Tables' and IP addresses being stored, no idea what this stuff means. No idea what an IP address even is. I'm a plug and play sort of guy, which is why I preferred a good old analogue integrated amp and a Nakamichi cassette deck plugged into it with phono cables.
I have a Plusnet router, DSM and I also have a 5-way Ethernet box in my living room. Plusnet router is in my office, that has a long ethernet cable going through the loft and coming down into my living room where it plugs into a 5-way Netgear GS208 box from which I have ethernet cables go from that to all my devices: Apple TV, Amazon TV, Bluray player, Linn Majik DSM.
I have Linn Konfig on my iMac and Linn Kazoo on my iPhone.
I have a Qnap TS251 NAS drive and Qfinder Pro software on my Mac for it, but no idea how it really works as somebody else, John at Ripcaster, UK, remote controls my computer and sorts it for me as I'm crap at this stuff.
With this in mind, what's all this about IP addresses and putting NAS on a DS fixed IP? No idea what that means.
Chapter 2: nowadays a router has a service function called DHCP. It assigns LAN IP addresses to locally connected devices. Your DS e.g when powered up will say hello to your router and request an IP-address. DHCP will in turn look into a table and find a free LAN IP address within the assigned subnet. Your DS will get this in "competition " with all your other devices. Note that the maximum number of devices within the subnets as defined in our example is again usually 255. When you shut down your MAC PC e.g. the IP address will be freed up and it can be assigned to another device when it requests an IP from DHCP. This is how it happens that your PC sometimes gets 192.168.0.4 and next time 192.168.0.16. Reserving (fixing) the IP address is an option in DHCP where you can always get the same LAN IP assigned to that device. If normally the IP address is the unique identifier and a device when powered has no IP address yet, how you do know that this special device wants 192.168.0.22? Because it also has a second identifier which is globally unique for every single device that is designed to be in an IP network. This is the MAC address and it has the form xx:xx:xx:xx and normally can be found on a sticker at the bottom of the device. The device sends its MAC over the network when powered up and if the DHCP function finds that MAC in a special table it looks to the right column in the table and assigns that IP address for the MAC that YOU (Y O U !!) have reserved for it. The differences now come with the router you own: the way you do the pairing between MAC and IP address varies from router to router. Some are very comfortable (like mine) and I only tick a box: "always use the same". Others are less user friendly and you have to find a place in your router UI where you can do it and it is usually called MAC binding service (TP Link had that IIRC).
Chapter 3: your Netgear is a switch and this implies it has no DHCP. This implies the DHCP runs on the router to which the switch is connected.
Chapter 4: if your network is not very stable or has a lot of activity regarding IP address administration then it can happen that the router has to refresh the IP address tables more often than you would guess. In such a case a device can get a new IP address on flight and then it is up to the router o ensure that everyone in the LAN is aware that what used to be 192.168.0.3 is now 192.168.0.24 and that is often not the case with crappy routers and it impacts especially devices that use UPnP. The already mentioned word "discovery" is a function in UPnP where a requester is asking/searching for the IP-addresses of other UPnP devices in the same subnet. E.G. Kazoo would send out a discovery request to find the IP address of the NAS running your media server and the DS (your renderer) and once discovery returns the IP then it can communicate . If discovery returns no or the wrong IP address the UPNP device will not work. …. "waiting for Mainroom"...…….
End of this book.