HD200, Sage, Network Wired & Wireless Problems. Then,... a Solution.

[Steve20A]

I'm writing this up, just to give hope to others with odd problems involving Sage. Don't give up.

Sage was running very poorly. Spinning circles of death, blocky recordings, an HD200 that was losing its IP address (even thought it was permanently assigned). Independently, wireless problems in the house. Tuners disappearing from Sage. No signal. The HD Homerun software could not find the Prime and Quatro tuners. And then it could. And then it couldn't, again. High CPU for Java. The Sage computer and two others losing internet access, but retaining LAN access. What the heck? It made no sense. (And, at this point, WAF is zero.)

The Sage machine is a Sage-only machine. I took the JAVA CPU usage as an indicator that Sage was working overtime trying to do something. I checked the disks - no errors, no SMART indicators. Rebooted Sage just to clear up its network interface. Oh, no. Microsoft update 1809 is loading. Too late to stop it. Might as well see if it fixes anything. Full backups available, just in case. Alas, no improvement.

Loss of internet indicated a modem problem. Reboot - no improvement. Computer cabled directly to modem has good internet access. Not the modem, then. The network slowness indicated a switch or router problem. Reboot main router – no improvement. Bypass closest switch to Sage computer by putting Sage machine and tuners on the main router's ports. No improvement. Tested with long cable from Sage's closest switch directly to HD200's switch in the living room, bypassing most house internal wiring. No real improvement. Replaced the most likely switch, anyway. Replaced a few cables from the switch to the main router, the Sage machine and the data server in my "computer room." No improvement. Maybe attack the problem from the wireless side. Took one of my routers, which was acting as an access point and which was closest to my wife's failing laptop, offline and aha! Network started to clear up. But just a bit. And no improvement in the HD200 or recordings. Tuners still missing. Circle of death still present on and off. Still looks like a network conflict of some sort.

Anther HD200 and 2 HD300s extremely slow. You can watch the screens paint. The original failing HD200 now does not get a green light, at all. Started to play with it and the green light comes and goes. Bad port on the HD200? Bad port on the switch? Nope, bad cable. Fixed. HD200 is now back to normal. Sage/Java CPU down to normal. Recordings back to full function. No pixilation, no stutter.

Router still causes problem when put back online. Full reset, reboot, update firmware and re-set up router up as access point again. Now that works, too.

So two independent problems that each contributed to a larger network problem, hiding each other in a swamp of failure. Who expects a router and a cable, on different ends of the house, to simultaneously fail? Not I.

The moral - don't give up. Sage still rocks. Running better than ever now. And update 1809 didn't cause a problem. Go Sage!