Hello,
The Network router would be my very first suspect here.
Have you tried to reset it or to power it off and on?
Are the network IPs fixed or are they assigned by DHCP?
@Erwan is probably correct but it is likely that you may need to check or uncheck specific default settings. May I suggest that you get assistance from dCS Support by sending an email to:
Your original query has been passed over to Richcom - our distributor for China & Hong Kong - as they want to deal with any queries within their territory (and obviously we support them where needed) and they did confirm that their support guys were going to contact you.
I have prompted them again today and they should be in touch but if you don’t get any contact from them can you please send me another email at [email protected] and I’ll chase.
As for the cause of your issue - I would also suspect that your router got itself in a bit of a knot and started misrouting (or dropping) traffic in its switch (quite often router switch ports are software based rather than hardware based) …
I’m obviously speculating here but my suspicion is that powering down the unit overnight may have allowed the DHCP address for the unit to be returned to the DHCP pool and when it was powered up again then the unit would once again announce itself on the network and the router would have to re-establish its internal routings once more - essentially powering it down for a while would mean the router could do some housekeeping and get things back in order again.
Actually not as strange as it may seem. See this post for a high level description of how Mosaic discovery works. There is a whole family of different protocols running on your network and just because HTTP/TCP (as used by a browser) is working that doesn’t prove that mDNS/UDP (as used by Mosaic for discovery) is.
So unfortunately the notion that a network is an atomic entity that is either completely working or completely broken is an incorrect oversimplification. Networking equipment is not all created equal and some products don’t handle mDNS correctly. I am not saying that is the cause in your case, but it is one of the more common causes of discovery problems reported here on the forum. Hopefully Richcom can help you get to the bottom of it.
Is there a particular router (brand and model) that would establish a most stable connection with dCS products? I know nothing about advanced router settings and would only choose factory defaults and automatic settings.
It’s really difficult to make suggestions for network kit to buy … mainly because all you need is kit that actually works correctly so in theory it should ALL be absolutely fine, you don’t need anything with any special features, but also because in the consumer space models change quickly and frequently PLUS functionality and operation that is valid today may completely change by next week if a manufacturer issues a firmware update that fixes (or breaks) something.
I have used Ubiquiti Unifi for quite some years (as does Andrew I believe) and I have had no reason to look elsewhere as for me that works perfectly but you couldn’t just buy it and plug it in and it work - it is kind of “prosumer” grade kit that before it will do anything needs to be set up and configured and as such if I handed a stack of Unifi boxes to most people they’d recoil in horror.
We tend to use LinkSys routers in our mobile Lina demo stations and so far I’ve had decent results with TP Link, NetGear and Huawei from the kit that I’ve used of theirs from the perspective of how reliably is works with our kit in a “we turn up to do an event and we just need to know that when we get there it’ll work and work reliably” manner.
Not really, because the simple fact is that most network equipment works absolutely fine. I think it would be hugely misleading to give the impression that there is one brand or model that is ’safe’. Please remember that what we see here in the Support category are the few exceptions.