Connection Problem

[1richardw]

I have never been able to get this to work consistently and would be grateful if someone could help me. All seems to be set up right but I cannot hold a connection on my Droid. Often, it will not connect to my server and when it does, it usually loses the connection within about 1 album if I am away from my house. This occurs using the Verizon phone network, not wireless internet. My goal is to be able to listen to music on my home server via my Droid when I am away from home. What would be causing the failed connection??

I am not too savvy with this stuff but can fumble my way around with some guidance. Thanks!!

[sn0skier]

what error message do you get?
Be more specific then "will not connect" and "loses the connection."
What happens exactly? Does it cut out in the middle of the song? Does it give you an error message

[1richardw]

Thanks for the reply!

The songs it has downloaded will play out, 3 songs or so, and then silence. Typically I will test the connection in the settings at that point and it retries 4 times then says unable to connect please check server address (I think). This occurred today while I was walking my dog. It played a few songs of the album I started when I left but then silence. I just tested it and the connection says "ok" now but I am in my home. Does this makes sense?

Thanks again for your post.

[sn0skier]

So there is silence, but does subsonic stop running? Also, can you ever get it to work over Verizon's network? Subsonic caches songs, so it might just be that it downloaded a few songs before you left your house, but once you weren't on the home network anymore then it wasn't connected anymore so it played the songs it had downloaded before you left, and then stopped playing.

Assuming you can never connect at all over verizon's network can you try accessing it while on someone else's wireless network? It may be that the server is only running on a local network and it isn't connected to the internet. Testing this on an alternate wifi network will either confirm or deny this.

I can actually probably test this for you if you can tell me what comes up when you go to Subsonic settings-servers-And tell me what all of the addresses are for the 3 different servers.

[1richardw]

The issue is only over the cellular network, not wireless internet. That is the part that really confuses me because it should not matter how close I am to the server. I can connect using this now. The address is 192.168.1.10 but this changes every day. I have not been able to figure out how to make my IP stop changing so I just check it before I sign on and enter the current IP. Then I sign on, my library downloads to my phone, I select an album, start listening and when I get away from the house, it stops.

So maybe I am using my wireless after all. I will check that but if that is the case, can I only do this over a wireless network?

[1richardw]

Other things that may or may not be related:

-I just tried to connect and it failed, retried 4 times and error message unable to connect please check address. Restarted phone and tried and connected right away. This happens often.

-On the settings page of SUbsonic running on my laptop (W7), I get inconsistent responses to the address I enter. For example...it sometimes says "richard.subsonic.org is registered but cannot connect to it timeout connection expired. Other times it says the address is taken select another. The port forwarding section always forwards successfully, on the brighter side.

-This is most likley related to the above but I have never been able to connect via my phone/wireless using the richard.subsonic.org address, only using the IP address...which always fails.

[1richardw]

Ok...it seems I was in fact connecting through the wireless network, not 3g cellular. I turned off the wireless connection on my phone and now unable to connect, turned on and connected with wireless icon showing. So this suggests I may just not know how to connect via cellular! Can someone tell me how to set this up and connect via cellular?

[sn0skier]

The problem is that you have set the server on your computer to broadcast only on your local WiFi network. The IP address 192.168.1.10 is your computers IP address on your local network. This address is assigned to your computer by your router. Your router actually has 2 IP addresses. One should be 192.168.1.1. This is the address it uses to communicate with all of the computers/phones/gaming consoles etc... that are connected to your WiFi router. If you type 192.168.1.1 in your browser where you would type a web address then you can access the routers settings. The router also has another IP address which you can think of as its internet IP address. This is given to it by your internet service provider (ISP eg. Cable, DSL, telephone, etc...) and is ascribed to your router by your modem (sometimes the modem and router are the same box if you got your router from your ISP). What you need to be connecting to is the internet IP address of your router, not the local IP address of your computer. You can find out what this is by going to http://www.whatismyip.com/, however, just putting this number into the server area of subsonic will (probably) not work. To understand why you need to understand ports and port forwarding. Ports are different streams of data. It is a way for computers to say where the data they are sending should go. Most web addresses are on port 80. Bittorrent usually uses a number over 1000. Port forwarding is the process where if something (your router) is asked for data on a certain port (for instance by your phone looking for the subsonic server) then instead of trying to supply the data itself, it gets the information from the computer that you have forwarded the port to.
You are almost done understanding this process. The only problem is that your ISP will often change your router's internet IP address. This means that every month or so (possibly more often) subsonic will suddenly stop working. To fix this you need to get a permanent web address. This process is FREE and easy, so don't worry about paying any fees or anything. This process is called "setting up a Dynamic Domain Name System (Dyn DNS for short)." Subsonic can actually do it for you.

So now that you understand all of this stuff the directions to do it all will be much easier to follow. They are listed here: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/getting-started.jsp

[1richardw]

Wow. I think you have figured out my issue. Thanks so much! I am trying to digest all that. I have signed in to my router (netgear wndr3700) and there is a section on setting up dynamic dns. I looked through and did not see how Subsonic could do this so I will go ahead and set one up. After that, what is the nest step? Will it give me an address that I type in the server address on my phone and that should do it? Sort of how I am understanding it now but will keep trying to digest. The port forward stuff is a litlle hard to grasp. There is also a section in my router on that. I also did see a DNS address in the router along with IP address's. But to start...I will set up the Dynamic DNS....

[sn0skier]

Really the directions here are going to be your best bet: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/getting-started.jsp starting with 2.1. Starting with the port forwarding is generally a better idea because you can access the server without the DynDNS, but eventually it will cut out when you're IP changes. You will not be able to access the server without setting up the port forwarding.

[1richardw]

I did that long ago using subsonic. It currently reads "Satus: successfully forwarding port 80" so I thought that was complete. No?

[sn0skier]

Definitely. Didn't realize you already had done that.
Try going to http://www.whatismyip.com/, and then enter the IP it gives you in the address bar. It should bring up the subsonic page and you can move on to setting up DynDNS.

Did you do this part of the directions already?
From Settings > Network you can register your address. (Remember to log on with admin rights). Enable the "Access your server over the internet..." option, and enter your preferred address, for instance http://joe.subsonic.org.

Click the Save button, and pay attention to the status message that is displayed. Note that Subsonic will also perform a test to ensure that the web address works properly. If the test fails it might be an indication that the port forwarding is not set up correctly.

If not then do that and let me know what happens.

[1richardw]

Yes...richard.subsonic.org but it says it is registered but cannot connect and times out or sometimes it says name already in use select another. I will say that in the past it has connected successfully, not for a while though.

I pasted the IP in my address bar and it does not connect. I get the "oops" page in Chrome.

[sn0skier]

try disabling your windows firewall, but if that doesn't work sounds like the ports aren't forwarded correctly. I would turn the automatic port forwarding off and try the manual set up (http://www.subsonic.org/pages/getting-started.jsp) with a different port (I use port 8889). Remember that once you do this however you will need to right click on subsonic in the system tray-->subsonic control panel-->settings tab-->port number 8889.

[sn0skier]

So the directions for forwarding ports for your router are here:
http://portforward.com/english/routers/ ... efault.htm

Remember to set up a static IP for your computer first like that page tells you.

When you are done you should be able to enter your internet IP address (whatismyip.com) and then:8889 (for example 98.202.210.10:8889) and it should bring up subsonic.