Intermittent Wired LAN Connectivity using SSDR 1.4

Bill Roberts

Just installed SSDR 1.4 on a Dell 8700 (I7, 3.4 GHz, 12 GB RAM, Nvidia 640 video card) running Windows 8.1.  Everything on my 6300 came up fine until I left the rig in RX for a few minutes.  Perhaps, 5% of the time, the LAN indicator would show no connectivity.  I rebooted both the radio and the PC several times with similar results.  Checked and replaced a few cables...  not a clue.  This LAN outage would show up in both TX and RX.  THEN...  as if either Windows or SSDR saw a problem and recalibrated, the LAN outage indications went away.  The LAN connectivity meter has shown full scale, green for the last 3 hours.

Not a problem or a complaint.  Just wonder if anyone else is noticing similar symptoms.  I have used this D-Link gigabit router and LAN set up for 3 months with this 6300 and never saw any delay or outage.  Go figure :-)

Alan Nusso, N4BV

Having same problem with a very strong high speed wireless on my Laptop. Goes wonky, drops to one or two bars on 1.4 screen then goes back to full bars. Laptop and other devices show full strong signal 100% of tme Any comments from Flex folks?

K2ERA

Probably the latency is spiking on your wireless network due to congestion or interference from other local wifi networks.  If your latency spikes even for a moment, the network quality indicator will go down to fair or poor for a bit.  

Is it actually causing any issues?

Are you using 2.4ghz or 5ghz?  Personally, I would recommend a 5ghz for the best results with remote audio.

Tim - W4TME

Yes.  K2ERA is most likely on point.  Wireless network adapters can be very poor at streaming data regardless if the signal strength is strong.  I have a laptop that has high speed wireless but the internal DPCs related to the network interface (ndis.sys) are so high when using the wireless interface that it shows the same behavior as you are observing with the network quality monitor; showing degraded network performance. 

Bill Roberts

Any idea on why my wired LAN started out intermittent and then seemed to heal itself?

Terry K8EET

My laptop has never lost connection with my network, but dropped out during my first two CW contacts. Haven't tried ssb yet. I'm not sure how much I'll use the LAN anyway.  My shack has the most comfortable chair in the house. Otherwise 1.4 is looking great. Too bad we have the worst propagation today I've seen in a long time. (How did the sun know when 1.4 was arriving?)

Bill Roberts

For whatever it's worth, my Windows 8.1 machine received 12 important updates this week.  After a restart, the LAN quality indicator was fluctuating between poor and fair.  The radio itself worked fine, latency was < 1 ms and showed 0 packets dropped.  Then like magic (45 minutes), the "problem" went away.  It seems that whenever significant changes are made to Windows or a new version of SSDR is installed, Windows has to learn how to deal with SSDR and the 6300.

Dudley-WA5QPZ

Bill,

I was about to tell you to check your NIC vendor or motherboard vendor for latest drivers,  hopefully the AI in Windows did it for you ..  :-|

Bill Roberts

Dudley,  I had checked the LAN card driver and it was current.  What other "devices" should I have suspected?  Thanks.

Bill -VA3WTB

Do not use any windows drivers for anything if possible, this is well documented.

Peter K1PGV

What's the topology?  Is the radio *directly* connected to the computer, or do you go through a hub or switch? What sort of cabling are you using? What speed are the links running at (both should be GB)?  I *really* don't link D-Link anything.  Bad experiences.

Do not use any windows drivers for anything if possible, this is well documented.

I'm sorry, but this is just not true. The vast majority of the time, the drivers that are in-box with Windows, or that are downloaded from Windows Update, are the SAME drivers -- written by the vendor -- distributed via the Vendor's site. There are other cases (such as the Intel AHCI/SATA driver) where the MSFT-written driver is *vastly* superior to the one supplied by the vendor.

So, it depends.  But "Do not use any Windows driver for anything" is just a silly thing to say.

Peter
K1PGV

Bill -VA3WTB

No It's not silly, but you can disagree, I hope not to call your comments silly in the future also.
My comment is based on many Replies from Flex Radio as suggested.

Bill Roberts

As this thread indicates, I've been struggling with intermittent wired LAN quality (occasionally no green bars) for several weeks.  In desperation, I allowed Advanced System Care to tune my system, update drivers, etc.  So far, it seems to have done a good job.  DPCs are slightly lower (using Latency Mon) but that was rarely an issue for me.  The SSDR LAN Quality Monitor is now solid.  Today, I spent quite some time using Device Manager and other tools to find the problem.  I might break down and get the paid version.  Try it, you may like it.