Remote problem

Goran SM6PPS

I am trying to use another owners radio to test SmartSDR 2.3.9 on Windows 7. If I ping the remote radio in a command prompt, I get around 40 ms. When connected with SmartLink, Network Diagnostics show around 300 ms and status shows up as poor. I can hear audio and control the radio, but the spectrum display doesn't work. Dropped packets is around 6%. Any ideas of where to look for the problem?

Chris DL5NAM

Speed of your LAN/WAN ?

Goran SM6PPS

Remote site is LTE-service and I don't know exact, local is 100 Mbit/s down/10Mbit/s up. Owner of the radio says it works fine when he tries. What is confusing for me is that if I ping the remote IP outside SmartSDR, I get 10 times lower response time than what SmartSDR reports. Is there maybe something I need to modify in my client side router/firewall?

Chris DL5NAM

No, at remote no router changes needed. Your speed is OK but what's the LAN speed at radio side?

Mostly - if waterfall not work - it's a LAN problem.

Maybe Mike from FRS can answer your question

73 Chris

N8SDR

LTE Speed - why do folks insist on running remote setups with Cellular services & LTE services, your just asking for issues!. Then they blame SSDR software or the Rigs Ethernet port.

Stephen VA3KXP

I suspect the reason for the difference in times is the size of the packet. When you use the “ping” command with just an IP address the default size of the packet is 128 bytes (if memory serves me correctly). Where as when SSDR is communicating with the radio it will be using much larger packets. Larger packets, longer times.

Bob - W7KWS -

Mainly because Flex doesn't yet do remote as well as Some other, alternative solutions do it.

The lack of configuration settings in almost all Ham Radio remote software seems to limit reliability in the face of Internet jitter & the UDP protocol. Usually other traffic on my LAN disrupts audio. QOS hasn't seemed to do much. The best system has been RemoteRig configured with 200 m-Sec. buffering on both ends. I use the ulaw codec as It has no compression. I can't remember for sure but I think I was able to specify TCP on the RemoteRig so a repeat of dropped packets can be requested by the receiving end.

Certain SIP, VOIP software offer similar configuration Capabilities and therefore similar results. It's important to carefully select server & client software, codecs & SIP providers. I use X-lite free from www.counterpath.com for the PCs, Zoiper free for my Android devices and www.callcentric for my free SIP VOIP provider.

I run audio in & out of my 6300 via it's accessory & speaker connectors to a USB sound card on my station PC, avoiding all the difficulties with DAX.

For use from my Android cell phone & in the face of difficult Internet conditions that are usual with cellular, I run SmatSDR at the radio end on the station PC. I run everything except audio via Microsoft Remote Desktop on that PC & use Xtralogic Remote desktop on the phone. I use SIP for audio. It's all very reliable & with the extensive controls in Xtraligic, two finger scroll tuning is a breeze.  If preferred, a Bluetooth mouse also works quite well.

With the waterfall slowed to around 60% and the spectrum display at one FPS, the up/down combined data rate runs around 500-kbits per second or around four hours ber one gigabyte of cellular data. 

Operating from my laptop is similar.  I connect it to the Internet via the cell phone WiFi hotspot feature.

Best regards,

Bob

mikeatthebeach .

Bob,
Are you usingTeamViewer on that phone ?
73 Mike

Bob - W7KWS -

Mike,

No, it's Xtralogic RDP in the Android Play Store.  It's very configurable & connects very reliably with Microsoft Remote Desktop on the PC at home. 

Team Viewer scrolls too fast for easy two-finger scroll tuning but works well with a Bluetooth mouse &  scroll wheel.  Xtralogic can also be set for eight bit video saving bandwidth.

By the way, Remote Desktop is only included in Windows 10 Pro & Enterprise editions but I saw a YouTube video yesterday that showed how to download RDP for free from Microsoft and install it into WIN 10 home. I didn't try it so I don't know how well it works.

Also, it takes a fast CPU in the phone to render a 1080P display in real time.  My phone is a couple of years old so the Snapdragon 820 is a couple of generations back but it does well.  Anything older would probably be problamatic. 

You need at least 1080P to mirror a 1080P display on the PC back at the station & to display all the needed station controls & see all the detail on the phone.  Good eyes or glasses are also needed for the phone.

Most recent laptops should be fine.

Bob

N8SDR

I haven't had any issues running the Flex with smart link at any point, But then again I don't try and wouldn't consider to use a cellular internet carrier to host such things. Fiber here with FTTP.  even when I ran the 100/50 connection never had an issue, and that includes 4 servers and a VOIP systems along with 4 kids streaming or playing on-line games, I recently moved to 500/200 services, as I'll be taken on a more servers and clients.  It just surprises me how many folks try and use LTE or 3G cellular services for remote access and then blame Flex that it doesn't work. It's been my experience along with others that Splashtop remote works better then Teamviewer for audio and most other applications, and the cost is much less!, Using it with around 200 clients here and haven't had an issue. 

Bob - W7KWS -

You & I live in an Internet world many can only dream about.

Some examples: 

When SmartSDR first came out there was a lot of trouble with some ISPs throwing out "fragmented" packets since they have been a target of some expoits in the past. According to Steve Hicks, he didn't know that when he originally wrote portions of that software.

They fixed that issue with version 2.3.7 a few months ago (summer 2018) by fragmenting the packets & doing the reassembly themselves in SmartSDR instead of relying on a network router for fragmentation. 

It appears that network routers do this automatically when a large packet is encountered.  That is a packet that exceeds the measured path MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit).  The Flex 6xxx radios produce Vita 49 packets as large as 1500 bytes. Articles addressing packet size suggest that a nominal design target for avoiding fragmentation is in the range of 1200 to 1300 bytes. 

I suffered from this when trying to operate from my daughter's home. We are both subscribed to 50-down, 5-up Comcast service. It appears to me that Comcast NW in her city took the easy way out & threw my packets away instead of a more sophisticated method of security that would have let them through.  Interestingly, both AT&T and Verizon cellular passed them through to my laptop when I was connected via that path.

I think UDP coupled with somewhat small audio buffers in SmartLink is another problem getting in the way of some users who have, or are stuck with lesser Internet service exhibiting high jitter.  In other devices I use buffers as large as 200 milliseconds to avoid all but the most difficult paths.  It's a trade off between latency and reasonably usable audio. 

Your success is probably due to the super Internet you subscribe to.

With time, more experience & resources, I'm sure Flex will introduce methods that others have developed to get around more of the Internet's subtleties.

Bob

Kari Gustafsson SM0HRP

I have been using 4G LTE at my remote Flexradio for two years now. It has worked flawlessly. But I have no alternative. Yet anyway. In rural areas it is still the only way to access broadband internet services. I guess we will have 5G before fiber. 73 Kari SM0HRP

Goran SM6PPS

Hi Bob, thanks for info about the Vita 49 packet sizes. I think this could be the reason then why I don't see any spectrum. Most Vita 49 packets arriving on my side (client), is less than 150 bytes. Some are 1002 and even fewer are 1358 bytes. I do not get any Vita 49 packets larger than 1358 bytes. So if they are sent from the radio, it looks more like this is the issue rather than speed as some people seems to indicate.
Göran

ka7gzr

I always find my remote connects through LTE are always reliable and much better than public LANs. I have tried many of them in restaurants, bars etc. They all have issues such as no waterfall, freezing and long drop outs. I have none of these issues with my unlimited cellular service (AT&T).
Jim
ka7gzr 

Kari Gustafsson SM0HRP

I start a new thread to focus "Fragmentation issue w SmartSDR 2.3.9 and not w Smart SDR iOS" on the issuse.

Bob - W7KWS -

Goran,

It's my thinking that, from SSDR 2.3.7 forward, the Vita 49 payload is fragmented by SSDR itself, wrapped and sent without setting the resulting packet's "Fragmentation" bit, thus avoiding some ISPs from throwing these packets away. The payload is then reassembled at the distant end by SSDR.

I think this probably would account for you seeing only smaller Vita 49 packets but I have no inside information on any details of the new algorithms Flex is now using. I'm just putting two & two together as best I can from what little I can see.

With the fragmentation fix implemented I was still experiencing no waterfall or spectrum displays In some places where I was testing my Maestro. It turned out that I was being fooled by a delay of as much as two minutes before those displays would appear. I was giving up thinking the fix wasn't working.

Then I was distracted by a phone call & when I came back to my Maestro, both displays had appeared
.
It seems this is a different issue than ISP throw away but summer is here with other activities so I haven't pursued any of this further.

73,
Bob