Any one having connection problems with FRStacks?

Patrick

I am having a problem getting FRStacks to connect and or maintain a connection to the radio. Is it being maintained to the latest .net standards? I deleted the latest version of the App then reinstalled and still had the connecting problem. Any thoughts?

Pat_W5WTH

No details on your setup but my 6400 and Win 10 machine work perfectly with the latest SSDR version.

Of all things Flex, FRStack has been the most stable part of my setup.

Mike-VA3MW

We have these discussions on morning support meetings pretty often.

We keep seeing problems with network communications between devices and about once a week, we determine that it is the router, yet, we assume that it is perfect. These show up as slow communications issues.

Tim mentioned today that he had a customer whose router was fine, but the 4 port switch in the router was bad and didn't work as it should. Tim fixed it by having the customer get another Switch, plug his 2 computers and radio into the new Switch and the Switch into the router. This fixed all his network communications issues.

Just something to keep in mind. (And, I have had both good and bad switches).

73

David Decoons, wo2x

I have a 16 port gigabit Ethernet managed switch at my desk with the PC, radio, amp, tuner, 2x8 switch, Pi, and 5 other devices connected. That runs to an8 port gig-e switch at the mesh router (mesh router only has two ports).

This way the Flex and 4O3A equipment communicate to each other and that network traffic is not sent to the router. This works very well and only necessary traffic is sent to the router.

Jim K4JAF

I had a windows 10 cumulative update this morning and now FRstack3 will not run. Checked and still ok in Controlled Folder Access. Not sure what is happening, any others having this problem?

I did have to recreate my Cat com ports as they were missing after the update. Jim K4JAF

Patrick

I run a mostly standard IP switch configuration. All devices that have Ethernet run wired as does the Radio. I do run remote and that runs perfectly over my IP network. Wireless connection to main switch and internet, and runs 1.3 GBs, (Netgear CAX-30 wifi cable modem). The flex IP monitor indicates 0 packet loss and drops. All external apps running TCP/IP protocols run fine. Does FRSacks require administrative rights?

Patrick

Just a note: this connection issue began in the last two SmartSDR updates 3.2.37 and current update.

John KB4DU

Patrick;

what is your network configuration? Maybe try connecting directly to the radio without a router or switch?

I have had only 1 lockup with frstack in the last few years, but I am on a previous software version.

Mike-VA3MW

This is a document that I share with people to give them a starting point.

https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/202118558-How-to-Connect-your-FLEX-6000-to-a-LAN

Patrick

Nothing wrong with my network……..

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Patrick

I'm not trying to sound difficult, so bear with me on this.

How do you know?

And, the reason I ask is that I have a career in diagnosing network issues on the physical layer and I have been burnt so many times. In fact, I have to dial into a friends place who is in a new house, all Fibre and was running Gig speeds until yesterday. Now, it seems locked down to 100mb/sec (not a ham operator, just 1 person and a home office). Something is dragging her network down and nothing changed.

We see these sorts of failures here at FlexRadio at customers' shacks with the following failures. Almost weekly. All these (and a few more) can impact performance and cause all sorts of failures and send devices into retries to move data.

• Bad LAN cables - I had one that caused CW Skimmer to crash
• degraded ports on switches (one port works and the other port not so well)
• Switches with dead ports (happened to me a month ago - TPLink replaced the switch for me)
• Old drivers on PC's that control the NIC card - make sure you keep them up to date
• Antivirus software and their firewall/deep packet inspection - this one is our favourite since these programs inspect every LAN packet.
• AntiVirus in general as a big resource hog. By design the 'spy drivers' handle every file. So, if a program needs to retrieve a file the spy driver opens it first, inspects it and then passes it to the program that wanted it. The same is true in reverse when a file is written to a computer. The spy driver has to re-inspect it.

It is easy to make a LAN to work. It is hard to make it work well. :)

The hard part is these are hard to isolate since it is a real trial and error exercise. You just have to keep changing things until you isolate the issue and eliminate each part one step at a time. I use a tool called LANSpeedTest https://totusoft.com/lanspeed to make sure I am getting the LAN performance I expect. Well worth the investment.

And, this is why the LAN in the hamshack is now as important as the antennas in the air.

That is the view at this side.

73

Patrick

Well, without comparing resumes, we comparing pretty closely. I have done checks on all that you noted. That is why I asked the question about FRStack’s problems.

Patrick

Perhaps I need to be clearer on the problem. FRStacks runs and the app is running, but neither auto connect or manual connection makes it communicate with SmartSDR. The problem, started 2 versions ago (.37 & .39) and before that it worked well. In fact always auto started with reliability. Thanks for your comments.

Alan

I have had few problems with FRStack. When I did, I found that Windows 10 Firewall or Windows 10 LAN settings changed, and so affected FRStack's functionality.

Router changes come in second.

If you are using managed switches, these would be third.

Since you are having a connection problem, I would first look at variables that affect the VITA49 UDP port 4992, broadcast.

Alan. WA9WUD

Patrick

Let me be clear, it is NOT a connection problem, but a app connect problem. I have had no connection problems in that the computers Ethernet connection and ALL other apps using the same Ethernet are not affected. I will check again the Ethernet port settings in that it is possible that a given setting can affect a given app. The VITA49 UDP port 4992, broadcast settings are a good suggestion. Thanks

PS: I will also check firewall, although turning off the firewall was one of my first checks, but who knows, maybe it did not turn off. Also will check firewall permissions.

Erik Carling EI4KF

Have you tried completely uninstalling FRStack, including registry entries, rebooting and reinstalling? I had to do this recently. In my case the issue occurred after a Windows Update (KB4023057). A simple uninstall<>reinstall did not fix it, only a reg entry removal to simulate a completely FRStack free system would solve it. This might not work for you of course, just giving my recent experience.

Patrick

Actually that was one of the first solutions I tried. Also did the registry as you did. I may try it again. My list of solutions is basically empty at this point. Are the creators of FRStack still supporting this app?

Erik Carling EI4KF

Yes. In fact there has just been a new release. Also within the software there is a 'contact support' email link that opens your default mail app to the the correct recipient. You will find it under 'Help'.

Alan

Mark updated the required version of dot.net earlier this year. Perhaps your PC does not have the update of Dot.net.

Suggest updating Dot.net on your computer.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/install/dotnet-35-windows-10

Alan. WA9WUD

Patrick

I am running all current versions of dot.net in fact JTAlert requires 5.0 and it has been loaded.