# does my router affect my hopper?



## bdee1 (Dec 12, 2006)

I have a hopper with a super joey and two joeys. I have pretty regular problems with the joeys or super joeys losing signal and coming up with a box saying that it is searching for a hopper. These problems usually seem to happen when I am having issues with my home network.

I realize that the hopper is connected to my router to get internet for VOD and PPV and that sort of thing, but does the super joey and the joeys require that connection to my router/internet in order to maintin a connection to the hopper? I dont really know how it all works but the installer told me that the hopper and the super joey got their signal directly from the dish over coax and that the joeys got their connection from the hopper via coax.

So if I am just watching a recorded show from the DVR or live tv on one of the joeys or the super joey, shouldnt that be unaffected by my home network?

If it is reliant on the hoem network can someone please clarify how that work?

I really appreciate any assistance as this has been giving me trouble since it was installed and dish support hasnt been much help.


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## jerry downing (Mar 7, 2004)

bdee1 said:


> I have a hopper with a super joey and two joeys. I have pretty regular problems with the joeys or super joeys losing signal and coming up with a box saying that it is searching for a hopper. These problems usually seem to happen when I am having issues with my home network.
> 
> I realize that the hopper is connected to my router to get internet for VOD and PPV and that sort of thing, but does the super joey and the joeys require that connection to my router/internet in order to maintin a connection to the hopper? I dont really know how it all works but the installer told me that the hopper and the super joey got their signal directly from the dish over coax and that the joeys got their connection from the hopper via coax.
> 
> ...


I had this problem when I first had my Hoppers and Joeys installed. I fixed it by connecting the internet to only one device. The internet is available to others through MOCA.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

If your router locks up or otherwise goes stupid, it can have an impact on the conected devices.

If your conventional LAN blows up often, you need to fix it.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

If all your Joeys (Super as well) are connected correctly via coax... then that is how the video is delivered.

You would only need to connect the Hopper to Internet and the others would share that connection over the coax as well.

There have been issues where a faulty Internet connection on a Hopper could bog it down to the point where performance of the Joeys were affected... It's not the Internet per se that is the problem, but if it causes the Hopper to get into a "bad state" that could pose problems for everything else.

IF you want to rule that out... you could disconnect your Hopper from the Internet/router and see if that changes your other experiences. IF it does, then you have a router/Internet issue to resolve... but if it doesn't, then you might have some faulty coax to one or more devices OR perhaps a bad node or switch in the mix.


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## bnewt (Oct 2, 2003)

jerry downing said:


> I had this problem when I first had my Hoppers and Joeys installed. I fixed it by connecting the internet to only one device. The internet is available to others through MOCA.


Could you tell me how you have your system connected to avoid this problem? I have 2 hws & 1 joey that I want to connect to the internet wirelessly.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

bnewt said:


> Could you tell me how you have your system connected to avoid this problem? I have 2 hws & 1 joey that I want to connect to the internet wirelessly.


As jerry downing made clear, only one of the Hoppers should be connected to your Wi-fi LAN. The other Hopper must NOT be Wi-fi connected.


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## bnewt (Oct 2, 2003)

Does it matter which one? Should it be the one that is already linked to the Joey?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Doesn't matter which one as long as they are all connected via MoCA... connect either Hopper (but not both) to your router and on that same Hopper enable Bridging so that it will share the Internet connection with the other Hopper and Joeys.


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## TheGrove (Jan 10, 2007)

I wonder if some (many?) of these issues are because of how bridging is turned on. I have 2 Hoppers and 1 Joey and don't seem to have any problems with them seeing each other or the internet. All 3 are connected to my home network (wired) but neither of my Hoppers have bridging turned on. The Hoppers access the internet without any problems and the Joey works without any issues for what my sister uses it for.

Just my $.02 worth.


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## bdee1 (Dec 12, 2006)

Thanks for the replies everyone. after a bit of research I found out that the hoppers and joeys all pull IP addresses from DHCP on my router. So if the router has issues, then so do the hopper and joeys. What is surprising is that nobody at dish support was able to tell me this. They all seemed pretty confused about the whole thing.

But that aside, I found this post over at chriscolleti.us which was describing issues very similar to mine. I had assumed that my networking issues were seperate from my hopper issues but it turns out that my hopper is actually the cause of my network issues - read on for details...

I have my hopper connected to my router (Asus RT-N66U) via cat6 ethernet. The joeys connect to the hopper and pull their IP addressed via DHCP over moca.

whenever the issue happens, if I go to my Mac Mini, I see the alert saying that another device on the network has the same IP address as me (my mac mini). When this happens the whole network is down. Even local access to the router interface is impossibly slow if it even loads at all.

at this point if i do one of the following, the network comes back up:

restart the hopper by unplugging the power cable and then plugging it back in.
unplug the ethernet cable from the back of the hopper - wait - plug it back in.
on the hopper, go to menu->settings->network->broadband (I think that is correct - going from memory). I see the disgram with the red X's on it indicating that it does not have network acces and i see that it is reporting an ip address of 169.254.x.x IP address which indicates that it is unable to reach the DHCP server (details here). If I click on the "reset network" button. It takes a few minutes and then seems to restore the network connection on the hopper and pull a valid IP address. and then my network comes back up.

So once I realized that the hopper and joey's were using the router, I went on my router and added in some DHCP reservtions for my hopper and joey devices. This means that they are still pulling from DHCP but the router knows (based on their MAC address) to always hand them the same IP address. I set my DHCP pool to start at .30 and set up the reservations for the hoppers and joeys to be .20 through .25.

I had hoped that this would help but it didnt seem to. everything worked for about a day and then the issue happened again last night.

so at this point I know that the quick fix when this happens is to basically go reset the network from the hopper but what a hassle.

I also had the thought, early on in this process, that there might be an issue with the router that was causing this so I went and bought a new apple airport extreme router and set it up and I experienced the same issues there.

so it really does seem like the issue here is wih the hopper but I have no idea what the solution is. Any other ideas in light of this new information would be greatly appreciated!


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

bdee1 said:


> whenever the issue happens, if I go to my Mac Mini, I see the alert saying that another device on the network has the same IP address as me (my mac mini).


There's the problem. Do you have the latest firmware for the router?

If DHCPD is issuing an address that is currently active, the DHCPD implementation is broken.

If any of the devices aren't renewing on schedule, their DHCP implementation is broken.

If you don't want to go through the headache of running third party firmware (although I think the N66 uses a customized version of DDWRT), you can try doing static IPs outside the DHCP address space (at least for the devices you have control over).


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## bdee1 (Dec 12, 2006)

Thanks for the reply! 

so yes that is in fact a symptom of the problem but not the source of the problem really. What I mean is that this only has happened since I got the hopper. When the problem occurs, the solution is always to reset the network or reboot the hopper. Plus there are others who have the exact same problem (see the links in my original post). The source of the issue definitely seems to be the hopper. I do have the latest firmware on my router and I have even tried resetting it to factory defaults, keeping the latest firmware and manually setting it up again. I also tried buying an apple airport extreme router and had the exact same issue so to me that says that the issue is not the router, right?

I think you are correct that the DHCP implementation is broken but I think the DHCP implementation is broken on the hopper, not on the router...
The one thing, I haven't tried is to explicitly set static IPs on the hopper devices outside the DHCP scope, but is that possible to do on the hopper (and the three joeys)?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Maybe I'm missing it... but I still haven't seen how your Hoppers/Joey are connected to each other and to the Internet... nor have I seen mention if you have checked to see whether or not Bridging is enabled on both Hoppers (it should only be enabled on one of them).

It still sounds like you have a situation with Bridging enabled on both Hoppers or a connection problem... but I haven't seen a post that details exactly how things are connected for us to do anything but guess.


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## bdee1 (Dec 12, 2006)

Stewart - sorry if I left out some detail. Here are the answers to your questions...

Here is how everything is connected:
I have 1 Hopper, 1 Super Joey and 2 joeys.

The Hopper is connected to my router via gigabit ethernet.
The Super Joeys and the Joeys get their internet connection from the Hopper over coax using Moca (or at least thats my understanding). 

Bridging is enabled on the hopper.

I didn't check for a bridging setting on the joeys as I assumed that was not an option is that correct?

If I have left out any other detail just let me know. and thank you for your response!


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

I'm doubtful that you would want bridging set on when you only have one hopper.


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## bdee1 (Dec 12, 2006)

It was my understanding that bridging is what takesthe internet connection from the hopper and enables it over MoCa for the joeys and super joey. Did I misunderstand what that is for?


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## thomasjk (Jan 10, 2006)

Your understanding is correct.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

I guess I am confused.
I have never wanted or needed my Joey to see the internet.
I have both Hoppers connected to the internet so that I can use Dish Anywhere to see what is on either of my Hoppers. There
isn't anything on my Joey that I want to see from the internet remotely.

Therefore, my suggestion is to eliminate bridging to see if that solves the problem that Bdee1 is having.
I have the same ASUS N66U router and have not had any problems like Bdee1 describes.

Maybe I'm missing something here.


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## thomasjk (Jan 10, 2006)

I assume that you do not have bridging enabled on either Hopper or only 1. There have been numerous reports of instability when both Hoppers are connected to the internet with bridging enabled. I don't disagree with your suggestion but as Bdee1 stated bridging distributes internet access via MOCA to other devices.


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## bdee1 (Dec 12, 2006)

I think the reason that the installer enabled bridging was so that I could use internet connected apps such as pandora or blockbuster (we are still on the free trial of blockbuster). In reality though I almost never use those, so last night i disabled the bridging on my hopper. hopefully that will do the trick. If not then I will officially be out of ideas.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

For some reason I thought there were two Hoppers in the original config for the Thread Starter... so my apologies there.

Sounds like it is setup correctly then... bridging enabled on the Hopper and everything gets its internet over MoCA via the coax.

With just the one Hopper, there really shouldn't be an issue unless something else strange is going on.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

I forgot that you had a wireless Joey. Don't know how that affects the whole setup.

As a side note, I don't have bridging enabled on either Hopper, both connected direct to router and I can access the weather app on my Joey. Never tried other apps though. My Joey is not a wireless one so must be getting the app through MOCA on the RG6 cable.


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