# DECA crashes Airport Extreme Network



## rsmarcus (Sep 13, 2010)

Hi Folks, 

Longtime listener, first time caller. Did a search but I couldn't find anything quite like this. 

I had a WHDVR install today. Simple setup (see below). MRV works in all three locations. However, when we installed the DECA into in my router (Apple Airport Extreme), not only does it NOT work, it somehow manages to crash my whole network (DSL Modem to Airport Extreme then a bridge to a Time Capsule). Nothing either wired or wireless can get on the internet. Unplug it and everything works. It even crashes everything if I plug it into the bridged Time Capsule! The installer blamed it on the Airport and had to take off to his next install. 

I'm wondering if this setup is somehow overpowered and crashing my network. Is the Office Run below normal? Can you split to two DECA's from one line? Or does the internet run need it's own dedicate line from the 8-way? 

I would appreciate any help. 

Thanks,

Rich M


SETUP:

SL3 --> 8 Way Wide Band Splitter

3 coax lines run from the 8 Way:

1. Living Room Run--->SWM Power Inserter ----> DECA ----> HR22-100 

2. Kitchen Run ----> H24-200

3. Office Run ----> 2 Way Splitter:
----> DECA ---> HR21-700 
----> DECA (with PI) --->Router


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## armchair (Jul 27, 2009)

Do you still have the BB DECA powered? It should display all green LEDs if connected properly. Some things to check w/b the coax feeding the DECA; make sure the braided shield is not shorted to center conductor (both ends). Also, the pig-tail end of BB DECA s/b connected to Power port of green-labeled PI and PI should have green LED displayed.

When there's network activity, the middle LED will flash green.


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## HaRrrgh20! (Jan 22, 2007)

I recently added DECA to my Airport Extreme network and have not had any problems. My network now has the Extreme, a Cisco powerline bridge and 3 AirPort Expresses. I removed an Airport Express (was a bridge for 3 HR-20s) and another wireless bridge (for XBox) when DECA was installed. I connected the XBox to the ethernet side of one of the receiver DECAs using a little 5 port Linksys switch.

There's a diagram of the Sat/DECA side of things in this link...

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?p=2571925#post2571925


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## rsmarcus (Sep 13, 2010)

armchair said:


> Do you still have the BB DECA powered? It should display all green LEDs if connected properly. Some things to check w/b the coax feeding the DECA; make sure the braided shield is not shorted to center conductor (both ends). Also, the pig-tail end of BB DECA s/b connected to Power port of green-labeled PI and PI should have green LED displayed.
> 
> When there's network activity, the middle LED will flash green.


DECA is powered with three green lights and blinking network activity. It looks like my whole DECA network is fine as long as it is independent from my internet network. When I connect it, it actually causes problems the other way as well. Picture starts to judder and freeze up on DVR and menus are super slow or non responsive.

Coax connections look sound. I may change out a few to see if it helps. But then why would my DECA network be fine? A short would affect it.


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## rsmarcus (Sep 13, 2010)

HaRrrgh20! said:


> I recently added DECA to my Airport Extreme network and have not had any problems. My network now has the Extreme, a Cisco powerline bridge and 3 AirPort Expresses. I removed an Airport Express (was a bridge for 3 HR-20s) and another wireless bridge (for XBox) when DECA was installed. I connected the XBox to the ethernet side of one of the receiver DECAs using a little 5 port Linksys switch.
> 
> There's a diagram of the Sat/DECA side of things in this link...


Hmmm. The lower right part of your diagram looks exactly the same as what I thought might be a problem: 2 way split going to both a DVR and the suspect DECA I can't get to play well with the Router. If it works for you, it should work for me.

The only other thing I can think of is that most people have the SWM Power Inserter as a separate loop on their diagrams. My installer included it in the middle of my living room run.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

I've been reading this and while I think I know a fair amount about the DECA system, I don't have a clue here. You RF side of this [DECA] all seems fine, but whatever is going on, seems to be on your ethernet/router side of things.
the green LEDs on the DECA show that this side is working fine.
Maybe someone that is more familiar with Airport Extreme and anything else you have on your network, might be able to offer more help.
Someone had something like this and it turned out to be a cell phone being connected [or something like this] and when it was removed, the problem went away.


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## armchair (Jul 27, 2009)

rsmarcus said:


> DECA is powered with three green lights and blinking network activity. It looks like my whole DECA network is fine as long as it is independent from my internet network. When I connect it, it actually causes problems the other way as well. Picture starts to judder and freeze up on DVR and menus are super slow or non responsive.
> 
> Coax connections look sound. I may change out a few to see if it helps. But then why would my DECA network be fine? A short would affect it.


Are un-used ports of splitter terminated?

Could be a bad DECA module?

But having the SWiM PI in line with the DECA @ the HR22 is something that didn't work well for me when f/w 0x040D was released. I found a work around for my setup but only temporary fix I can think of is removing the ETHERNET cable from DECA to HR22.

From what I can see in this forum, there's nothing actually wrong with that. Some people don't like the idea of data and DC power sharing the same coax/port and insist on isolating the DECA frequency range using a BSF (Band Stop Filter) at one of the splitter power pass throughs, whichever applies to the SWiM PI.

When I started having trouble, I got the SWiM PI out of the DECA cloud using a BSF.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

armchair said:


> Are un-used ports of splitter terminated? *Shouldn't affect a problem only related to the BB DECA being attached *
> 
> Could be a bad DECA module? *might be, but rare. *
> 
> ...


My PI is right n the middle of my cloud.


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## armchair (Jul 27, 2009)

veryoldschool said:


> I don't even understand what you're trying to say here. My PI is right n the middle of my cloud.


My HR24-500 was connected to the SWIM PI signal side. 0x040D and the following CE was causing a lot of gremlins. The issue was continually impacting the HR24-500 connected to the SWiM PI.

First I thought that having the HR22 in the DECA cloud w/o DECA or BSF was causing the issue. So I put a BSF on it to isolate it from the DECA cloud. Didn't work; gremlins continued about every other day.

That only left me with the suggestion others had about using the BSF to isolate the DECA frequency range from SWiM PI using BSF. Gremlins went away and haven't returned as yet. You can read my issue posts for 0x040D and later to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

The first solution and latest CE didn't resolve it so I removed the SWiM PI from HR24-500 in LR and swapped the coax so that the DC pass-through of splitter now feeds the BSF, SWiM PI and HR22 (in that order). I wanted the HR22 and SWiM PI out of the DECA cloud.

I wasn't going to report this until the end of the week (needs more testing due to the variability of interval between gremlins I previously saw) but I'm seeing more predictable behavior since this setup was installed, Saturday. I know it's not identical to the TS/OP but I saw a similarity in the setup that I feel is suspect, ATM. But as you say, it may be a rare result; YMMV.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

armchair said:


> My HR24-500 was connected to the SWIM PI signal side. 0x040D and the following CE was causing a lot of gremlins. The issue was continually impacting the HR24-500 connected to the SWiM PI.
> 
> First I thought that having the HR22 in the DECA cloud w/o DECA or BSF was causing the issue. So I put a BSF on it to isolate it from the DECA cloud. Didn't work; gremlins continued about every other day.
> 
> ...


Since you have a 24, you can use the menu for coax networking to see how well it is working. You get into the menu by pressing the guide & > buttons at the same time on the front panel. [it may take more than once as the touch screen buttons make it a bit hard at first]. Once in the menu, there are two screens/tests. This will show how well the DECA network is setup/working.
You might want to run these tests and then start your own thread, so we don't hijack this thread.


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## armchair (Jul 27, 2009)

veryoldschool said:


> Since you have a 24, you can use the menu for coax networking to see how well it is working. You get into the menu by pressing the guide & > buttons at the same time on the front panel. [it may take more than once as the touch screen buttons make it a bit hard at first]. Once in the menu, there are two screens/tests. This will show how well the DECA network is setup/working.
> You might want to run these tests and then start your own thread, so we don't hijack this thread.


I ran the coax diagnostics on both HR24-500s; the results never changed through multiple setups I described.

I only posted here because I thought it might be relevant to the OP's setup. Hopefully, it's no longer an issue for me.


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## HaRrrgh20! (Jan 22, 2007)

rsmarcus said:


> Hmmm. The lower right part of your diagram looks exactly the same as what I thought might be a problem: 2 way split going to both a DVR and the suspect DECA I can't get to play well with the Router. If it works for you, it should work for me.
> 
> The only other thing I can think of is that most people have the SWM Power Inserter as a separate loop on their diagrams. My installer included it in the middle of my living room run.


The splitters in my system are actually 8-way, because that's what they provided to the installer. Everything is on DHCP hosted by the Extreme, 16+ clients.


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## JamesTPDI (Jan 4, 2007)

Do all the devices on your network have different addresses?


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## HaRrrgh20! (Jan 22, 2007)

You said that the DSL is a modem. Is the Extreme acting as the router using PPPoE? That's my setup with the modem on the Extreme's WAN port.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

armchair said:


> I ran the coax diagnostics on both HR24-500s; the results never changed through multiple setups I described.
> 
> I only posted here because I thought it might be relevant to the OP's setup. Hopefully, it's no longer an issue for me.


"OK", but there was a lot of "smoke & mirrors" with your PI & BSF use/positioning. Any change that those might have had would be from something else going on and why those tests are useful.


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## sungam (May 10, 2007)

You don't by chance still have an Ethernet cable connected to the HR21 or HR22 do you? Connecting to your network in two places at once (a DVR and the BB DECA) can cause the symptoms you're describing.


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## rsmarcus (Sep 13, 2010)

Update:

Problem solved. Short story: on the most difficult to reach HDDVR (in a dark cabinet), the installer had, for some strange reason, plugged in an extra ethernet cable, which was part of my network. I have bunch of other devices on the network in the same cabinet (XBOX 360, Slingbox, etc.) No idea why he grabbed it and added it in. It was for something else and was definitely NOT the BLUE color usually used on installs (which he also plugged in!). 

So all this was caused by two ethernet cables plugged into one HDDVR. Once an ICK DECA was plugged in at another location, it brought both networks crashing down. 

Found it by retracing every line and connection starting at the Sat Line In entering the attic. I had spent an hour and a half+ on the phone this morning with a directv tech who never suggested that this might be the problem. We isolated all the pieces of the network, HDDVR's, individual DECA's, the 2 way splitter and nothing helped. I even turned off port mapping on my router (for the Slingbox). He then gave up and punted me to technical forums! 

Thanks all for your input. Knowing that a lot of similar systems are up and working fine really helped me isolate the problem. 

Rich


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