I have had my WDTV Live and FreeNAS server setup and working together for awhile now. Recently, my Internet has been very intermittent due to my underground being damaged. Because of this, I noticed that when attempting to connect to my FreeNAS share on my WDTV Live box, it would hang while connecting and eventually error out saying it could not find a connection! Lies!
At first I didn't realize this was causing it. Eventually I figured it out when the WDTV couldn't connect to my server, my Internet was non-functional as well. Since we have cellular service with a data plan, the Internet has not been too huge of an inconvenience. Now that it was affecting TV time... that's a problem.
I was able to get it to work by logging into the Tomato web interface of my router and "Release" my IP which effectively disabled my WAN port and defunct Internet connection. The problem with this work around was when my signal was sufficient for Internet access, I would have to log back into the router and "Renew" my IP. When the signal worsened, Internet access would be unheard of and my WDTV would not connect to my server.
After battling it out for a few weeks, I eventually had a revelation. I simply restricted all Internet access from my FreeNAS server at my router. This Access Restriction allowed me to specify all day every day, the IP Address of my FreeNAS server was not able to access the Internet. Upon saving this configuration, my WDTV was able to connect to my server without any hanging or issues.
Only downside I see to this method is now I cannot access any Internet media through the WDTVs slow/poorly designed interface. I rarely used it, but now it's no longer a possibility. Oh well.
One day I plan on building a little media PC to connect to my TV and allow me to access files on my server. Hopefully the interface will be better thought out and less crappy.
No comments:
Post a Comment