AXIA digital eqpt connection to office LAN for Internet

[rustycogs]

We (at Capital Community Radio in Perth, Australia) have had our AXIA network switch connected to an office network switch to allow AXIA connection to the Internet for 2 reasons:
- NTP time synchronisation on studio Element desks
- allow tech volunteers to use a local office PC (at the station, or via Remote Desktop from home to the local PC) to connect to the various AXIA equipments for maintenance and updating.

We have recently purchased a replacement Internet modem-router (ADSL2+ service), and within 10 minutes of this modem-router being connected to the office network (using a new D-Link DSL-2750B modem-router, in lieu of the previous D-Link DSL-G604T modem-router), the studios fail. To restore broadcast we have to remove the office network connection from the AXIA switch, then reboot the studios, to restore broadcast service to our listeners.

Any ideas - is there some issues on type of modem-routers, or type of AXIA network connection to a local office network?

Thanks in anticipation of a rush of advice - we NEED it.
Russell Coghlan
(rustycogs@acslink.net.au)

[Andrew_KOOP]

Hello.

I'm sure you have already contacted Axia technical support for ideas?

In your network, does the livewire traffic have to pass through your D-link?

In our situation we have the livewire equipment on a Cisco switch, and we connect to the outside world through a router attached to that Cisco switch. So livewire traffic never has to go through the external router.

One other thing to check - on the link to the router we block IGMP traffic (using a router setting, not a switch setting if I recall correctly). It may be that your new router is seeing the livewire IGMP traffic and responding to it in some inappropriate way. Check to see if there is an option in your router configuration to block IGMP traffic. If there is not, there is a way to block it from the switch. We do block IGMP traffic from one of our Cisco ports that goes to a 5.8Ghz radio, but I've long since forgotten the Cisco command to make that happen. I am sure Axia tech support could show you how to do that.

-Andrew

[rustycogs]

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for your reply. No I have not contacted AXIA Tech Support.

No, Livewire does NOT have to pass thru any of our office network. We have the two networks separate, with one connection between a switch in each network.

I have found (by remote connection from home) the new D-Link modem-router (which has a limited 10 address DHCP range enabled, and considers all other IP addresses in the sub-net to be static) did have IvP6 DHCP enabled (factory setting), and stated (it the Help screens) that this uses the full subnet. I have disabled IvP6 althogether.

IGMP was found enabled (by factory default), and I have also disabled this.

When I am physically back in the station tomorrow (Thursday, 9.00am to mid afternoon), I will plug the connection between the two networks again and see if the problem has been resolved.

Regards,
Russell Coghlan
(rustycogs@acslink.net.au)
Capital Community Radio in Perth, Australia

[SmokChsr]

We have recently purchased a replacement Internet modem-router (ADSL2+ service), and within 10 minutes of this modem-router being connected to the office network (using a new D-Link DSL-2750B modem-router, in lieu of the previous D-Link DSL-G604T modem-router), the studios fail.

I would suspect that the Broadcast (Livewire) packets migrated across the router to the office network. LiveWire data will take down a "business" class switch in no time. I'm surprised it stayed up for 10 minutes. Likely something on the office network requested broadcast info and that opened the router to pass LiveWire to the office network.

As you probably already know it takes a "Enterprise" class switch to handle the speed and complexity of LiveWire packets.