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Lawrence-Dol
Reel Rookie

Most Channels Won't Playback

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We have four Roku devices, two 4630, two 3920. About 3 or 4 weeks ago they all began to have problems with playback on most, but not all, channels. One 4630 is connected via Ethernet, the other via WiFi.

Internet service last changed back in Mar, upgraded to 900 x 30. Local network setup is the same as it's been for years, with all devices => [optional WiFi AP] => dumb-switches => PFSense firewall => cable modem => provider. Internet service is consistently excellent, with low latency, A to A+ for buffer-bloat, and full speed up and down. Internally it's Gigabit cabling, with Wireless N topping out at 300 x 30 to the Internet. The two 3920 boxes do not show the WiFi N network, though they claim to have b/g/n support (the access point is a Unify b/g/n/ac AP).

Tubi, Pandora, and Amazon Music work perfectly.

Netflix works most of the time, but has intermittently failed with error code NW-2-5. For a few days it worked on Ethernet but not WiFi (the only service to exhibit this symptom). When it works, it's excellent -- very fast to buffer and immediately high quality.

YouTube And Amazon Video load the channel, but both won't play content -- they time out and report a bland "something went wrong" error. YouTube offers to submit an error report, but that also fails after a few minutes.

Hulu, and Disney+ won't load the channel.

Crackle loads the channel, starts a stream, plays the ads, and then times out on the actual content.

I must stress, only the Roku boxes fail. The same services work perfectly well on all computers, laptops, and phones (about a dozen devices), using a mix of wired and wireless.

I've tried disabling all firewall rules except blocking internal connections from the Internet. I've enabled logging for all firewall block rules. I've tried Google DNS as well as my usual OpenDNS Family DNS. I've tried rebooting the Rokus numerous times. I've tried resetting to factory defaults. I've tried deleting and re-adding channels. I've even analyzed traffic dumps taken while starting streams using WireShark (there is an unexpectedly high number of packets rejected due to TTL expiry).

Netflix, when it fails, offers detailed network setup -- I've noticed that it reports that Google DNS servers are added after my firewall's DNS. But the firewall routes all DNS requests to its DNS server anyway (though, obviously, I've tried disabling that, as well as using Google DNS).

I'm at a total loss -- any suggestions would be welcome.

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1 Solution

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Lawrence-Dol
Reel Rookie

Re: Most Channels Won't Playback

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I was able to pin this down to my WAN interface MTU being set to 1400. Once clearing that setting all channels stream successfully again (and I am able to switch it back and forth to replicate the problem with 100% consistency).

The first theory I tested was to limit my LAN interface MTU to 1000, which also fixed the problem, which then signalled me to check the MTU on the WAN interface. In analyzing the streams I am able to locate packets sized between 1400 and 1450 bytes marked Do-Not-Fragment.

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Lawrence-Dol
Reel Rookie

Re: Most Channels Won't Playback

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I was able to pin this down to my WAN interface MTU being set to 1400. Once clearing that setting all channels stream successfully again (and I am able to switch it back and forth to replicate the problem with 100% consistency).

The first theory I tested was to limit my LAN interface MTU to 1000, which also fixed the problem, which then signalled me to check the MTU on the WAN interface. In analyzing the streams I am able to locate packets sized between 1400 and 1450 bytes marked Do-Not-Fragment.

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smithersj
Newbie

Re: Most Channels Won't Playback

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Thank you for this post. I was having a similar issue, where my other devices (laptop, phone) were working fine, but the Roku stick and TV would not play youtube videos, and sometimes netflix would fail. 

My situation is unique, and I am double VPN'ing a WireGuard tunnel through an ipsec tunnel, so the MTU is cut down to 1330. I was able to modify my Wireguard tunnel to 1330 MTU size, and the mss to 1330 using iptables on my router. Anyway, everything is working now.

 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. 

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RokuDanny-R
Retired Moderator

Re: Most Channels Won't Playback

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@smithersj

Thanks for the post.

As a friend reminding when posting in the Community of the Community guidelines:

Discussions regarding any usage of VPNs to circumvent established regional broadcast rules or limitations are not allowed in the Community. Any topic or comment posted regarding the use of a VPN, or any circumvention of applicable limitations, will be removed at Roku's discretion.


Thanks,
Danny

Danny R.
Roku Community Moderator
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Ottowoody
Newbie

Re: Most Channels Won't Playback

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I have this same problem - no channels stream, not Sling, Netflix, even Roku Channel shows fail. It started this week, and occurs on 4 devices, 1 of which is not even in the same house or town. I cannot change VPN or other settings on my router as our provider does not allow that.

Is the only choice to return all Roku devices? They worked for 3 years until now but none are usable, I am back to using my phone and an HTML cable.

Every streaming device is both houses work fine -only Roku is failing.

Frankly, this sounds like a device problem that Roku should be fixing or replacing.

Thanks

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Ottowoody
Newbie

Re: Most Channels Won't Playback

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Ok, replying to myself - this is so weird but after 4 days of no Roku, every attempted change (restarts, resets, etc)and 2 hours of restarts this morning, moving a device from tv to tv, etc, I tried one more time and VOILA!!! One of my devices is now working! All channels, etc.

I did NOTHING to change this - my wifi continues to be Excellent and the same device and tv that failed an hour ago is working.

Now to drive 20 miles to check out the other 3 devices.

Fingers crossed, some magical gremlins at Roku or a sunspot has fixed it?  Or our state's provider found an oops that had broken everyone streaming?

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