Vigor and IPTV
Last friday I received the hardware to receive TV over IP for each TV, I now have a Motorola Setupbox, that will receive it’s software over the network. Different from the previous ISP, these are to be connected to the router. The signal is relayed in a different VLAN, not to be mixed with Internet traffic (so IPTV is not mixed with “normal” internet traffic) and VoIP – each of them travel in their own VLAN. So I had already setup the Vigor router to have this VLAN bridged to a particular port and separate LAN, and the switch to be used locally has been devided as well. Because of this separate VLAN, it is addressed separatedly. I hooked up the Fritz!Box onto that LAN, as I am told it contains specific software to faciliate the Motorola boxes, connected one of the bocxes to the Fritz!Box and had it boot.
It didn’t work as expected.
First of all, the receiver tries to connect to the network, but if found a DHCP service, which shouldn’t be there. Hoeverer, this separate LAN doesn’t have one , I deliberately disabled this service. Nevertheless, the receiver complaints about a DHCP-service on the “home LAN”. Obviously, there is one, but it resides on the LAN on which the normal internet traffic runs – and due to the setup, this IPTV-LAN should not locate it!
I did some experiments in setup in both the Vigor and the Fritz!box and at some point, the Motorola bootloader didn’t locate this DHCP service, and started loading software, and when that was done, I could watch television – but just the basics: no HD as I was expecting. It might have been too early 🙂
So that was one set working, so I saved both configurations and tried the second one.
Alas: the very same problem occurred: it ran onto a service similar to DHCP. The first one however, seemed to have been basically prepared, did no longe complain, started to load screens and data but it did not complete – it seemed to wait, and wait, and wait …for an answer that didn’t come. In the end, I decided to install the Fritz!Box for the time being, since it had already been set up to forward all internet traffic, so my experiments would not block any TV activity. Retesting will have to be done on moments that watching TV is no priority….
However, there now is one advantage: It could well be that changing the address of the LAN on which IPTV is to be served, will do the trick to pass IPTV through the Vigor: Since both Motorola boxes have now been initialized, I know their address and their default gateway – and that should be the address of this LAN interface. Probably – it is to be determined shortly.
Another thing: I also have a facility to use a fixed prefix so that all services will eb available over IPv6; and since this is a fixed one as well, it is likely that I can set this fixed in the Vigor router, bypassing the prefix-delegation problem. It is no problem either to have this router function as the DHCPv6 server in the home LAN, but that remains to be tested on OpenVMS. It might be that this server is not yet available….
Worst case, the Fritz!Box has to remain the main entrance, in that case I want all traffic but IPTV be passed to the Vigor. It is possible to bridge the normal IP traffic only – including IPv6 – and leave VoIP on the fritz!Box as well.
So this story is “To be continued”