Solved: Cisco 2950 switch & PS3 media server

the1337bofh · ‎07-31-2010

I have a couple of Cisco 2950 switches throughout the house to serve my network in the needed locations. I also have a media server running on my PC at one end of the house opposite of my PS3. The media server is connected directly to my router. During development, I had my PS3 connected across my trunk CAT5, but now I have it connected to the Cisco 2950, so I definitely know that the PS3 can communicate with the media server without the 2950 in between.

Since the expansion and addition of the 2950 at the location of the PS3, I've had to work through the issues of getting the PS3 to talk on my network. It drove me nuts last night because every other piece of equipment would pull DHCP and talk on the network with no problem at all. The PS3 however wouldn't pull an IP address via DHCP nor would it talk when I assigned it static values. I'd thought about enabling spanning-tree portfast, but I didn't try it until today. I had tried switching VLANs across all 24 ports in case there might be a native VLAN conflict between the PS3 and the 2950. But I guess you can tell I've gotten that sorted out. Please forgive my rambling, I just tend to throw as much detail into a subject as I can.

Since enabling spanning-tree portfast across all 24 ports, my PS3 is able to pull an IP address via DHCP without any problems and connect to everything on the network. However, it is unable to locate the media server that I have running across the house. I believe it tries to do this via multicast and I have tried enabling IGMP snooping on a VLAN and assigning that VLAN to all ports, but still no cigar.

My current configuration consists of no VLAN assigned to all ports, and spanning-tree portfast assigned to all ports. I've assigned the 2950 an IP address on the default VLAN and also a default gateway. Along with a few passwords, that is my entire configuration.

I would certainly appreciate it if anyone could pass a few suggestions my way in order to get this PS3 talking to the media server so that the wife and kid will have something to do during the many hours that I spend at work.

Thanks!

Thomas

Jayakrishna Mada · ‎08-02-2010

Hi Thomas,

Let me try and see if I can help you here.

1. Since you mentioned that PS3 uses multicast to get to the media server, turn off IGMP snooping completely and see if that works.

2. Can you span the port connected to ps3 on the switch and what multicast address it is using.

3. While doing a caputre on the switch can you capture packets on the media server itself using wireshark.

4. Also enable "ip igmp snooping querier " on the layer 3 interface of the vlan and see if that helps.

JayaKrishna

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the1337bofh · ‎08-02-2010

No one has any idea what it would take to get my PS3 to find my media server across my 2950? They will work just fine without the 2950 in the middle.

Jayakrishna Mada · ‎08-02-2010

Hi Thomas,

Let me try and see if I can help you here.

1. Since you mentioned that PS3 uses multicast to get to the media server, turn off IGMP snooping completely and see if that works.

2. Can you span the port connected to ps3 on the switch and what multicast address it is using.

3. While doing a caputre on the switch can you capture packets on the media server itself using wireshark.

4. Also enable "ip igmp snooping querier " on the layer 3 interface of the vlan and see if that helps.

JayaKrishna

the1337bofh · ‎08-03-2010

Jayakrishna,

I disabled igmp snooping completely and it worked on the first attempt. I don't know much about multicast across these switches but I intend to learn. I'm not even entirely sure about how this media server operates. I was just going off of something I read when searching for a solution. But I got it in about 2 minutes after reading your post. I have also gotten interested in SPAN now and will be taking a better look at that as well. So your post was helpful in more ways than one. So thank you very much!

Thomas

Gregory Camp · ‎08-03-2010

Thomas,

Most of those media servers use some form of UPNP which sends multicast packets to 239.255.255.250 I believe. Your problem was most likely that you did not have an IGMP querier in your Vlan.

the1337bofh · ‎08-04-2010

True enough. Only now I still don't have an IGMP querier enabled. Thanks for the info for sure. It's definitely something worth looking into for me.

Thomas