iPlayer on Be to work?

Oh my.

I need this. The Olympics would have been so much more enjoyable without iPlayer locking my BeBox (Speedie 585).

BBC engineers fix BT bug

So, now they've set a precedent, can the BBC send a team of engineers round to me - I've got several bugs which I can't be bothered to sort out.

(Douglas Adams reference:) If the beeb feel like fixing bugs that are somebody elses problem, does that mean that BT have produced a working SEP field and can thus be rendered invisible? Pleeeaase!!

Be works fine

IM on Be, iPlayer works fine for me..

Rubbish...

The BeBox may not be the most stable piece of hardware in the world (quite an understatement really), but we've never had a problem with iPlayer on it. That's with our, albeit small, office of people all watching the Olympics at the same time - no resets at all during the last couple of weeks.

@ Chris Williams

Four players you can blame?

No, there's just one: Thompson. Routers are not supposed to fold simply because of the data they're routing.

Hang on a little more...

Even if you blame the BBC for this problem on the basis that it was their code crashing the BT router, BT are still to blame and should be paying for the fix.

Dodgy code should never cause a router to drop a line. The fact that the BT router dropped its line is a fault with the router and as BT supply the router its their problem.

Its nice that the BBC have done the honorable thing and provided a work around but the fact remains that those who own BT routers are likley to suffer simillar problems from other websites using new tech.

I am actually somewhat concerned that my licence fee has been used to diagnose faults for a private company. In this instance I have helped pay for BT's denial or responsibility.

A router that resets itself due to 'dodgy' data...

...is really the problem, not the servers that stream it or the clients that receive it. Assuming the client software isn't making unreasonable demands on the router, like opening up hundreds of connections (which would be a bug on the Adobe software), there shouldn't be a problem. If BT bought in shit hardware that doesn't work reliably under normal networking conditions, the fault lies with them, not the BBC.

It's just that in this instance, the BBC felt compelled to do a fix at their end because the crappy Home Hubs make up such a large percentage of the end-user router market, and that good ole' BT would probably take a year or two to sort this out.

BT Denials

This took bl**dy ages for BT to admit there was a problem. Even when it was becoming well documented on BT's own support forums their customer service teams were still denying everything and telling people it must be their computer, filter etc.

With regards to the "tiny number" of people struggling, it was pretty much anyone who didn't have the very latest version of flash plus most Mac users even with updated flash.

It's great that the BBC have done a workaround, even though it's taking ages for them to update the videos on BBC News. This is still a problem because occasionally their videos auto-start and therefore break my router before I have a chance to stop the video.

BT should still apologise because it's their router and because they've been so crap about it.

Re: iPlayer on Be to work?

iPlayer worked ok here on Be*

However the watching directly on BBC Olympics site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/default.stm) would kill the bebox (SpeedTouch 585) consistantly after watching one video...

Worked fine on our Motorola

router that what is now Virgin and was Telewest supplied. All during the olympics we were watching two things at once. One via the red button on the box and one via iPlayer on the iMac. The internet never fell over the whole time, though we had to reset the digibox on the telly numerous times... So obviously not the Beeb's fault.

Wouldn't touch BT's internet with a bargepole.

Not just BT

My Netgear router keeps falling over whenever I try to watch a BBC News Online embedded video. Wasn't sure if it was Netgear, BBC or Firefox to blame, but my iPod Touch plays back fine.

I've upgraded the router to the latest firmware and that's made no difference.

I'll wait and see if BBC's "adjustments" solve the problem.

[cue 9000 Reg. readers saying they have no problems with their Netgear DG834s]

My original O2 Wireless Box...

...had this exact same problem. I spent ages on the phone to an O2/Be tech support guy discussing this, and he found it as bizarre as I did.

When the iPlayer stream changed from the channel logo video to the programme proper, the router would go into a "BBC-only" mode - i.e. I could only access *.bbc.co.uk domains, and all other domains would time-out. (The programme would stream okay during this time, as it came from a bbc.co.uk domain.)

After a few minutes of this, the whole connection would drop, and the router would reset. (Probably 3m34s - the same issue as Ivan's client, above!)

They sent me a new O2 Wireless Box II, which works fine!

Screw the customer.

This isn't a BBC, BT nor Be*/O2 issue, but a Thompson and, to some degree, Adobe problem. So, what's the "obscure undocumented" setting and is it related to Adobe's RTMP? Thompson support denied any knowledge of the problem and the ISP's decided they couldn't afford to replace all the free routers for ones which work properly. Their support lines said it wasn't a problem with their service. What happened to proper engineering? And support? Oh, and the Beeb are pretty drawn into RTMP, so why are we only hearing about this now? 2008: screw the customer.

The heart? Cos we all need a little love...

Dodgy Firmware

<rant>

It's worrying the number of products that ship with firmware which is plain not-fit-for-purpose, I'm talking about cable modems, mobile phones, data cards, routers even graphics cards.

I remember having to debug a TCP/IP stack in a certain product similar to the home hub, it's NAT layer recalculated the TCP checksum (which is required) without checking the original checksum was correct (The correct procedure is to drop packets who's TCP checksum is incorrect, or forward them with an incorrect chksum). The upshot being that it corrupted TCP streams when the packets got corrupted, leading to randomly corrupted downloads.

If that isn't enough firmware in standalone devices these days seems to be written so that if it crashes it reboots and starts from scratch, which is all well and good, but how the hell does it get through Q/C when it crashes periodically?

Another problem is that many users don't know how to update the firmware themselves, or in the case of some mobile phones you need to pay some junior engineer to flash it for you, because the firmware is not publicly available for copyright reasons.

Oh, and "router crashes when using iplayer" stinks of a network layer buffer overflow. That means someone can (probably, they may have to convince your computer to send certain packets which is a little harder) own your router remotely by sending the appropriate packets when they feel like, honestly some people should be banned from writing their own TCP/IP stacks, there's enough working stable free stacks out there already without writing another buggy one. It's like junior software engineers who feel they need to reimplement the ftp protocol, guess what, FTP is non-trivial and most people make a complete pigs ear of it.

</rant>

FINALLY

This problem has been the BANE of my life when trying to catch-up on programmes via iPlayer.

BT support refused to help, instead pointing out I was being 'metered' for downloading and then saying that was the reason.

The 'small number' of customers affected is UNLIKELY considering there are millions of these crappy white boxes everywhere across the country. The only reason I haven't actively moved away is because a family member is using the email addys as their business addy (despite my advice) so there's been a degree of inertia.

The new Home hub 2.0 should be provided free to angry customers like me!

@ShaggyDoggy

Search eBay for DG834G - plenty for under £20 and seem very reliable - they've become the de facto standard for people who buy their own routers (or at least those who know what they're doing but can't afford the Draytek)

@Anonymous Coward

No, just buy the Draytek!

Cheap and reliable form unnatural bedfellows at the best of times when your perimeter security and connection reliability are at stake.

On a small tangent; is it only me that objects to the BBC using my bandwidth bit torrent style on iplayer or did I misread that bit?

BBC fix BT problem?

Why should the BBC fix "BT's Problem" ?

Isn't this just the BBC making a WORK AROUND for BT's problem?

@Antony Riley

Good rant mate, I agree entirely (I'm a software test engineer and I agree with all of what you said).

Not just routers - I've had 4 occasions in the last year where shops couldn't serve me because their tills were "down". Abbey National (spit) have replaced software systems recently and they are f(*&ing up all over the place - wrongly spelt names on cards, lost direct debits, the works.

And if this router was based on Thompson Speedtouch then it's not surprising it fell on its' arse - I had a modem based on that chipset which was frankly shite. Now I have a DG series router. Solid.

I knew HomeHub was just a cheap glossy front with cack insides!