Hopefully this will alleviate some of the posts saying things like server down again, or, are we down again?

Hopefully if you are running any form of IKS, regardless of the box and the server you should know what an IP is at that point. So I will not explain that part of it.

At the time I am writing this, SV is down, Nfusion & Kbox are up. I do not know about the rest. Now there is an easy way to tell server status of any IKS at any given time. First look in either your network config on your receiver as some models have the info there, or, if IP the receiver is connecting to is not visible then you will have to resort to your router settings or logs to pull the info but it is obtainable.

Once you have the IP you can easily check the status of the server by going to a DOS prompt and typing ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (where xxx is server IP). If it times out then the server is down! Otherwise you are having some other type of issue.

Now to explain the occassional freeze there is another command you can type at the DOS prompt. This will only work in entirety when server is up and running, but if it is down you will get a partial listing up to last connection to where the interruption is occurring. at the DOS prompt type tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (where xxx is server IP).

You will now see every hop from your computer to the IKS server unless of course the server is down. You will also see how long it takes to make each connection in milliseconds. Now, this is some interesting information if you really break it down.

If you have 8 to 10 hops in there with a time of 200 milliseconds, you have used about 2 seconds to make that connection. Using a proxy could easily make this worse as depending on what you are using for a proxy. A proxy could include more hops plus just by using a proxy you are adding one hop to connect to the proxy server itself.

Ok some basic math here, saying your receiver rquires 10 hops at about 200 milliseconds, that means your "keyword" request takes 2 seconds to reach server. Servers work on a FIFO (First In First Out) when answering requests. So you can have some delay before the server can answer your request and then you have the 2 seconds required to send that info back. This whole procedure has to re-occurr over and over about every 10-15 seconds to prevent a box from freezing. Any lag on any server along the way can cause the issue of freezing as they transfer data back and forth.

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Please don't PM me with fta related questions, they will no longer be answered.

there's a great little program to check out all network connection issues and the hops your mentioning, FTA Pro...... try out "TCPOptimizer' great for checking server status , hops, network adapter optimizing etc.
good luck
redhawk