I was getting a different ISP setup today and my internet went down in the early morning hours as a result. My wife was unable to connect to the Tablo to watch her favorite morning show via the LAN. I did some research (scoured these forums) this evening and it should have worked without internet, but didn’t. I did a packet capture of the traffic and it appears that the iPad hits a multicast address and the internet (Tablo API and some AWS servers) before it even attempts to directly connect to the Tablo device. Can someone with more understanding of the data flows explain this to me what is going on and why my wife’s iPad Tablo app wouldn’t connect? Needless to say, my wife was very unhappy (happy wife = happy life…failed).
P.S. It works just fine now since we have gotten the internet re-established later in the day.
Edit: Forgot to mention one probably critical element - my Tablo and other media devices are on a separate subnet from other devices (including the iPad) in the house. Could it be that since the iPad can’t see the multicast broadcast from the Tablo that it then goes to the internet to determine the connection?
Yes. The Tablo is not on the iPad’s local network (multicast lookup failure), so the iPad app has to try talking to the remote connect servers to determine the Tablo’s address.
You didn’t say what method(app) she was using. Some apps, such as the browser, are HTML based and require the internet to be functional since they are cloud based apps. Thus I assume AWS is the Amazon cloud WEB server. But I only use Roku when the internet is down. I know the Amazon UI doesn’t work on the Fire TV Stick when the internet is down - regardless of whether the Tablo app would work.
I really don’t think the tablo does a multicast broadcast over your lan, if you’re suggesting something like 192.168.1.255 - to announce it’s self. Apparently, some devices can work the other way and remember/find it.
This is an issue for me also. I bought my Tablo to use when my internet goes out. Does Tablo require internet access for devices on my local network to connect to it?
I’ve read that and my question is with item 4. It says that when external internet is down, it will fall back to last known address. That wasnt my experience when my internet went out recently. My Apple TV could not connect to Tablo. Was this an error, or expected? Did my EERO do something unexpected? I’m trying to figure out where to start and looking for help.
All I know is that apps that use the “newer” api methods, like the Roku app, tend to fair better in talking to the Tablo when the Internet is down. I’ve never had a problem reaching my Tablos (have 2, one WiFi, one hard wired) when the Internet is down using surlatablo.
