Netflix Not Working – PS3, PS4, Smart TV, Apple TV, iPad, Xbox etc

Netflix Not Working On Your Home Device

If you find Netflix not working on your device – be it a PS3, PS4, Smart TV, Apple TV, Xbox, iPad, Android and so on then you may find the following will help! This experience was with BT as a broadband provider but may well be applicable to others – Talktalk, Virgin, EE etc. – if they offer some type of parental controls.

Symptoms:

Your internet is connected and everything else is working, Netflix is the only problem. If you have delved into the logs you may find something like:

  • netflix server 1 connected
  • netflix server 2 and 3 not connected
  • internet connected

You have probably tried one or more of the following:

  • a factory reset of your TV
  • a reboot of your router
  • changed your connection to wired in case it’s the wifi connection which is problematic
  • even changed to a different router (!)
  • rung Netflix who have advised you to ring your ISP
  • rung your ISP only to be told to ring Netflix

Cause:

If you have BT’s “Parental Controls” enabled then you will not be able to resolve addresses unless you (i.e. your router) are using BT’s DNS servers – change your DNS server on your router to something else and your connections will die very quickly.

It would also appear that Netflix is not the only service to be broken by these controls.

Solution:

Turn off BT Parental Controls – preferably permanently if you can. Should you just disable them temporarily then they may come back and bite you in the future – every time BT updates their controls they seem to be turned on again by default.

Turning off BT Parental Controls temporarily

Should you wish to turn off your BT Parental Controls at any time there’s a simple way to do this whilst keeping your settings, should you wish to reactivate Parental Controls. Here’s how:

  1. Log in to My BT with your BT ID
  2. Scroll down to the ‘My Extras’ section and click Manage in the ‘Parental Controls’ panel
  3. Slide the button to ‘Off’ and your BT Parental Controls will be switched off
  4. To turn them back on slide the button to ‘On’. It’s that simple and any settings you have saved will be restored
  5. It may take up to 10 minutes for filters to be applied to an active browser session.
Turning off BT Parental Controls permanently

If you still want to delete BT Parental Controls completely, first turn them off temporarily by following the steps above.

  1. Now select Delete BT Parental Controls underneath the slider
  2. You then receive a final confirmation screen. Select Yes, De-activate now
  3. It can take up to two hours for BT Parental Controls to be completely deactivated but we find that if you delete these and reboot your router then the effects are pretty much instantaneous.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you have found a different solution which works for you ..

IP Appliance – Flash, Disk-based or Hybrid

IP Appliance – Flash, Disk-based or Hybrid

You can tell whether your IP Appliance is flash, disk-based or hybrid based on the mount points of the /var and /opt partitions:

  • On Disk-based systems, both the /var and /opt partitions are mounted on the hard disk (wd0)
  • On Flash-based (diskless) systems, the /var and /opt partitions are mounted on v9fs (a file system based in the RAM – loaded at startup)
  • On Hybrid systems (the HDD is used for local logging) the /opt partition is mounted on v9fs and the /var partition is mounted on the optional hard disk (wd1), assuming the customer has previously enabled the optional HDD for local logging as per kb article 1350934)

Use the “df -k” CLI command to verify your configuration as shown in the examples below. These apply to IP390, IP560 and IP12XX.

Disk-based installation verification information
————————————————————–

IPGW[admin]# df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0f 598029 85871 464316 16% /
/dev/wd0a 37556 32 34520 0% /config
/dev/wd0d 30978766 287029 28213436 1% /var
/dev/wd0e 5268700 268396 4578808 6% /opt
procfs 4 4 0 100% /proc

Flash-Only installation verification information
————————————————————–

IPGW[admin]# df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0f 266383 44080 200993 18% /
v9fs 755824 50548 705276 7% /image/IPSO-4.1-BUILD013-03.27.2006-223017-1515/rfs
/dev/wd0a 31775 161 29072 1% /config
/dev/wd0h 664831 205478 406167 34% /preserve
procfs 4 4 0 100% /proc
v9fs 716840 11564 705276 2% /var
mfs:97 7607 0 6998 0% /var/tmp2/upgrade
v9fs 825888 120612 705276 15% /opt

Hybrid Installation verification information
——————————————————–

IPGW[admin]# df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0f 266383 44080 200993 18% /
v9fs 767388 50548 716840 7% /image/IPSO-4.1-BUILD013-03.27.2006-223017-1515/rfs
/dev/wd0a 31775 161 29072 1% /config
/dev/wd0h 664831 205476 406169 34% /preserve
/dev/wd1d 37905549 23674 34849432 0% /var
procfs 4 4 0 100% /proc
mfs:92 7607 0 6998 0% /var/tmp2/upgrade
v9fs 837452 120612 716840 14% /opt

Hope this helps!

 

Restore the SmartUpdate Generate CPInfo Menu Option

This article describes how to restore the SmartUpdate “Generate CPInfo” menu option which has been disabled by default since the R77 release.

Background

A CPInfo can be generated by the standard “cpinfo -z -o <filename>” command on the console and then either FTP’d from the gateway / management centre to a local server or copied off using WinSCP or equivalent.

There can however be issues here, including:

  • there is no local FTP server to transfer the file to or technicians do not know how to use FTP from the command line
  • A security rule prevents FTP / SCP / SFTP between the gateway / management station and the FTP/SCP/SFTP client
  • WinSCP sometimes has buffer issues and the copy fails
  • The default shell on the gateway / management centre must be changed to /bin/bash for the WinSCP connection to work

A much easier way for the less technically minded is to use SmartUpdate – the Checkpoint console application – to generate and save a copy of the cpinfo on the local machine.

Since R77 however, this option has been disabled and the only option is to “Upload diagnostics CPInfo to Checkpoint.” This is fine if you have a direct-to-vendor support contract all companies except the largest corporations go through a reseller who will require a CPInfo for support purposes.

Using SmartUpdate to Generate a CPInfo

To re-enable the local “Generate CPInfo” menu, follow these instructions. Click on the images to see them full-size:

1. File -> Tools -> Upload diagnostics (CPInfo) to Checkpoint -> Settings

Open the settings menu

2. Enable the Generate CPInfo menu

Enable “Generate cpinfo” menu

3. Exit and restart the application

4. Locate the gateway, right click and choose “Generate CPInfo”:

Choose “Generate CPInfo”

Now you can generate CPInfos and save them from the application directly to your desktop – just like in the old days!

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