70 minute loss of connection - please help

Hi all - my first post on your forum.

I am hoping the members of this forum can help where other forums have failed. I am getting desperate, so please respond if you have any ideas.

My setup:
Apple Mac connected to a BT Broadband Hub by ethernet cable. BT Broadband Hub is a wireless router. I have a Belkin Range Extender which picks up the signal and boosts it to my Roku Soundbridge M1001 at the far end of the house.

My problem:
All works well except that every 70 minutes (to the second) the Soundbridge loses the connection to the music library on the Mac and I have to reboot the Soundbridge to reconnect. However, the Soundbridge is still connected to the network as I don't lose internet radio connection.

Roku say it is an issue with the Belkin, and to be fair if I move the location of the Soundbridge so that it is in range to connect directly to the BT Hub, taking the Belkin out of the equation, all works fine.

Belkin have responded to say it is to do with Port forwarding settings, but won't explain what this means in practice. I have had various other suggestions from the Roku and the Firefly (server software) forums, the most useful to date being that it is likely that the Belkin is changing the encryption key every hour and then 10 mins later dumping the old one. I am using WEP encryption.

I would welcome any help or suggestions on how to identify this problem.



thanks
Duff

Hi all

I have some additional information, which I hope may get me a response here:

I have tested the setup with all encryption switched off on the router and the range extender, with no change in the problem, so think I can rule out it being a security issue.


However, I have realised that if I switch on the Soundbridge with a wireless connection to the Belkin Range Extender and then start firefly or itunes, the Soundbridge does not register that they are there. They have to be there when the Soundbridge is restarted, so even if I have firefly active on the network before I switch on the Soundbridge it doesn't pick it up.

Likewise, having connected to a music library, if I stop Firefly or close itunes, the Soundbridge still thinks they are there and lets me choose them and then says "Connection to server failed". This means that regardless of if the library is active or not, the Soundbridge is not interacting with it through the Belkin, except when I do a restart.

However, move the Soundbridge to a wireless connection through the router and the Soundbridge instantly updates its screen when firefly or itunes is switched on or off.

From this I deduce that the restart initialises the connection to the library, (firefly or itunes) and then is happy to play its contents, but the link is one way (from the library to the Soundbridge). The guess is that at a point some 70 minutes after the connection the Soundbridge must re-check for the presence of the library and not being able to get confirmation that it is still there, brings back the message that the library has shut down.

I now need someone to confirm this thinking, and I need a wireless expert to help me figure out why after the restart the Soundbridge-belkin-router-mac connection is lost, when we know we have a mac-router-belkin-Soundbridge connection (the route the music files are taking) and that the Soundbridge-belkin-router connection is still there (because we still have an internet radio link).

What does the Soundbridge restart do, that the rest of the software can't?
Is the break in connection between the router and the mac or does the link from the Soundbridge to the internet differ in any way to the link from the Soundbridge to the library.

I would appreciate any help and support you may offer.

Duff