[THRobinson]

Hey guys, I have two Beelink GT1 Ultimates running CoreElec with KODI for media players in my house.  Had these running start of 2019 so, quite a few years. And probably once a year I take the SD cards out, format, put the CoreElec img back on and quickly set them up and let them run. But not this time.

I have a cascading network setup, and everything is connected with Cat6 ethernet cable, nothing (except cell phones) is using WiFi.  I will attach a quick sketch to help clear up the setup.

Basically, my TV setup works fine.  Media scrapes, connections are good. I'm using HTPC1 and PC1, so I'm connected to the cascaded router next to the NAS (WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra). 

Family TV is right next to where the modem and primary router are, with fibre optic coming into the modem and again, Cat6 everything else. Everything worked just fine, except this week when I reinstalled everything. I could connect to the NAS and a share folder on PC2 so they can access their video folder there.  Been working for years. I connect, I scrape, I come back and half the scraping is a mess and now no longer connected to the NAS. I check and also booted from PC1. I reboot and now my network access works for PC1 again but not the NAS. I check the NAS and seems fine, so I reset the password and it's working again. For a day.

I did a lot of changes on the NAS, cleaning up file names and such so scraping works better. I have a great NAS setup and everything named etc... but sometimes it scrapes the wrong items so, did some changes. Anyways... formatted the SD card again and again, setting up I could connect, add the NAS/PC1 folders, access is fine, start scraping and an hour later an even bigger mess than before. PC1 access again was lost but came back after a reboot. NAS I can't get back at all. 

So... rebooted both routers, NAS and HTPC2. No change. PC2 access is fine, but can't access the NAS. Deleted them off the NAS and re-added. On HTPC2 I added the NAS folders again, and soon as added, access gone. 

My system uses a different name/password so I have full access, and the family has an account setup on the NAS as well with read-only access. Thought maybe an account issue? So formatted the SD card again, this time I stuck it into my HTPC1 player and setup from there using the family name/password. Like before, I could access the NAS/PC1 and add them, scraping now and so far everything looks just fine. So not a bad account on the NAS. 

Kinda stumped.

Excluding the years I ran this off a PC, the Beelink has been running fine on this setup for 3.5yrs. Nothing has changed and I've done this yearly without issues. CoreElec is the same, they stopped updating it for this hardware over a year ago so, not different software either.  Seems to let me have access long enough to add it to the system and usually start scraping for info then at some point drops. Kodi says still connected, and the connection to PC1's share folder seems intermittent. That said, I was able to connect to it just fine and play videos at the same time the NAS connection was dead and gave no access at all. So, it's not like I have all access with the network, or no access at all.

Speed issue? 

The HTPC2 connects to the same router as PC2, but to get to the NAS has to go through the main router to the second router then to the NAS. 

I will say, when it was working, the KODI library cleaning took way way longer than mine. Like 5min for mine at most versus 30min for it.  Hard to know if because I clean mine often and they never clean theirs at all, or because of network speeds. But again, everything is ethernet connected, good fiber optic in, not sure of the router brand but it's from the internet company, and my router it cascades to is a TPLink TL-WR1043ND. Older but works fine (I think).

Any suggestions for someone not very skilled in networking?

[Jogee]

Does your MODEM have router abilities?  If so, have you disabled them?  Also, if the MODEM does have router abilities have you disabled the router abilities of ROUTER1?  Based on some of what you wrote, I can only guess that your MODEM and ROUTER1 are supplied by your internet service provider -- which may mean these questions I can kind of assume but it's best not to do that.

To which port is the ethernet cable feed coming from ROUTER1 connected to the TPLink (ROUTER2)?  One of the Ethernet/LAN ports or the Internet port?

How do you have your TPLink router (ROUTER2) configured?  Default, like out of the box?  Or have you turned some things off?

How do you reference your NAS when you try to connect to it?  By name or by IP address?

From a quick review of the manual, that TPLink doesn't have a bridge mode (basically turns off the router part and leaves the wireless and LAN bits alone).  If it is basically out of the box configured then you may have a double NAT setup and possibly competing DHCP servers.  Hence my above questions.

It's not clear why you have a router being used at ROUTER2, a simple gigabit ethernet switch might be more appropriate for your setup.  If only for simplicity.

[THRobinson]

Well, modem/router1 are ISP provided, then the TPLink is what I had from before we upgraded. I think it's a LAN-to-LAN cascade... really wish I had the link to what I followed to do it, thought I saved it. Was years ago I did it. ROUTER1 connects to ROUTER2 via the LAN not WAN though.

NAS I connect to through //mycloudex2ultra not the IP address.

The setup on HTPC1 works fine.

I setup HTPC2 on HTPC1 and worked fine so I know the family access account is ok, then put the SD card into HTPC2 and same issues again where says connected but won't connect to the NAS and usually not to PC2 but sometimes it connects to PC2 fine just not the NAS.

I remembered a setting that I enabled last time I did this though, where it waits for a network connection before starting KODI and can choose how long, I think 10sec was default. I enabled it and it's been working perfect since.

That said... I guess why? Why does it need a 10sec delay at startup to connect properly, and why was it connecting and dropping connections before I did that?

Would it possible run better/faster with something like this Netgear 8-port Switch?

I was looking at updating the TPLink because it's getting older, though still works, but also out of connections and wanted to run another cable upstairs from ROUTER2 but all 4 LAN ports are connected. Though those switches seem cheap, but not seeing any WiFi antennae which is a no go. Very old farm house, thick walls. ROUTER1 WiFi not strong enough to reach ROUTER2, definitely not upstairs.