Android TV network connections not closing under 384.9

[Morac]

After updating my RT-AC88U from 384.8_2 to 384.9, my Sony XBR55X930E Android (Oreo) TV started having network problems where the network (Ethernet) would get slow or simply die. I tried rebooting the TV and even unplugging it, but nothing stopped this from happening after a short while.

I did some digging and saw on the router connection log page that the TV had at least 100 open connections, mostly to Google’s servers and most with the same IP address and port (5228 and 443). The tools page on the router reported over 140 active connections. These connection didn’t appear to be closing.

Also the TV was making DHCP requests at least every 15 minutes and many times much more often than that.

From what I could tell, the TV was simply opening too many network connections until eventually the network died.


I reverted back to 384.8_2 and rebooted the TV and saw the TV open a bunch of connections, but they changed to the “CLOSED” or “Time wait” state on the router connections log page. These eventually went away leaving a single connection. There was also one “unreplied” DNS query to 8.8.8.8 which must be hard coded somewhere since I’m not using that.

Under tools there are now 60 active connections.

So basically under 384.9 the TV’s network connections never closed (or closed slowly) and the TV made tons of unneeded DHCP requests. Under 384.8_2, the TV is closing it’s unused connections and is making normal DHCP requests.

I’m at a complete loss as for why this would happen, but there’s obviously something in 384.9 that the TV does not like (or vice-versa).

I posted this in the 384.9 thread, but figured I’d post it in its own thread since this seems like a major problem.

@RMerlin any idea what could cause this?

 

[Morac]

I’ve found after reverting back to 384.8_2 that while the TV is on, it maintained one open connection. After turning the TV off, DHCP requests started going out every few minutes. Each time that happens the TV opens more outbound connections. After 8 hours it’s up to 60 open connections because then connections are opening faster than they close.

As such it seems like whatever happened is persisting to an extent.

 

[RMerlin]

Smart TV network code is often pure garbage. Look at Samsung for example who still tries to obtain a DHCP lease with the hostname of "localhost".

I prefer to avoid them like the plague, and rely on a decent box like an nVidia Shield TV or a Roku instead.

 

[Morac]

I understand that but what I don’t understand is why the TV suddenly started freaking out after updating to 384.9. I’ve been using the TV for over a year without issue.

As for why I use it. I mainly don’t. I use an Apple TV, but for Dolby Vision video the TV looks better because of some oddities with DV over HDMI. Also the TV has built in Google Assistant.

Mainly the issue though is that I use IP remote control to control the TV which obviously stops working if the network dies.

I'll mention that so far under 384.8_2, while I am seeing an increased number of connections and DHCP requests while the TV is off, I'm not seeing that while the TV is on and so far the TV connection hasn't died yet.

 

[Morac]

I think I might have my first clue. I see a ridiculous number of TIME_WAIT connections from my TV to port 8200 on the router, which according to the process list is the DLNA server. I don't use the DLNA server on the router. I don't really know if that's an issue or not though because there are also a ton of connections to port 8200 from various other devices on my network

 

[Morac]

Also the network dies simply having the TV on the network. Even if I haven’t used any network features.

 

[Morac]

So it’s been about 24 hours back on 384.8_2 and despite the excessive connections and DHCP requests when the TV is off (standby), the TV is behaving normally when on and not losing its network connection.

Under 384.9 I would lose network in anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours, plus there were excessive connections and DHCP requests when the TV was on.

As such I have to conclude that the router firmware is the problem

Edit: 48 hours now on 384.8_2 without issue.

 

[Morac]

Still not having any issue with 384.8_2 since downgrading.

I did discover that if my Internet goes down that the TV will report a loss of the Ethernet connection. That means that for whatever reason under 384.9, my AC88U was blocking connections from the TV to the Internet after awhile. I still don’t know why.