Spotify connect kills internet connection on router

[Henriko8]

Plan

Premium

Country

Austria

Device

Samsung Galaxy Tab A, Spotify Connect on Cambridge Audio CXNv2

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

Since a couple of weeks I am having issues with Spotify connect.

The connection to my streamer works, songs can be played just fine. But before long (in what seemed increasingly shorter intervals) my internet connection is killed. I mean not just the connection of my device to the internet - my router is caused to hang up and loses the internet connection completely. Looking in the log files of the router (a Zyxel DX3101), it says something like: user.err dhcp6c: client6_start: client6_start, user.err dhcp6c: client6_send: client6_send, daemon.info pppd: Hangup (SIGHUP)

Everything else works just right (like our Internet connection in general, or playing Internet Radio on my Streamer). I restarted my router many times, even did a factory reset of my streamer. What finally seemed to help was to do a clean uninstall oft the Spotify app. So far the problem seems to occur less often than before - but unfortunately it still occurs more often than you'd want it to (and kicks the whole family out of their internet activities…).

The problem only occurs when using Spotify Connect, and it seems especially after having used the Skip button for a couple of times. The app freezes, the internet connection is gone.

I am at the end of ideas what I could do, maybe there is a bug in Spotify Connect somehow?

[Joan]

Hi there @Henriko8,

Thanks for reaching out. Does this happen on other Wi-Fi networks (and by extension other routers) or only on this one? Please test this if you haven't already. Also send us a video of the behaviour so we can see exactly what happens. If the file is too big to attach here, you can send it via Google Drive or as an unlisted YouTube video.

Let us know how it goes.

[Henriko8]

Hi,

thanks for trying to help!

The problem is that this behaviour seems to occur rather randomly and unpredictable. Yesterday evening, everything was running as expected (we tried with the Samsung Tab as well as with an iPhone) - no problems! This morning, I switch on my streamer, start playing a song, skip to the next – boom, gone is my internet connection. This evening, it worked for an hour or so, even when switching between different playlists, pausing and skipping songs. Until to a certain moment (to me not different from any moment before) – boom, there we go again. This is really weird!

Here’s what happened in the last moments of my connection:

On the tablet I skip from song A to song B, and artwork and all song information of song B is shown there. But on the streamer, the old song A keeps playing for a little while. That’s when the internet connection is lost, and on the tablet no song information (art work, title) is shown anymore. After a minute or so, when the router has automatically reconnected to the internet, both streamer and tablet are in synch again, and playback is resumed where song A stopped – shown on the tablet and on the streamer. Skip to song B again – this time it plays with no problems.

What I can say is that the problem emerged after an older router (ADB VV 2220) got replaced by a new one (Zyxel DX3101), since we upgraded from bandwith 80 to 150 Mbit/s (and Wi-Fi now has 2.4/5 GHz versions).

As nothing else in my setup had changed, that’s why at first I suspected the router was the culprit! I even reached out to my internet provider. They said if everything is working fine (which it certainly does) except one product, it’s not their (routers) fault. I guess they have a point there.

I tried to test with the old router, but that doesn’t work anymore; I don’t have a collection of different routers at home, so I can’t test other setups.

Maybe Spotify Connect and the Zyxel DX3101 for some reason don’t like each other (although only under “certain” circumstances).

[Eni]

Hey @Henriko8, 

Thanks for your detailed description. 

Could you check if the firmware of your streamer has any pending updates? 

On another note, could you ask a friend or a relative to log in to their account on your device and check if they can replicate this behavior with their account on the streamer?

Let us know how it goes.

[Henriko8]

Hi,

the firmware of my streamer is up to date.

We have Spotify Duo, so were able to try from another acount (via an iPhone). The behaviour could be replicated there (while streaming via AirPlay for example had no problems).

[Henriko8]

Also working (at least as long as I tried) is when selecting streaming to the device via chromecast in the spotify app. So it really seems to be Spotify Connect causing the trouble?

[Alex]

Hi, there @Henriko8,

Thanks for the post and the info.

It's possible that the streamer itself causes this issue. Can you check if the connection crashes when you stream from a phone to another device, using Spotify Connect with the network streamer switched off? If the connection stays stable, this means that the streamer is contributing to the crash, so you can try the following:

• Try switching the router's frequency from 2.4 Ghz to 5 Ghz or vice versa.
• Check online if you can find any firmware updates for the  CXN V2.

Let us know how it goes.

[Henriko8]

Hi,

I think I finally found out where the problem is. Seems like the wired connection of the streamer via power line causes the problem.

I have been using my streamer via a power line connection for about three years. Never any problems, everything worked like a charm, until recently. One more try was switching the streamer to a „Wi-Fi“ only connection - and so far I have not experienced the disconnection problem (fingers crossed).

So I unplugged the power line adaptors, reset the adaptors, and established the powerLAN again from scratch. After having done all that, I swichted the streamer back to wired. Everything (including Spotify Connect) worked fine for a day or so, until (one skip too many at some point?) something caused the router to hang up again.

It’s a bit of a mystery to me. For about three years Spotify on the CXNv2 has been running happily on that exact same powerline connection, never any problems. So maybe the new router is more „sensitive“ to „something“ happening on the signal path (though shutting down the whole internet connection seems a bit extrem a reaction to me); or my powerline adaptors (Devolo 550+) all of a sudden have a problem, or whatever.

Anyway, using a Wi-Fi only connection on the streamer seems to work, so I have some sort of a solution.