Mac users disconnect after 2-3 minutes

[Darren Rickets]

Hi, we are running a pilot across the university and what seems to be happening is that all the users that are using Windows pc's are fine but as soon as someone logs in using a mac the mac user is disconnected after 2-3 minutes. The Mac users are using wifi in their house. I have tested Macs within the University using the lan and wifi and work fine, but i had some issues when taking it home to try. The first attempts logged me out within minutes as well so i have checked firewall settings etc on my router and they are fine as i can connect via a windows laptop.
Mac user is using Lion and safari
BBB release 0.8 (18th June release) we have had the same problem for the last release as well

Any ideas would be appreciated

darren

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Darren,

Thanks for reporting this.  We've opened an issue for it

  http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/issues/detail?id=1246

We're very interested to resolve this one.  To help narrow down the source, can you (or have one of your students test) against 

  http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/

and let us know if you get logged out as well.  We have Macs we can test with and will try to reproduce this issue.  Can you give us details about your Mac and home wi-fi network as well.   Once we can reproduce the issue, we're half way there to fixing it.

Regards,... Fred

-- 
BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

darren

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[Darren Rickets]

Hi Fred,

Sorry about cross post, forgot i had already posted. We have tried the demo server and it works fine from both at home and from work. It doesn't log us out suddenly.
IMac is 10.7.4 with 8Gb memory basically just out of the box config. turned off firewall settings and antivirus. Home wifi is Virgin media cable 50mb link, but more like 30mb with some virgin branded router (no idea what make as it has been stripped of any useful info). only thing i didn't try was to plug imac directly into router to test.
BBB is latest version 0.8 2 Dual core processors  4gb memory (this is a virtual machine as it is a pilot, but have applied for funding for physical boxes).
Don't know if it may be related to the heartbeat that is sent ( will attached them later when i can find them again)

darren

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Darren,

> We have tried the demo server and it works fine from both at home and from work. It doesn't log us out suddenly.

Just to confirm ... that's using wifi, but when you access your BigBlueButton server, your getting logged out?

On area to investigate is whether the University is doing any packet shaping on incoming connections?  We had a problem at another University where remote users couldn't connect, but this might be related.  BigBlueButton used port 1935.

Of course, this doesn't make sense as the packets should be the same (access remotely from wifi or lan), but there is clearly something different.  The other possibility is that when accessing remotely to your University, you are tunnelling to BigBlueButton (again, this doesn't make immediate sense as the connections between wifi or lan should be the same, but your seeing different behaviour).

Can you turn on the debug log in the client.  On your BigBlueButton server, edit

   /var/www/bigbluebutton/client/conf/config.xml

and change

  <layout showLogButton="false" ...

to

  <layout showLogButton="true" ...

Reconnect to your server, then click the small document icon in the lower right-hand corner.  It will show a log window.  Look for the lines

6/20/2012 07:36:30.813 [DEBUG] NetConnectionDelegate::Connecting to RTMP://demo.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton/1 ...

6/20/2012 07:36:31.001 [DEBUG] NetConnectionDelegate:Connection to viewers application succeeded.

and let us know if you get RTMP or RTMPT.  If you can do this in a setup that is disconnected after 2-3 minutes, it will tell us if you are accessing directly (RMTP - port 1935) or tunnelling (RTMPT - port 80).

Regards,... Fred

-- 
BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

If that's the case, can you check with your University to see if they 

darren

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[Darren Rickets]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for your help, i will try this tonight and let you know tomorrow

thanks
 

darren

[Darren Rickets]

Hi Fred,

Tried it last night and got messages that RMTP failed to connect and was connecting via RTMPT after a short while the system either directly logged me out or the voice stopped working and then the system slowly ground to a halt. Will need to have a look at the rules withing the firewall to check but i'm sure that port 1935 and port 9123 are open for both incoming and outgoing traffic, but will need to get our Ops team to check.

Darren

[Darren Rickets]

Hi Fred,

we have checked the firewall and it is open to allow traffic in and out, but we still have issues with imac users being disconnected.

Any ideas

Darren

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Darren,

> we have checked the firewall and it is open to allow traffic in and out,

We're very interested to figure this out.  Can you let us know if the iMac is now connecting via RTMP or RTMPT?

Regards,... Fred

-- 
BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

Darren

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[Darren Rickets]

Hi Fred,

When using the iMac internally on the network it uses RTMP (works fine) when using at home it uses RTMPT (fails) even though firewall is set up to use RTMP incoming and outgoing.  I have set up the API to allow testing directly through to the server as normally it would through Moodle. If you want to test to see if i have missed anything or try to get the same error I can email you the server address 

Darren

[Fred Dixon]

Thanks for giving us access to your server.  We can reproduce the problem here.  Now looking into what's causing our iMac to disconnect from your BigBlueButton server.

Regards,... Fred

-- 
BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

Darren

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[Darren Ricketts]

Hi Fred,

Just checked the time and date and discovered it's an hour out so have updated that. I know Mac's have an issue if server time is out.

Darren

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Darren,

An update on our end.  

1.  We accessed an internal BigBlueButton server (on our LAN) from a PC and iMac via tunneling.  

Result: Both computers stayed connected.

2.  We accessed your BigBlueButton server from a PC and iMac via tunneling.

Result: PC is solid, iMac drops connection within a minute.  

3.  We setup an external BigBlueButton server (outside our firewall) from a PC and iMac via tunneling. 

Result: The PC was solid, but the iMac intermittently dropped connection ... some times it was less than a minute, other times it stayed connected for over an hour.

 It's definitely something that is outside our firewall as with iMac we had connections open in both (2) and (3) and (2) would remain connected, whereas (3) would drop.

We're doing more test to narrow down.

Regards,... Fred

-- 
BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

[Darren Rickets]

Hi Fred,

Thank you very much for all your help (talk about going above and beyond the call of duty). We have now changed the firewall to allow traffic to be routed in and out using 1935 only and it has solved the issue that we were having. I have tried the system with several other members of staff and had a video conference using a mix of iMac's and pc's and it was successful :-)

Thanks again for your help as this is probably the only product where the developers actually care about their product and will do almost anything to get it fixed.

Great product, Great Support

Thanks

Darren