My UnitiStar is so frustrating. It constantly looses connection to my iPhone 15 and I’m told the Streamer is not responding.
The ‘help’ on the phone tells me I’m connected to ‘default’ network but when I check on the Naim it correctly identifies the appropriate network and happily plays internet radio.
Bluetooth is on and discoverable but UnitiStar doesn’t appear in the list though at other times the app reports Bluetooth is off when it clearly isn’t. Looking on my iPad I find UnitiStar is showing in Bluetooth but US not appearing in app.
The router is in line of sight and no more than three metres away.
And it’s not just the UnitiStar, my Qube is frequently prone to the same problem.
Both have to be rebooted at least three or four times a week.
I reached out to Naim on this a while ago but was just sent a cut-and-paste ‘help’ file so full of jargon it was unreadable.
I suspect its a network problem (it usually is) but you don’t say what your wireless hub (router) is.
Have you set the IP addresses on all system devices with DHCP, if not I suggest thats the first step.
Have you set the iPad Wi-Fi to 'Private Wi-Fi Address? if you have, turn it off.
(find this in Settings>Wi-Fi>your wireless hub ID>Private Wi-Fi Address - tab OFF)
I had a similar issue in that my Naim streamer would disappear from the network more than once a day. Rebooting everything brought it back.
Then I noticed a pattern to the problems that coincided with an Apple TV coming online.
Confusing……
I spent many an hour trying to figure things out.
Then a colleague suggested swapping out the Ethernet lead to the streamer.
All problems solved. No visible issues with the lead, but obviously it had degraded in some way.
Also, have you got a VPN running on your phone whilst on your home network? My phone VPN ‘knows’ to disconnect when I’m on trusted WiFi. Apple have a quasi VPN call Private Relay; it’s found under your iCloud Settings.
This all sound like, given the limited info provided, a fault with the network bridge used between wifi and switch, likely in your router… in short it’s not handling group addresses properly and timing out. Group addressing is used for UPnP device discovery and polling.
I am afraid if that is the case, solutions are get a firmware update for your router that fixes this, a better router, or a different WiFi solution.
I suspect you may also see this with other UPnP discovery devices like some printers or some home automation device discovery.
Not a lot Naim can do as they rely on a correctly functioning home network for the standardized protocols they use to work correctly, in this case SSDP.
BTW things like DHCP are nothing to do this, as that is used for unicast IP addressing, not group multicast IP addressing used for discovery. The group address for this in ip4 is 235.255.255.250
If you are lucky you might see a setting called ‘IGMP snooping’ in your router… if so ensure it is enabled.
If you are using a configurable switch such as Cisco 2960 I can give you some config that might help fix other sub standard network components such as a wifi bridge in this regard on your home network. Essentially activate an IGMP querier to try and force devices to behave correctly… doesn’t always work, depends how faulty the errand device is.
Thanks everyone for your kind replies. In truth I have little idea about the terms and solutions offered. I guess I didn’t realise when I chose Naim that it demands a level of competence unavailable to an ordinary bloke who just wanted to listen to music on a good piece of English equipment.
If it won’t behave on a proprietary router it’s clearly not designed for the common home.
But thanks anyway.
If more than one product have an issue I would put my efforts into the router. Some routers are really bad. Not knowing what you have I would look into a new one and one from a well known brand which continuously update their software. Some have routers left from the past with 15 year old software running. Both a security and compatibility challenge.
This is coming up regularly these days and I believe it will be network related, affecting how the app communicates with the U-Star & Qb.
Yes, I agree that proprietary routers should just work, but some are better than others. Hence the posts requesting for this info to assist further.
Another area of consideration with iOS products is their Private Wi-Fi Address feature. Haven’t quite got my head around what this is doing and why it affects UPnP product visibility, akin to your experiences, as yet but it is certainly something else to look at.
Not sure if this helps, but endeavouring to reinforce what others are suggesting.
Most home network setups are extremely poor quality; either because of the comically cheap hardware provided by ISP’s, and/or ignorant generic settings that don’t work with your homes layout, neighbours WiFi settings, etc. etc. etc.
Your options are:
Learn how to configure the settings on your existing equipment (may only result in marginal improvement if it’s cheap ISP provided)
Buy replacement hardware that works better/smarter out of the box that needs less setting (like Netgear Orbi’s)
Either way a little knowledge and experimentation is required. There is literally no solution that will just “work”.
Hooray. I knew it wasn’t the router because the UnitiStar always correctly showed the network in Settings and I never had a problem streaming radio if I used the Naim remote; ditto Qb.
The issue to my mind was the iPhone app. A recent update to the app has sorted it all, so thank you Naim. My fingers stay crossed.