Cinesend device requires a working Internet connection to do a local file copy

[Frank Cox]

The Cinesend device requires a working Internet connection to do a local file copy.

My ISP had a problem this afternoon where traffic was apparently not getting routed past a certain point on their network. So while the Internet connection was active and working, it wouldn't actually send traffic anywhere.

Since I had received the Adams Family movie on the Cinesend device overnight last night I decided to copy it to the cinema server while I was getting ready for tonight's show. The Internet service was still down at that point.

The Cinesend device responded so slowly that it (either the Cinesend device or the cinema server or both) timed out just retrieving the available filenames from the Cinesend device on the cinema server.

As soon as the Internet service was working again, everything went back to normal and I could view the files and copy the movie onto the cinema server at full speed with no issues.

So somehow the Cinesend device relies on or is waiting for something that it's getting over the Internet before it will do a local file copy.

I thought this is an interesting bit of information that might be handy to know for future troubleshooting if someone says that they can't get the movie copied from the Cinesend device to their TMS or cinema server.

[Leo Enticknap]

I can think of two possible explanations: either there is some sort of security provision in the Cinesend device whereby it has to "phone home" for authorization to release content over the LAN, or its NIC is configured with a static route to the gateway (i.e. it will not communicate with other devices on the LAN through the switch as a straight shot), and the gateway/router was malfunctioning as a result of the bad WAN connection. Does the Cinesend box have separate NICs for Internet and the connection to the media NIC on your DCP server, or does everything go through one?

[Frank Cox]

The Cinesend device has two separate network connections, one for the projector's local network and the other for the big scary world. That's actually all it has for connections other than the power cord. It really is the proverbial black box.

It didn't actually tell me to buzz off when I tried to do the file copy, it was just so slow that something timed out somewhere along the way. When I told the cinema server to retrieve the list of available files it sat for a while and then eventually showed me the first one on the list and then sat with that little spinny "busy" doodad on the screen again and eventually just stopped doing anything at all.

After the show, by which point my Internet was back up and working again, I tried it again and everything worked as normal.

Ultimately it isn't really a problem so much as just something that's it's good to be aware of, i.e. if the Cinesend device appears to not be working make sure that the Internet connection is working even if what you're doing doesn't have any obvious need to run over the Internet.

[Carsten Kurz]

You could try to repeat that task with the cable to the router or wall box unplugged.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It might be something as stupid as the box not responding, because it needs to do a DNS lookup for almost every "transaction" it makes. If no DNS servers are reachable or is only producing timeouts, because the Internet is down, this often slows down stuff considerably.

It feels a bit backward that you would need a permanent internet connection for stuff that's already been downloaded, but then again, many of those boxes presume they're always connected to the mothership. It shows how dependent we have become on this magical thing called "the cloud"...

[Leo Enticknap]

Why would 10.10.1.1 (for example) need to do a DNS lookup in order to initiate a FTP connection to 10.10.1.2? There would be no DNS entry to look up or resolve.

I was wondering if this behavior is security-related: specifically, that Cinesend wants to maintain logs of what DCP servers have ingested what content from its devices, and that is based on pre-authorization before the download takes place.

[Mike Blakesley]

Wow, I"m jealous that you're getting satellite delivery. I think we are probably the only first run theater in North America that's still getting the stupid hard drives.

[Frank Cox]

It's currently about 40% of the time that I'm getting stuff through Cinesend and the rest of the time it's a hard drive on the courier truck. Though it's slowly increasing as time goes on, which suits me since it saves me about $50 every time I get a movie that way.

Cinesend isn't satellite delivery. It gets downloaded over the internet. The whole thing is just a magical hands-off process, though. I don't do anything other than leave the machine turned on. I occasionally get an email from Cinesend saying that "A new DCP is available: Movie Title", and that's all there is to it. If I check the content on the Cinesend device, it's there.

I have the Cinesend device set up as an ingest source on the cinema server, so the procedure to copy the movie onto the server is pretty much the same as getting it off of a hard drive. Pick the title off of the list of available stuff, hit "copy" and let 'er rip.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Why would 10.10.1.1 (for example) need to do a DNS lookup in order to initiate a FTP connection to 10.10.1.2? There would be no DNS entry to look up or resolve.

I was wondering if this behavior is security-related: specifically, that Cinesend wants to maintain logs of what DCP servers have ingested what content from its devices, and that is based on pre-authorization before the download takes place.

A lot of stuff does DNS lookups for all kinds of calls, sometimes just for logging purposes. Even IP addresses can be resolved back to their hostname, if configured correctly, using reverse DNS records.

But a lot of stuff is also just badly coded or as you stated yourself, it may check the mothership with each and every "transaction" to check if stuff is allowed to happen. In this case, if DNS servers aren't reachable, stuff will take even longer to timeout.

[Greg Routenburg]

Frank, when you did the installation, did CineSend assign static IPs to both ports on the device or are you relying on DHCP? Are both ports in use and on separate networks?

There might be a software glitch that needs addressing on your CSX. I would reach out to them and get them to troubleshoot it for you. As I understand it, there's no "phone home" functionality to the device when a local transfer is happening.

[Frank Cox]

I sent them an email about it when it happened but didn't hear anything back so I assume it's the expected behaviour. Not that it matters much either way since it's working fine as long as it has the Internet service working.

I did encounter something else just now, though, which I guess can be put down at least partly to user error on my part.

A couple of days ago my Internet service suddenly got really really slow. I hadn't received any email from Cinesend stating that they were sending me anything, so that can't be what's suddenly caused the slowdown, so I reset the modem and all was well for a while. Next morning, it's slow again. I reset my router and now it's ok, and late last night it's slow again. Yet another router reset and hey, I just bought this router a month ago so maybe it's a piece of junk and I need to replace it again.

This morning it's slow again and I started unplugging everything on the network one by one to find out if something is running wild somehow and eating all of the bandwidth.

While I'm in the middle of doing this (and cursing) I got an email from Cinesend saying that No Time to Die is downloading. I checked their Venue Login to find the status of my Cinesend device and it shows three failed attempts to send me No Time To Die.

So I just restarted the download.

Bloody hell. I had discounted Cinesend as a reason for the slowdown because they hadn't sent me the email to say that they were sending me anything at this time. It looks like I've spent the past three days trying to solve a problem that I don't have.

Lesson learned: If there's a sudden slowdown on my Internet, check the Cinesend Venue Login and see if they're sending me something before taking any other action since they don't always send that email in a timely manner. I guess me resetting the router and pulling out wires and such caused the download that I didn't know was happening to error out three times. Now that I know what's going on I can just let 'er rip.

I just assumed that I'd always get an email when the download started since that's what has always happened before.

[Gordon McLeod]

We checked and all our cinesends work for transfers from it to local servers with the internet disconnected

[Frank Cox]

Weird.

I wonder, though... pulling the network cable isn't exactly the same environment as what was happening when I couldn't copy a file from the device. At that time, the network connection was active, up and running. It was just somehow null-routed so traffic couldn't travel past a certain point on my ISP's network and get out into the big scary world.

So maybe it works with no network connection at all but somehow doesn't when traffic is null-routed that way.

Another mysterious interaction of some kind.

This situation may never happen again.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Some fancy managed network equipment can show you graphs of what's happening on a certain port, you may want to check that out. It's a great way to find bandwidth hogs without randomly pulling strings.

[Bruce Cloutier]

I wonder, though... pulling the network cable isn't exactly the same environment as what was happening when I couldn't copy a file from the device. At that time, the network connection was active, up and running. It was just somehow null-routed so traffic couldn't travel past a certain point on my ISP's network and get out into the big scary world.

So maybe it works with no network connection at all but somehow doesn't when traffic is null-routed that way.

Probably a good call. The thing likely wants to phone home for copy approval (or logging) but they figured that it would need to work if there was no network. So the logic says if there is an active network then require remote approval. No network then just do the copy. But "active network" doesn't always mean Internet is available as Frank astutely surmises.

If you can set the gateway to a bogus address you might simulate this. You could pull the uplink from the closest switch. If it can't find the gateway it can't get to the Internet but the network would still be active.

Rookie programmers you know. Bobbleheads write the specs too.