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Clients dropping from Multicast at join

Answered Clients dropping from Multicast at join

  • Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:50 PM
     
     
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    We've got a WDS server running on Win 2K8 R2 SP1.  It's on a blade with a couple Broadcom NIC's teamed now.  We've also had it setup with a single NIC with the same results. 

    The problem we are having is machines are inconsistently dropping out of multicast sessions shortly after joining.  I'll setup a schedule-cast with no threshold or time and have machines join up.  I'll see all the stations join but most will drop out of the session within a minute and drop to unicast. 

    If I reboot the machines that dropped they will occasionally join back up and wait properly. It seems like the clients are seeing the session ok, but just have trouble keeping the connection. 


    • Edited by mrhector Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:51 PM typo
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  • Friday, February 24, 2012 8:23 AM
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    Hi,

    At first, I suggest that you need to verify the prerequisites of performing multicast deployment, for the detailed information, you could refer to the article below:

    Title: Performing Multicast Deployments
    URL: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd637994(v=ws.10).aspx

    Please pay attention to the Part “When to Implement Multicasting”.

    Towards dropping from multicast at join the session, at the same time, we need to verify the settings on the WDS server, just like the figure below:

     

    Regards,
    James

    James Xiong

    TechNet Community Support

     
  • Friday, February 24, 2012 5:44 PM
     
     
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    Hi James,

    Thanks for reply.  I've gone through the documents and can confirm that we do meet all the requirements. We currently have the transfer settings set to (slow,medium,fast), and I've noticed that when a session does start occasionally stations will drop to separate sessions correctly. 

    If the stations manage to stay connected during the initial handshake of the multicast session all goes well.  The problem is it is inconsistent when establishing that connection.  I'll boot up a lab of 20 stations and maybe half will connect to the multicast session and stay connected.  Usually after rebooting the ones that failed once or twice they will join up properly.  If I repeat the procedure ones that worked previously may fail, it's very inconsistent. 

    I'm thinking it may be something to do with the client or server timing out the multicast session but I am not sure if there is a way to adjust the timeout.

    Once they do establish the connection and the multicast session starts it does work and the session does finish. 

     
  • Monday, February 27, 2012 7:27 AM
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    Hi,

    Thanks for your clarification. I understand that once the multicast session established, it will work properly. If not, it will come up with a timeout error.

    At first, please type the following command to generate general server health information:

    WDSUTIL /get-server /show:all /detailed

    This command causes general server health information to be logged in the Application log and in the System log.

    Then on the client, we need to find out the affected PC’s setup logs on the client computer.

    the failure occurs in Windows PE before the disk configuration page of the WDS client is completed, you can find the logs at the X:\Windows\Panther folder. Use Shift+F10 to open a command prompt, and then change the directory to the location.

    And post your findings here to get further analysis.

    Regards,
    James

    James Xiong

    TechNet Community Support

     
  • Thursday, March 01, 2012 1:07 AM
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    Hi,

    How is everything is going? I hope everything is fine with you. If there is any update from your side, please feel free to let me know!

    Regards,

    James

    James Xiong

    TechNet Community Support

     
  • Thursday, March 01, 2012 4:26 PM
     
     
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    Hi James,

    Sorry for the late reply.  I've been checking the logs for various machines and it looks like there may be larger problems with the multicast traffic getting through reliably.  In the ones that failed I was seeing the error 0x800705B4, indicating it had timed out.  As for the session itself, I noticed the speed would fluctuate a lot and the client logs are seeing a ton of repair data blocks and retries.

    We do have a few different multicast servers on our network but have made sure to give them their own multicast IP range.  I suspect it may be something in the routing but I am planing on doing some more multicast testing with the tools provided here http://www.29west.com/docs/TestNet/testnet.html. 

    Is there something I can use to track which way the data is getting lost?  I'm not sure if the clients are having the issues or something possible on the server. 

    Vic

     
  • Friday, March 02, 2012 6:35 AM
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    The link you provided is used to test WDS multicast transmission capability. Have you done that test to verify the condition of the multicast transmission?

    And I noticed that one client received the error message when installing the OS, just like I mentioned in my previous post,

    If the failure occurs in Windows PE before the disk configuration page of the WDS client is completed, you can find the logs at theX:\Windows\Panther folder. Use Shift+F10 to open a command prompt, and then change the directory to the location.

    And post your findings here to get further analysis.

    For the detailed information about WDS logging, you could refer to the link below:

    Title: How to enable logging in Windows Deployment Services (WDS) in Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008  and in Windows Server 2008 R2

    URL: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936625

    Regards,

    James

    James Xiong

    TechNet Community Support