Any Star Trek Discovery fan will appreciate my frustration on this one:
CBS All Access - a streaming service - normally plays through (but not for me) the smart TV widgets, a Roku device, on a HULU account on a PC, and direct from the service on a PC.
My router configuration does not let this streaming service connect for some reason. All of the other online streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Roku, etc.) work just fine, but CBS All Access, for some unknown reason, is being blocked by something - presumably my router.
The ISP modem is in “bridge mode”
I’m PPPoE with a static IP
I don’t know if the order of items in the firewall are out of sequence, so please help there if I need to rearrange, add, delete, or otherwise.
Sounds like a DNS issue..
What are you blocking with those drop forward rules? What are those lists?
You could disable all your forward drops and try again…
I believe you are correct on the DNS issue. That’s why my previous inquiry was asking about deleting “dynamic dns”. As soon as you guys solved this dynamic dns problem, I was able to cleanup the DNS settings to only two DNS servers. I’m using “alternate DNS” addresses to filter spam, commercials and ads on the entire network and preliminary testing is showing me that a base subscription of CBS All Access has hard encoded commercials. The base subscription has commercials and they won’t play through “alternate DNS” IP addresses and obviously CBS All Access doesn’t play well with this type of filtering.
Upgrading the subscription to “commercial free” is now allowing the CBS All Access app to work on the smart TV’s with built-in CBS widgets, as well as the Roku TCL TV.
I now have to test the actual free standing ROKU device (on another non-smart TV) to see if the streaming service works on it now that the account is upgraded to “commercial free” while still using “alternate DNS” IP addresses on the router.
Call me paranoid, but I see no reason to allow certain countries that are not nice to play anywhere near my network, so they are blocked by IP address. If an advertiser has online ads being hosted on servers that are in any of these countries, they get blocked. Although imperfect, its an added layer of defense for malware and virus propagation as well as reducing the chance than something on our network becomes a zombie.
You’re paranoid. I mean, statistically it helps. Block 10% of internet and you’ll have 10% less addresses that could be potentially dangerous. Block 50% and it will be even safer. Block all and you’ll be completely safe. But it’s also very easy to block something you don’t want to block. It’s not like various sources about which country has each address are always accurate, and it can also change in time.
This problem is now SOLVED. This is how: Using Alternate-DNS (for DNS resolution) with a CBS All Access subscription that includes Ads, doesn’t work. Obviously CBS All Access starts out the data stream with a commercial (an Ad) and when this fails to load (because Alternate - DNS drops the Ad) the actual data stream of the show you want to watch fails to start. Change the subscription to “commercial free” (which costs $4 more) and you can use “Alternate-DNS” IP addresses for DNS resolution. Some may ask why do this? Alternate DNS provides some level of filtering of Internet Ads and when people with slow ISP data streams (like me) need any edge we can find to speed up our service or block the junk - which makes more bandwidth for what we actually want.
I mean, statistically it helps. Block 10% of internet and you’ll have 10% less addresses that could be potentially dangerous. Block 50% and it will be even safer. Block all and you’ll be completely safe. But it’s also very easy to block something you don’t want to block. It’s not like various sources about which country has each address are always accurate, and it can also change in time.