DirecTv receiver and your PC on same network?

[Ol Smoke]

I found this little tidbit out the other day when I was trying to figure out why my ping and my system seemed to slow down at various times.

 

It turns out it was my HDD-DVR DirecTv receiver.  Thats right.

 

I got rid of Netflix for a while so I plugged the Directv box into my network here at the house.  Not long after, I started getting weird pings

and a slow down when I was playing COD4.

 

So I was sitting in my computer room the other day and looked at the router.  The #3 hookup was just going crazy.  My PC was doing it's little

ping thing and so was my wife's PC, but the one to the Directv box looked like it was flowing data.  So I went in and unplugged it.  Then I got

to thinking,  could that be the weird ping issue I am having and the lag problem in the game?  So I tested it out.  Sure enough.

 

So I placed a call to Directv and their tech guy told me that the box sends and receives data all the time.  This is to keep the On Demand menu

up to date and to check on the performance of the system box.  There are times when it has to do a cleaning cycle on the menus and it gets a

lot of data from Directv during this time.

 

So I plugged into the COD4 game and kinda played around while watching the router.  Sure enough, when I started to get a little laggy in the game,

the Directv box was actively sending and receiving data.  I also noticed that it did it quite often.  So I reached up and unplugged the DIrectv box from the

router and noticed a big improvement in game play.  I also unplugged my wife's PC, but it didnt do anything for it.

 

So just a word of advice from an old tech.  When you have a blu-ray player or directv or dish box plugged into your router,  unplug it before you play.

 

Now here is a bad thing about the directv box.  If it loses the com link to the router, it also loses the ability to restore the connection when you plug it back in.

You will have to restart the directv box with the cable plugged into your router before it will re-set the network connection.  A pain in the ass.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Ol' Smoke