chrisorsi said: Hey all any help would be great.  I'm new to this, and just got my Slingbox and catcher set up.  Here's the deal.  I live in Japan and have a Slingbox set up back in the States.  The catcher is here, hardwired into my wireless router(Belkin N series, don't have model number at the moment), which plugs into the modem.  When I try to access the catcher on my TV, I get the "Cannot connect due to a Network Error" message.  However, I can watch the Slingbox with Slingplayer on all 3 computers in my house, so I don't think it is a port issue.  I tried all the suggestions I could find here(resetting the catcher and opening port 5001), but it's still a no go.  I checked on the updates and it is good to go, no updates available.  So whats next?  Any suggestions would be awesome.  Thanks!!

So, you've portforwarded your slingbox and router back in the states and you still can't connect using the slingcatcher? When you are streaming something from the slingplayer software on the computer, and press alt.shift.i, what comes up under stream type info?  If it's a Snatt stream, then it's a port forwarding issue on the slingbox side. The catcher doesn't do SNATT. The slingcatcher needs to be running a TCP stream to work with the slingbox.

As has been pointed out to me, a relay stream is just borrowing server time from Amazon when the slingmedia servers are full. Brandon, the moderator, pointed the following out to me.

"From what I have gleamed they are using SNATT when Sling Media is using their servers and NAT to sling and when they get overloaded they are using Amazon's AWS service as a RELAY to do it"

If you check your streaming again periodically, you'll probably see another stream type come up.

If you find out that you are getting a SNATT stream, and have verified that you have tried everything, ( I see some are port forwarding using 443 rather than 5001 ), have gone to the port forward web site

http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm

seen if your router is on there to make sure you haven't missed a step, and after all that you still can't get the slingcatcher to connect, then hopefully someone more knowledgeable can provide you with a clearer answer, because I'm out of ideas other than to think its a specific router problem that has issues with port forwarding. If it turns out that you are getting a SNATT stream, you have joined a very exclusive club of people asking why the slingcatcher can't do SNATT when the slingplayer software can, and why can't they just update the firmware on the catcher and find a way to make SNATT work so we don't have to screw around with all these port forwarding issues with the same protocol that works with the slingplayer software and connects to the slingbox 100% of the time. My slingbox was setup with automatic UPNP and I didn't use manual port forwarding, so I've got a slingcatcher network connection issue as well, but my slingcatcher still works every three days or so, but then I have to reset the modem / router / slingbox and then it works again for another three days. (It's a DHCP time lease issue). I'm too far away to fix this issue at this point, so I just live with it. I've learned enough that the slingcatcher works perfectly when it works, but if you've got any network connection issues, due to incorrect port forwarding, you'll encounter the connection network error you have, but I don't know how to further help you when I can't even help myself until I get to my router / slingbox at this point to fix the settings. I'm praying that sling see that manual port forwarding is a headache for a lot of people and eventually they find a way to make the slingcatcher work off the same principle as the slingplayer software or they release another slingcatcher down the road that can handle the backup SNATT stream and bypass these portforwarding issues.

Hi DWFaber,

I wish there was something new to add to help you, but I won't be at my router / slingbox until the summer of next year to try to correct the situation. Slingbox released a firmware / software upgrade recently. I was hoping that the slingcatcher was next on the list of priorities. They've addressed remote issues with the latest slingplayer / firmware upgrade. I'm hoping they focus on the slingcatcher and read this forum now and then to provide some sort of ability to use SNATT to get around the network connection issue and make the slingcatcher as easy to connect to the slingbox as it is with the slingplayer software. I don't know if that's even possible, but it sure as hell would solve a lot of network connection problems like yours and mine.

The thing is I've heard people using port forwarding and still not being able to connect to the slingcatcher. Whether they had setup the slingbox incorrectly or it's something to do with a specific router issue, I don't know. Not connecting to the slingcatcher is the only thing stopping me from enjoying it, because when it works, it's perfect. I've still got a three day window of use out of it before the hardware has to be reset, but I'm still no further in understanding why it works in short bursts and then can't connect.


This obviously doesn't help you any. All I can say is try any advice that's on this forum before throwing in the towel. Start from scratch, port forward, get a successful remote connection from the slingbox, and even try dropping the hardware firewall on both the router / slingbox side and the slingcatcher side.

As for the slingcatcher, I'm just praying that sling figures out a way to provide a future slingcatcher firmware upgrade that makes it possible to work with SNATT and solves this issue once and for all.