Lexia Network Issues

[JonDaviesBourne]

Hi,

 

We are currently running Lexia Reading at our school for SEN students and are have a few "issues" getting it working properly.

 

At least once per lesson we will get "Network Issue, please inform your teacher" come up on a machine, this machine then loses its connection to our network and locks up until restart.

 

Having generated a Wireshark log on a machine this happened on, it seems as though halfway through transmission to the Lexia server, the wireless card falls over and then spams our DHCP server with about 8 different requests. (We are using Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 cards) This only happens on machines running Lexia and only when Lexia tries to send data. (I have also run Wireshark on other unrelated machines to double check)

 

- We do not run a proxy server

- I have tried through both http & https to the Lexia servers

- I have tried different versions of drivers for the wireless card

- Hard wiring is not an option as we have no ports anywhere near the room where Lexia is being used

- We use a Meru wireless network controller

- Our machines are running Windows 7 Professional on a Windows Server 2008 R2 domain

- Lexia has been installed & configured manually on each of these machines by me, multiple times

- I have been in touch with Lexia support, but they were unable to help and pointed me in the direction of INM SecureNet Xtra which is the software they use for data transmission, but I'm having difficulty finding particularly verbose info on it.

 

I was wondering if anyone else had experienced anything like this?

 

If anyone would like a copy of the Wireshark logs or machine configuration, let me know and I'll be more than willing to provide - really need this resolved!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Jon

[thomass]

Hi Jon,

 

I was having some connection issues with Lexia which have now been resolved. I had to change the server setting to http as https traffic doesn't work very well through our ISP, additionally you could try changing the rpc_timeout setting to 180 as suggested by tech supoprt. Both of these settings are changed in the login.ini file, which is in C:\Program Files\Lexia Reading UK\LLSCommon

 

We run Lexia on Windows XP machines with a proxy and they are all on a wired network.

 

Hope that helps

 

Thomas

[JonDaviesBourne]

I tried changing https to http before and it didn't change anything unfortunately. I'll have a look at the rpc_timeout setting as I've not tried to play around with this yet.

[GeekyPete]

I get the same issue. RPC timeout = 180 and we are using http.

We might have 8 Toshiba C850 laptops all running it on wireless, Win 7 SP1, Smartcache Proxy, Server 2003 domain and we'll get one, may two with this issue. Closing down Lexia and opening it again sometimes brings it back. I'm thinking that maybe the wireless is dropping just long enough to for lexia to time out as they are moving. The affected computer can run the rest of the day without issue once someone else has logged on or the same user has logged off/on again.

[thomass]

Just found this

 

Lexia Learning

 

It says that Lexia needs a constant connection to the internet.

 

Have either of you tried your laptops on a wired connection to see if you still get connectivity problems in Lexia?

 

Thomas

[JonDaviesBourne]

@GeekyPete

 

Can you check what chipset the wireless cards in your laptops are? If they are based on Intel Centrino Advanced-N (maybe 62** series) then I think that might be the issue.

 

I have been trying some different settings on them, however I'm not on site this week to see if those changes have worked.

@thomass

 

We've tried running it on wired clients we have and it seems to work with no issues. The problem we have is that there are no wired points in the room where we do Lexia - and getting ports wired in would be a nightmare.

[GeekyPete]

It uses the Realtek RTL8723AE chipset.

With that said I can't recall a complaint about a wired client. We use both here.

[JonDaviesBourne]

It might be worth changing the following settings on your wireless cards then:

 

Disable Bluetooth Radio (if it has one)

Set Broadcast Power to Maximum

Set Roaming to Aggressive (depends on your wireless network/controller)

Set Preferred Band to 5.2GHz

 

EDIT: Also try these:

 

Disable NetBIOS on the card (stop it looking for a WINS server)

Prevent the OS from powering down the card

 

This is what I've done on our Centrino based cards. Awaiting results at the moment.

Edited January 22, 2014 by JonDaviesBourne

[thomass]

@Jon

 

I've just installed Lexia on my Dell laptop which uses a Intel Centrino Advanced-N (maybe 62** series) card and it didn't seem to give any errors. We are using Meraki wireless access points and I haven't changed any settings on the wirless card.

 

What version of Lexia are you using?

[JonDaviesBourne]

@thomass We are using 9.0.0 and the errors don't happen at specific times. The reason I think it may be the wireless card is that there's quite a well documented issue with those cards (specifically the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 - what we have) on the Intel forums where they drop connection. There's also the Wireshark logs (created by tshark running silently behind user sessions) that contain some quite quirky things. They seem to indicate that ~8 DHCP requests are sent to our DHCP server when Lexia loses connection. The computer then receives the 8 offers back with different transaction id's and fails to reconnect to the domain. I've been in contact with INM, the company that makes SecureNet Xtra - the software Lexia uses to send data via http(s) and their code doesn't go to a low enough level to cause any problems with wireless card drivers/network connectivity. I have also tried ~3 different versions of the wireless card drivers in case this was the issue, but to no avail. There is an access point in the room, and our wireless controller handles roaming, rather than leaving it to the OS/drivers so I doubt it's an issue with that (we have also been running diagnostics on our wireless network for another issue, and there is no indication that there's a problem with the network/controller). My next port of call will be to replace the access point in that room in case there is a fault with it, having done that I will have eliminated everything other than the wireless cards. Apologies that this is a wall of text, but the Enter key doesn't work in this forum on my tablet!

[thomass]

Hi Jon,

 

Oh ok, well I have never used Lexia on a wireless network. Have you got a different make of wireless access point or a different wireless card you could try?

 

Thomas

[JonDaviesBourne]

We don't have different makes of access point (Meru network & controller) and I have put an older Atheros chipset card in one of the machines for testing. Just waiting to hear back about how it's doing!

[JonDaviesBourne]

After many, many weeks of head scratching, I managed to finally resolve this issue.

 

Our wireless controller was set up to do band steering to 5GHz which was upsetting our wireless cards that occasionally wanted to use 2.4GHz due to high traffic on 5GHz. This was causing the program to think there was an issue with the network and crashing out.

 

If anyone requires any help with Lexia, please feel free to PM me on here as I have had to develop quite a comprehensive understanding of it in order to figure out what was causing it to break so spectacularly...

[robdoessound]

Had Lexia rear its ugly head again here. I've taken out the wireless cards from the laptops and hardwired everything! It works now... Who needs precision tools when you can have a lump hammer!

[GeekyPete]

Glad to hear it. To be honest mine has settled down on the laptops, even on wireless. Android and iOS tabets... now there's another story!

[bantonia]

I'm having an issue connecting to Lexia using Android on LearnPads. Currently my only solution is to take the LearnPads home, connect to Lexia and change the school settings, at this point there is a padlock at the top right of the login box which allows you to switch between HTTPS and HTTP authentication and leave them on HTTP. Once this has been done, bring the LearnPads back into school and they appear to work fine. I've tried connecting them through an unfiltered proxy at school but without success to get through this initial stage. Taking the LearnPads home removes all interference of any proxy settings.