Hi there,
For those of us owning a JBL Link Portable Speaker (Wifi):
its kind of coincidental, last monday I did an update of my iPhone to iOS 14.7 when the next day our Airplay2 compatible JBL Link Portable speaker started having problems: even though the speaker is on standby, it often refuses connection. Usually a power cycle helps, but it annoying. The real problem was that it just stops playing music after a few tracks.
At first I thought it was a new bug in iOS14.7 with Airplay2, but after a few days we found that isn't device/OS specific. Playback also stopped from an AppleTV, Mac or iPhones that still had iOS14.6 or lower. Eventually we did find a pattern: the speaker stopped playing music on fixed moments in time. Every 15 minutes on the clock it just stopped and the upper front LED were flashing. iTunes (Mac) or the Music app on an iPhone apparently did not lose the Airplay2 connection, they just stopped playing music. Music resumes quickly after pressing play again, but 15 minutes later...?
Since there seems to be no JBL app that can connect and diagnose the speaker, I started monitoring my network. I found no WiFi interruptions, no internet interruptions on all moments the JBL stopped working. So I looked into the router/firewall logs and there it was:
The JBL Link Portable is quietly connecting to several internet addresses. While our device is not setup for Google, it still tries to connect to a few google.com hosts. It also uses the NTP service from Google, even though the local network has its own NTP (advertised by the DHCP server). It also is connecting to "ota2.redbend.com", some service (JBL owned) that provides Over-The-Air updates.
Since do not like devices "secretly" connecting to Google I created a firewall rule to block the JBL to the internet entirely. And then the music didn't stop anymore. After fiddling some more I narrowed it down to this: when the JBL connects to "ota2.redbend.com" playback stops.
That service seems to be not working properly. On each moment the JBL connects, the playback stops.
So at this moment I've setup a firewall rule to restrict the JBL speaker to only the local network and the subnet of my ISP. Now the speaker keeps on playing music again.
I've searched on Google for more on this ota2 server, but no results. Anyone having similar experiences with the JBL speaker? Could it be related to DDoS attacks on several server parks around the world this week?
(I haven't send in a ticket at JBL yet)
For those of us owning a JBL Link Portable Speaker (Wifi):
its kind of coincidental, last monday I did an update of my iPhone to iOS 14.7 when the next day our Airplay2 compatible JBL Link Portable speaker started having problems: even though the speaker is on standby, it often refuses connection. Usually a power cycle helps, but it annoying. The real problem was that it just stops playing music after a few tracks.
At first I thought it was a new bug in iOS14.7 with Airplay2, but after a few days we found that isn't device/OS specific. Playback also stopped from an AppleTV, Mac or iPhones that still had iOS14.6 or lower. Eventually we did find a pattern: the speaker stopped playing music on fixed moments in time. Every 15 minutes on the clock it just stopped and the upper front LED were flashing. iTunes (Mac) or the Music app on an iPhone apparently did not lose the Airplay2 connection, they just stopped playing music. Music resumes quickly after pressing play again, but 15 minutes later...?
Since there seems to be no JBL app that can connect and diagnose the speaker, I started monitoring my network. I found no WiFi interruptions, no internet interruptions on all moments the JBL stopped working. So I looked into the router/firewall logs and there it was:
The JBL Link Portable is quietly connecting to several internet addresses. While our device is not setup for Google, it still tries to connect to a few google.com hosts. It also uses the NTP service from Google, even though the local network has its own NTP (advertised by the DHCP server). It also is connecting to "ota2.redbend.com", some service (JBL owned) that provides Over-The-Air updates.
Since do not like devices "secretly" connecting to Google I created a firewall rule to block the JBL to the internet entirely. And then the music didn't stop anymore. After fiddling some more I narrowed it down to this: when the JBL connects to "ota2.redbend.com" playback stops.
That service seems to be not working properly. On each moment the JBL connects, the playback stops.
So at this moment I've setup a firewall rule to restrict the JBL speaker to only the local network and the subnet of my ISP. Now the speaker keeps on playing music again.
I've searched on Google for more on this ota2 server, but no results. Anyone having similar experiences with the JBL speaker? Could it be related to DDoS attacks on several server parks around the world this week?
(I haven't send in a ticket at JBL yet)