Netflix "Instant" movies fail

[rkellyatspamcopnet]

Issue: Netflix "Watch Instantly" movies fail to play. My daughter is unable to watch them on her laptop on my network (Wingate 6.2.2), although she is able to watch them on the same laptop at school (Lynksys router). Other streaming media seems to work ok on other client computers. Has anyone experienced this issue and if so, found a resolution? I also plan to begin watching "Watch Instantly" movies from Netflix at a future time.

Searching this forum I got 0 hits for "netflix", and the hits for "streaming media" don't appear to appy. I've exempted netflix.com from caching with no apparent improvement.

[saubrey]

I had to turn off WinGate plug-ins before Netflix would play for me. I turned off anti-virus. Setting an exclusion for Netflix in the KAV plug-in is was not sufficient. Even with it excluded Netflix would not play. I had to turn off KAV.

[rkellyatspamcopnet]

Thanks for that information.

I don't believe I'm willing to disable AV, given the risky behaviors on some client PC's. My daughter likely will have to wait until she returns to school. Absent another solution, I'll likely use a dedicated appliance and put it on a subnet not serviced by WinGate when I start using Netflix Instant Movies.

[jasona]

Have you enabled 'drip-feed' on the WWW proxy?

Gatekeeper >> Services >> WWW Proxy >> Plugins >> 'check' drip feed data if...

[rkellyatspamcopnet]

Yes - dripfeed allows most streaming video to work, but apparently not Netflix. It is set to use 200KB as the file size criterion.

I'm still rebuilding the Wingate server after a recent (failed) attempt to get NetMeter to collect usage stats for all my subnets. Once the rebuild is complete I'll re-install the packet sniffer I use there and perhaps capture additional detail about what's failing.

[saubrey]

Neither drip feed or KAV exclusions worked for me. Instead, I configured a 2nd Wingate WWW Proxy on port 1134 with KAV turned off and then I implemented the following wpad.dat that redirected all Netflix requests to the 2nd proxy. This allows Netflix to stream for me as it uses the 2nd proxy that has KAV turned off.

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
if (shExpMatch( host, "69.53.224.*" ))
{return "PROXY 192.168.0.2:1134; DIRECT";}
if (shExpMatch( host, "netflix*.net" ))
{return "PROXY 192.168.0.2:1134; DIRECT";}
if (shExpMatch( url, "*.netflix.com/*" ))
{return "PROXY 192.168.0.2:1134; DIRECT";}
if (shExpMatch( url, "*.netflix.com:*/*" ))
{return "PROXY 192.168.0.2:1134; DIRECT";}
if (shExpMatch( url, "*.nflximg.com/*" ))
{return "PROXY 192.168.0.2:1134; DIRECT";}
return "DIRECT";
}

[alyork]

I'm not sure the Kaspersky plugin actually provides any protection at all from my experience.

It does however create havoc with file downloads, Facebook, streaming audio, Microsoft Updates, etc.

I'd reallly like to know what it does do and how to see some stats on its effectiveness, but so far I haven't been able to get any answers on where to look.

[saubrey]

I can tell you what I've seen--just my observations, not a rigorous study. I've been using KAV for 5 years or so. I've tested it with the eicar test virus and KAV correctly detects and blocks it. In my low volume home usage (4 family members, 4 computers) it has claimed to have detected and blocked maybe 5 viruses each year. I've never had a virus on my home computers...not sure if I'm just lucky or KAV is really protecting me.

In addition to the Netflix issue, every once in a while KAV seems to prevent me from downloading some file or accessing some site...not often, maybe twice a year. When that happens I just switch my browser to use my 2nd WWW proxy--the one that has KAV turned off, for that file or site. My other family members have never complained to me that they haven't been able to access a file or site, so I assume they haven't encountered any problems or at least none that they want to admit to me.

We use Facebook, mySpace, youTube, iTunes, streaming audio, streaming video, and haven't had any issues with them, only Netflix and the occasional, seemingly random twice a year issues.

[rkellyatspamcopnet]

FWIW, KAV has quarantined perhaps several dozen web exploits here in the past year, so I do consider it an essential security element. However it is part of the "close the barn door after the horses escape" approach currently in vogue among security professionals so I do not rely on it exclusively. We use zonealarm on each client pc as a more proactive approach to reduce the likelihood that an infecting agent can spread within the local area network. In addition some clients are on isolated subnetworks since they are intensively used for gaming and social networking, and have become infected multiple times (despite KAV!). Also, of course, we never use IE.

[alyork]

Before we switched to Winate, the proxy server and malware protection software we were using on several of my clients sites (5 to 15 computers) was detecting and blocking several 100's of malware items per day. That included toxic web pages, bad email attachments, infected downloads etc. Viruses, trojans, etc., were all being stopped.

A dozen items stopped by Kaspersky a year is pathetic protection.

We are finding that toxic email attachments are breezing right through like Kaspersky is not even there.