Error 8156

[Susan Pierce]

Hi... Is anyone else suddenly getting Error 8156? Instant Watch has always worked fine for me until now. I use the silverlight verson on a PC and can watch video on other sites with no problem.

The entire message is: "Internet Connection Problem Error Code: 8156. An Internet or home network connection problem is preventing playback. Please check your internet connection and try again."

Netflix Support couldn't figure it out - they just said it must be something wrong with my internet connection. Unfortunately, my internet connection is fine and very fast - and other streaming video sites work just fine.

Is this happening to anyone else? Or does anyone have an idea I can try?

Thanks!

[D._]

This occasionally happens to me and usually it's during peak activity on the interwebz. I have Comcast which is fast only during uncongested traffic. Sometimes reloading the page works. Other times I just wait for a few minutes or scrap the idea for an hour or so. Frustrating to say the least but, sometimes it is the internet provider's fault.

[Susan Pierce]

Thanks! It started last night and is still happening. All my other sites are nice and fast so I thought it might be something wrong with Netflix. I'll wait and see if it clears up.

[D._]

Some providers can be shady. It's against the law to target only certain sites for throttling, although, it is suspicious that Netflix seems to have the most problems with this. I'm fairly certain it's not the fault of Netflix as I'm sure they want people to be able to use the IW feature whenever they want.

[Sock Puppet]

That error message basically means your connection keeps (for lack of a better term) hiccuping or "timing out", which can happen during peak times or if the latency for a particular connection is very high, which would explain why yours works at other sites, but not Netflix. However long delays are "usually" caused by the ISP, not the end server (Netflix), but its very hard sometimes to prove it, and of course they wont admit they are doing anything bad (your ISP.)

Couple things might help (so us geeks know where to reference)

What Operating System (XP, Vista, W7... ?), ISP (Comcast, Roadrunner... etc...), Connection type (modem (name/model), wireless/not etc), Connection speed (rated, that is what you are paying for)

Do you have the latest version of Silverlight installed? Click Here to Check

ISP's use their own DNS (Domain Name Servers), which are basically what points the addresses to where they should go (will convert sitename.com to 123.456.789.0, then make a connection to that particular server.)

One way to test to see if your ISP is causing issues (even though everything tests fine and they say nothing is wrong... laughs to myself..) Is to go to:

opendns.com (its really easy to sign up and use) I've found that using opendns instead of the default DNS provided by my ISP has resulted in much improved streaming.

If you ISP is interfering with Netflix streaming, using this would stop them ;-)

[D._]

That opendns really sounds like something worth pursuing, Sock Puppet. I'll be lookin in to this avenue for sure. Thanks!

[Sock Puppet]

Takes a couple minutes to do (actually takes longer to sign up) I play lots of games online, its sped them up very nicely.

Plus once you've used opendns for awhile you can look at your activity log, and find out the "actual" site information, plus if you locate bad site (spam, ad, etc) you can setup custom blacklists at OD and simply block them from the source, or use built in filters at OD to keep the bad guys away.

[Hannabelle Lecter]

Thanks, Sock! I'm also looking into this.

[Susan Pierce]

Thanks, everyone - Silverlight turned out to be the problem. Someone installed the 4.0 beta on my computer and it's been working fine since September or so. Something must have happened to make it stop working. Since I uninstalled it and reinstalled 3.0 everything is fine.

And you're right about OpenDNS. I used to have lots of "Your connection has slowed" messages and switching to OpenDNS fixed that.

Thanks again - I was going into withdrawal!

[Sock Puppet]

Wow and I thought I was the geek :P I wasn't even aware that there was a SL 4.0 beta (runs off to google it :)

Edit to add: Are you a developer? The official page still shows that its only for developers to download/use, that there is no end user runtime yet. Im surprised it worked at all for you, it was first made available on November 18 by microsoft at a developers convention.

I like one of the tags I read "Flash Developers Need not Apply" ROFL!

[Susan Pierce]

The WIndows and Mac runtimes for 4.0 are about 2/3 of the way down this page:

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

I'm not a developer, but I have friends who are. That's how I end up with stuff that doesn't work. LOL

[Sock Puppet]

Yes well you should start telling your friends "no".

Like I said, there were no end user run times released, those are for developers.

Note A LOT of mentions:

Get the Tools!

To get started you’ll first want to download the tools to make Silverlight 4 Beta development productive for you.

IMPORTANT DEVELOPER NOTE: (big bold letters)

...a prerequisite for developing Silverlight 4 Beta... ...For Silverlight 4 development, you will need Visual Studio 2010.... ...This will install the developer runtime of Silverlight 4 Beta... ...If you installed the tools above, you will get the developer runtime and there is no need to install again...

Not one thing about any of that suggests its very wise for the novice end user to install this item... Heck I'm not a novice end user, and I will not play with it till they have an official end user release.

[D._]

LOL I learned my lesson on that with Google Chrome. Basically, I had to read enough shit to have taken a class just to get the browser to work again after I switched to the developers version. I wanted to use the nifty extensions that Chrome offered to only developers. I nearly lost all my bookmarks in the process. And I still couldn't add any extensions... I had to wait till they released the updated version a few days ago. :)