Transition issues between wi-fi and mobile data

[Darius 9]

Hi folks,

Transition between mobile data and Wi-Fi on mobile apps has issues, if you start playing content on Wi-Fi and want to finish on your mobile connection, you have to exit the app and re-open it every time. Very unpractical if you listen to music and don't have Wi-Fi all around the house or simply want to go outside and finish the audio content you started listening to while preparing…

In every android app ever, if I have both wi-fi and mobile internet turned on it will default to wi-fi until it loses the connection because of the distance etc. and switch automatically to the other connection without the user ever noticing or having to intervene.

Is there some limitation preventing this?

[Luke 37099]

Hi, currently the app can recover from network changes when you’re just browsing around. But during playback is an area that we need to improve on.

[x4cbN 3]

I use a wireguard vpn to route the traffic and it does not break connection for me switching from wifi (same lan as server) to mobile network 

[Darius 9]

On 8/31/2023 at 8:21 AM, x4cbN said:

I use a wireguard vpn to route the traffic and it does not break connection for me switching from wifi (same lan as server) to mobile network 

thanks for letting me know I will test with my vpn over wireguard

[Darius 9]

That VPN this did not solve my issue that being said this has been reported on r/emby already and multiple other places:

https://www.reddit.com/r/emby/comments/16543zn/handoff_from_wifi_to_cell/

"On jellyfin the handoff is pretty seamless and just keeps playing, seems like on emby it will pause after the buffer and fail to play anymore. Have to edit and relaunch the app."

Question for devs: How is jellyfin, your open-source counterpart able to achieve this without any hiccups and it's funded counterpart (with premiere), emby that advertises itself as being able to do all of that in a even much simpler way fails to do so, even after all these years of people asking? Is there some limitation? If so could you please explain?

I'm just trying to see if these changes are planned in a near future or if it's something that is going cook on the backburner for years to come? In my humble opinion, solving this is kind of crucial for a piece of software that 'allows you to access your media from anywhere'. Isn't that what the adverts are saying?

(Much more than features like 'Movie intros' for instance.)

Those are statements taken from emby.media main page

Take your home videos, music, and photos with you wherever you go, even offline with Emby Mobile Sync. Emby mobile apps are available for Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone and Windows Tablets.

Or sit back and enjoy Emby from the living room. Emby apps are available for Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Roku, Xbox, Home Theater Computers, and more.

Emby Connect makes it easy to enjoy your personal media while away from home. No more fumbling with IP addresses. Just sign in and play.

Your personal media on any device

Bringing all of your home videos, music, and photos together into one place has never been easier. Your personal Emby Server automatically converts and streams your media on-the-fly to play on any device.

 

As you can see  it uses wordings like 'on any device' , 'makes it easy', 'no more fumbling', 'never been easier' or even 'converts and streams your media on-the-fly to play on any device'.

 

So I feel like it's only fair for users to except this to work fine.

 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Darius

[Luke 37099]

On 9/12/2023 at 2:49 PM, Darius said:

That VPN this did not solve my issue that being said this has been reported on r/emby already and multiple other places:

https://www.reddit.com/r/emby/comments/16543zn/handoff_from_wifi_to_cell/

"On jellyfin the handoff is pretty seamless and just keeps playing, seems like on emby it will pause after the buffer and fail to play anymore. Have to edit and relaunch the app."

Question for devs: How is jellyfin, your open-source counterpart able to achieve this without any hiccups and it's funded counterpart (with premiere), emby that advertises itself as being able to do all of that in a even much simpler way fails to do so, even after all these years of people asking? Is there some limitation? If so could you please explain?

I'm just trying to see if these changes are planned in a near future or if it's something that is going cook on the backburner for years to come? In my humble opinion, solving this is kind of crucial for a piece of software that 'allows you to access your media from anywhere'. Isn't that what the adverts are saying?

(Much more than features like 'Movie intros' for instance.)

Those are statements taken from emby.media main page

Take your home videos, music, and photos with you wherever you go, even offline with Emby Mobile Sync. Emby mobile apps are available for Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone and Windows Tablets.

Or sit back and enjoy Emby from the living room. Emby apps are available for Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Roku, Xbox, Home Theater Computers, and more.

Emby Connect makes it easy to enjoy your personal media while away from home. No more fumbling with IP addresses. Just sign in and play.

Your personal media on any device

Bringing all of your home videos, music, and photos together into one place has never been easier. Your personal Emby Server automatically converts and streams your media on-the-fly to play on any device.

 

As you can see  it uses wordings like 'on any device' , 'makes it easy', 'no more fumbling', 'never been easier' or even 'converts and streams your media on-the-fly to play on any device'.

 

So I feel like it's only fair for users to except this to work fine.

 

 

 

I'm going to take an educated guess at what is possibly happening with that other software. If you always connect using the remote address, then as you transition from LAN to WAN it will always just work. Maybe a brief hiccup but overall should be OK. However this comes with the downside of having to use your WAN address inside your LAN.

Emby apps in recent years will always try to connect to the LAN address first, and only use the WAN address when the LAN is not reachable. This means that if you switch networks during playback, the server address is going to change and this is where we currently need to improve.

Of course we could just always use the WAN address but not everyone will like that.

[darkassassin07 428]

A temporary solution I've brought up elsewhere:

 

If all three of these are true:

- you run a reverse proxy infront of your Emby server

- you use a domain for WAN access that resolves to your WAN IP

- your router supports NAT Hairpinning (most routers do without any extra config, but there's some that don't)

 

You can use the firewall on the server machine to block everything except the reverse proxy from reaching Embys ports. This will force all clients to use the WAN address listed in the dashboard. LAN devices will resolve this to your WAN ip where the router will perform NAT Hairpinning to route them back to LAN and to the reverse proxy which proxies them to Emby. 

Devices transitioning from LAN to WAN will be able to continue to use the same address so the connection doesn't break anymore.

 

This is more steps/configuration than I'd like ofc, but it's a temporary solution until emby can sort out its network switching code.