Sony Hardwired Internet Issues

by 5tevenattaway

I'm wondering if anyone else has had these issues.

At the beginning of the year I bought a new Sony X90J and so far I've loved it, minus one thing. For some reason that I've yet to figure out I will occasionally loose internet and the TV will state I'm offline. I have confirmed that I am in fact offline by opening any video streaming app and they all will state I'm offline and by trying to stream from my phone which will also NOT show my TV because it's offline. The quick simple fix is to hard reset the TV by holding the power button for 3 seconds, this effectively "reboots" the tv. Once the TV comes back up, I have internet and everything works as it should, again confirmed by streaming apps and by casting from my phone. So far this has been a random issue, it doesn't happen every day, in fact I can go about a week or two without it happening and I think the issue is fixed and then it randomly happens again.

The TV is hardwired to an 8 port Unifi switch, which is connected to the primary 8 port Unifi switch on an SFP port in my office closet, which is connected to my Unifi USG firewall. I'm using a basic /24 network with subnet 10.0.0.X, IP lease time is 1 day. I have multiple other hardwired devices and none of them have this issue. Actually, I have a PS4 and a Sony Soundbar both connected to the same secondary switch that the TV is connected to and neither of them loose internet connection. This seems like a software issue to me, but maybe I'm wrong. It seems like the TV is not renewing it's IP address or something.

Troubleshooting I've tried:

  • Made sure the TV's software is fully up to date.
  • Setting a static on the TV. - The TV will keep the IP address, but will still NOT have internet.
  • Assigning an IP at the Firewall. - The TV will pull assign itself a 169 IP instead of receiving the correct IP from the DHCP server.
  • Tried connecting a USB NIC and discovered apparently GoogleTV doesn't allow that.
  • Changed DNS settings. - This effectively changed nothing. I was using 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 and moved to 1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1.
  • Installed two Gigabit SFP ports on the Primary Switch and connected the Secondary switch to the primary via SFP port2 and connected the Primary Switch to the USG via SFP port1. This cleaned up my Unifi Controller software device section, but didn't fix the TV issue.

My next step is to install Kali Linux on a Raspberry Pi and monitor the traffic from the TV to try and see what is or is not happening. If anyone has stumbled across this issue before or can give me some direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

FlickFreak

USB Ethernet adapters are supported on the X90J but it has to use the Realtek RTL8153 chipset (such as the TP-Link UE300 ) and you have to disable the onboard Wi-Fi.

Try enabling Simple IP control. 

Settings > Network & Internet > Home network > IP control > Simple IP control (Enable)
oldhorsenoteeth

I hope you got the issue resolved. If not head to the /r/bravia subreddit as I have seen numerous post about disconnection. My a80j nic is only 100mb and I get three times the speed on wifi, so you might consider switching to wifi.

libertarianvfascism

Sony TVs are garbage. The previous generation has several hardware faults breaking advertised functionality and their software is an atrocious bug filled mess that makes multiple features unusable. Run far away from Sony TVs.

jdrch

Exact same problem here on my KD-43X85J . I called Sony Support within the past hour and apparently it's a known issue.

Per the support person, Sony released an update last month to fix the problem. However, my son said he experienced it last night. He didn't manually reboot the TV, but I did notice during the call that the TV's uptime was just over 18 hours. So Sony's "fix" may simply be the TV rebooting itself if it loses its connection hahaha.

Besides that, the only good things about the TV have been the stellar picture quality and features. The UI is extremely laggy and sluggish. Shows frequently drop frames when I initially start watching them. Also, the internal storage is a joke: the TV runs out of space with any appreciable number of apps installed.

My advice to anyone considering one of these is to NOT use it as a smart TV and make sure you have a separate box (console, Roku, etc.) that does the smart functionality for you. That way you can avoid the UI performance issues.

FWIW my TCL 55R625 doesn't have the same storage or network issues and has a much faster and responsive UI. However the Sony has more hardware and software features.