Photon Cloud Connection - by IP or Hostname?

Troubleshooting
1

Hi all,

I won’t bore you with the saga, but I’m trying to find out if, when the photon talks to the Particle Cloud it does so using an actual hard-coded IP address or an AWS hostname? I am using the photon it on a wireless (Meraki) AP that leads onto a company LAN. On this LAN there are two DNS servers: one DNS serves route to a private network via which particle can’t be reached - the other just to the Internet.

Some days the Photon connects and stays connected just fine, some days it’s up and down (Green flash, or rapid Blue so losing Cloud connection, NOT Wi-Fi connection?) almost continuously. Our current theory is that if it’s doing DNS requests when things are busy the wrong DNS answers first and gives the Photon a route to nowhere. For reasons, both DNS servers are needed in this business environment so turning one or other off is not an option - but it is all Cisco kit so we could probably put some rules in that might get around this IF it really is the problem.

Thanks for any help or thoughts - and seasons greetings to all Particulates!
Alan T

2

I believe that the first preference is to do a DNS lookup of device.spark.io. If you are using a system firmware version prior to 0.6.0, it will fall back to the hardcoded IP address 54.225.2.62 if that fails, but in 0.6.0 and later there is no fallback. I think your DNS theory is plausible.

3

Thanks Rickkas7 - that would fit the symptoms then - my photon is on 0.6.0