So I got the support call.
The good news first. As a customer who bought a used device that was well past warranty, I certainly can’t complain about WD’s support effort. The tech I spoke with was courteous and respectful, stayed on the line with me for almost 1hr, going over things and consulting with the WD design team. Kudos for really trying to help, I appreciate it.
The bad news: problem still isn’t solved. The most likely suspect is DNS resolution timeout, and the WD designers were not able to inform me how long the timeout is as the code is licensed from Netflix and they don’t have access to the source. The reason DNS timeout is suspected is based on the following deductions:
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If it were the firewall in my system network server, the other Netflix devices on the LAN would also be affected as the Netflix app on the Plus uses the same link address and ports/protocol.
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The Plus connects and streams from Netflix just fine when connected straight to an Ethernet port on my DSL Router so its not anything in the Plus hardware. Connected on the LAN side of my network server, the “cannot connect…” error message comes up every time. All the other internet apps on the Plus work fine so its not due to lack of connection.
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My system server runs a local DNS server and performs a search before punting a query out to the internet. Although a DNS translation request should clear through its local list fairly quickly, my guess is it that it adds just enough delay, summed with the external (internet) DNS server delay, to trip the DNS timeout of the Neflix app.
Why my other (non-WD) devices run Netflix fine from the LAN side could simply be explained by a difference in DNS timeout default. This is the best theory so far and I have to figure out how to bypass my server’s internal DNS lookup without breaking anything else. For now, until I find how to fix this, I’ll just string another ethernet cable over from my DSL router and just switch the connection to the Plus when I want to watch Netflix. I’d leave it permanently connected but I want to be able to play shared media files from other devices on the LAN.
