TOO MANY STREAMS Screen Limit to 2 devices issue

I currently have this issue but only recently started using the DHCP on my modem.  Previously I had a private 192.168.x.x network set up on my internal router and assigned static ip addresses to all my devices.  If static addresses on the AT&T/DirectTV Streaming devices resolves this issue, then I will have to get a new router and create my own internal private 192.168.x.x network  and assign static addresses to all my devices.

Having static or dynamic private addresses inside your network will make no difference.

If your ISP assigns you a public address dynamically, every time it changes. DIRECTV stream will think your devices are away from home until you change where your home is, and you can only do that 4 times a year.  If your ISP would give you a static PUBLIC IP address, then that wouldn't change.

Again, it's the public IP address assigned to your router, not the private IP addresses assigned to your devices, that must be static.  If the address you're talking about starts "10.", "172.16." or "192.168." then it doesn't matter whether that is static or not.

Well that bites

Guys I have a router called AmpliFi and couple days after I created this chat (4 weeks ago), I realized that this mesh router allows me to create a "static IP lease" to each connected device. Since I assigned this static lease to each DTV device, I have not had any issue with the number of streams. My devices have been working smoothly without any interruption. Check your router, specially if it is a mesh, to see if it offers you to create a specific internal IP to each device. ampliFi call it "static IP lease" but not sure if other mesh/routers systems call it similarly. Check the settings of each connected device to see if something similar is offered. I am crossing my fingers it stays working fine... Good luck!

This is my system: AmpliFi HD WiFi System by Ubiquiti Labs: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L9O08PW/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_RQYYES11Q1HS96DC5Z0Q

Yes it does, though it isn't clear that there is a better technical solution available to them right now.  The problem is based on their desire to allow lots of concurrent devices at "home" (to satisfy customers coming from cable/satellite, which offer that, as well as to offer something most of their competition doesn't) along with their desire to prevent excessive account sharing.  Unfortunately, while using the external IP address works adequately for a lot of users (whose external IP very rarely changes - mine has been the same for at least 2 years), for others is really doesn't work at all.

A static IP address would resolve the issue, but many ISPs don't offer them, and those that do generally charge a significant fee or only offer them on (more expensive) business service accounts.  If IPv6 ever becomes universal, the problem would be resolved because IPv6 doesn't use NAT, but the net has been "transitioning" to IPv6 for 25 years now, and it's unclear when it will become dominant.

I have the same issue and now down to 3 streams even-though paying for 20 since I am on T-Mobile 5G Wireless Home Internet Network and IP changes often. 

The solution is actually very simple but don't know why DirecTV refuses to fix it once and for all.  All they need is a locked app running on their streaming box to report username and current Public IP address to their servers similar to the way client software works on dyndns.org service (not a rocket science). 

By doing that DirecTV Stream always know the current home IP and they don't have to go by the IP reporting over public network.

DirecTV Please fix this major networking flaw in your otherwise outstanding streaming service you know you can attract far more subscribers with happy customers and currently with this major flaw most subscribers have a hard time suggesting DirecTV Stream.

I also have the Too Many Streams issue and it is a shame because the service is so solid otherwise. We should be able to logon or call to clear device/ip information at a minimum until they find a better resolution. I mean it is the same devices connecting all the time, can't they read device mac addresses or serial numbers with their software? 

Did you try and sign out of the devices---from the devices?

@Cut_The_Chord - there are a couple of problems with that:

• No, an app can’t necessarily read the device MAC address or serial number.  Apple at least doesn’t allow it, for privacy reasons. I don’t know about the other platform providers - most of them are less concerned about user privacy then Apple is.
• Those values just tell DirecTV that it’s the same device that they’ve seen before. It doesn’t tell them where the device is, which is what they really are concerned with.

And they (validly) don’t trust the customers not to lie about some things like location. In the past there have been frequent posts here asking how to fool the location checks so that the customer could get local station and RSNs from other locations than where they were. This usually involves getting sports for teams they were more interested in.  In this case, customers might lie to facilitate account sharing. 

All that said, there is a need for them to come up with a better solution for this. If they only allowed 4 or 5 concurrent streams (which generally seems adequate to me if they quickly detected a stream dropping, which is different problem), then they might be willing to say “whatever”.  But for their own reasons they want to allow effectively unlimited streams at home, which invites account sharing (which they want to prevent as best they can) if they can’t reliably determine “home“.  Right now, I can’t think of a reliable approach that uses generally available mechanisms (that is, that doesn’t depend on the device having something like GPS).

@markjan ’s suggestion has a similar problem - dynamic DNS just enables mapping a fixed name to a changing public IP address, but says nothing about location. That mechanism would detect the public IP changed, but can’t tell DirecTV whether it was because the ISP just changed it, or because the device moved to a new location (and network).

The ISP clearly knows the location (for fixed networks), but they have no way to say to third parties (and couldn’t, due to privacy requirements).  The IETF has looked into this and related issues for many years, and as far as I know haven’t come up with anything that works and preserves privacy. 

I'm having this issue with the dynamic IP address.  Does anyone have a solution?

In my post from 7 months ago I said that using a mesh to assign an individual IP lease to each device (Direct TV stream divice) worked fine. After 7 months it still is running great and strong. No issue at all. Check my previous post and use a mesh that offers static IP lease. Good Luck!

It's been 11 months since the OP posted and this is still a problem.  How can Direct TV let this issue go on for so long?  My wife is upset with me that I changed out our perfectly working Spectrum service for a DTV Stream that constantly gives us the Too Many Streams error.  The only people using this account are the 3 of us living in this house, we do not share our account with anyone else.  I wouldn't mind cancelling and going back to Spectrum if it wasn't for the fact that I am still paying on the 2 streaming boxes.  But I am getting tired of calling DTV support and having them walk me through a plethora of troubleshooting steps.  This really stinks.  HELLO, DIRECT TV.  ARE YOU LISTENING???!!!??

This is only a customer-to-customer forum, not support. If your IP address is continuing to change, that is an ISP issue. If the service determines you are not in your home location, then you are limited to 2 streaming limits. Contact your ISP and request a static IP address that want change.

As noted, no, they probably aren’t listening here. The support reps that sometimes pop in are almost universally useless, especially for technical issues, and they don’t appear to have any communication with the people who might be able to address the issue. 

I think telling customers to get a static address to deal with the problem is (Edited per community guidelines).  Static addresses aren’t always available (and that may be especially the case for the ISPs that have this issue), and even if they are, they cost - sometimes a su(Edited per community guidelines)tantial amount. 

The problem is that DTV (and before them, AT&T, who really introduced the problem) have a marketing desire balanced against technical limitations.

On the marketing side, they decided that they wanted an effectively unlimited number of devices (streams) at the home location, whether as an edge when selling the service, or to remove a limitation for attracting people from cable or satellite service.  They didn’t want to allow users to be able to use this for account sharing, and they didn’t trust users not to lie about a device’s location (because realistically, users would lie).  And they apparently didn’t want to charge extra.  So they told the developers to figure something out. 

On the technical side, there is nothing available that reliably can identify the location of a device that doesn’t have high accuracy location services available.  None of the TV streaming devices do (with the possible exception of AppleTV, which sometimes does).  What they came up with was to pick up the external IP address shown by the first TV streaming device to sign in as the address of the home network, and treat any other device on that network as another home device (and anything not on that address as “away”). This obviously only works if that address doesn’t change.  For most users, it doesn't very often, even if the user has a dynamic address. (Mine has stayed the same for at least 3 years.)  But that isn’t the case for all users - some ISPs do change the address moderately to very frequently. This is apparently particularly the case with fixed wireless access.  But there is no way technically to know why the address changed (that is - did the home network’s address change or did the device move). So there doesn’t appear to be a technical solution to the problem.  It may be that to this point they’ve gotten a small enough number of complaints about it that they feel they can live with it - either manually dealing with it when a customer complains or being willing to lose those customers.  And in the longer run (which hopefully won’t be too much longer, but we’ve been saying that for 20 years) they might assume that IPv6 will resolve the problem, as that should do away with NAT, so everything will effectively go back to having static addresses.   But that doesn’t help now.

Since there is no immediate technical solution, it seems that right now all they can do to resolve this is to change the marketing desires: trust the users or only allow a relatively small number of streams bundled in, and allow users to pay to get more. The latter seems more practical (and a relatively small number would probably handle the bulk of their users, especially if dropped streams got noted and freed quickly) but I think they are somewhat locked in to what they have, and the marketing droids may not actually be aware of the issue.   

I agree DTV Stream not fixing this issue is so frustrating.

If it helps, what I did was by a battery backup and plug my router into that.  THis prevents the IP address from changing with a quick power outage.  

I still incur the issue if i need to reboot my router (due to slowness).  I've been lucky a few times if i unplug and plug it in very quickly it doesn't mess up direct TV stream, but i have had to call probably 10 times to DTV stream customer service and recently the person that answers is able to do something pretty quickly to fix it to give me another chance to reset home.