Connect Ultra-6 to Router via USB?

PeteCress wrote:
My Ultra-6 has two USB ports. My LinkSys E3000 router has a USB port.

In a USB system, there is one "host" and multiple "devices", arranged in a star topology with the host at the center and each device connected to it. The host is almost always a PC, and the devices are things like keyboards and mice, USB hard drives and flash drives, music players, etc. Devices can't talk directly to each other; they only communicate with the host. Hosts don't talk to each other because by definition there is only one host per USB system.

Your Ultra 6 is a USB host. So is your E3000. Therefore, they cannot talk to each other.

PeteCress wrote:
LinkSys goes on about E3000's "Media Server" and I vaguely recall something about a media server for the Ultra-6.

Yes, both products can be configured to read media files from a USB Mass Storage device (a hard drive or flash drive) and stream them to a DLNA client.

PeteCress wrote:
Seems like a USB connection would be faster than my Cat-5e Ethernet.

How do you figure? High-Speed USB (480Mbps) at its theoretical best can transfer 53 megabytes per second. Your E3000 is limited by its hardware to USB speeds much slower than that, but even if it weren't, transfers to and from your Ultra 6 over gigabit Ethernet should still be significantly (50-100%) faster.

PeteCress wrote:
Could the Ultra-6 be connected directly to the router via a male-male USB cord?

No. You won't start a fire if you try, but you also won't accomplish anything useful.

Case closed....

Thanks for the quick elucidation.

FWIW, what I'm really spun up about is HD video over wifi.

Until yesterday, I was convinced that HD over 802.11n was not going to
happen and the only hope was the coming of 802.11ac.

But yesterday, a salesperson told me that I can stream HD video with
something called an N900 access point or N900 router/access point.

Their claim to fame seems to be two simultaneous 450MB channels - as
opposed to one or two 150MB channels on the average consumer router/WAP.

OTOH, my E3000 seems to be a pretty high-end device (although I may have dumbed it down by flashing Tomato on to it) and no matter how close I get my tablet to the E3000, HD video isn't happening. I can get "sort-of" with 720, although it's nothing anybody would want to watch... but 1080 is just plain hopeless.

In my ignorance, I was thinking that maybe there was a bottleneck from the NAS to the E3000.

Doesn't sound like the case... and now I'm back to trying to figure out if the N900 contention is BS.... and, if not, if N600 would work too (there are several N600 WAPs out there at attractive prices... whereas it looks like quite a bit more money and buying a full-on router to get N900).

PeteCress wrote:
yesterday, a salesperson told me that I can stream HD video with something called an N900 access point or N900 router/access point. Their claim to fame seems to be two simultaneous 450MB channels

No. Stop shopping at that store.

The two simultaneous channels are in two separate frequency bands: 2.4GHz and 5 GHz. Your tablet can receive in only one of those bands at a time, and it would be EXTREMELY unlikely for it to be able to do 450Mbps in either of them.

Besides... To get 450Mbps in the 2.4GHz band, you need to be more-or-less the only person in your neighborhood using WiFi; if there's any interference from other routers, yours will (and should) refuse to occupy the wide bandwidth necessary for the high speed.

To be clear, there is no 450 mbps HD video to stream. BluRay requires about 7 MB/s (55-60 mbps/sec) of real throughput. Many HD media files are between 5-8 mbps. Note this is real throughput, and not link speed. Throughput is much lower than link speed.

802.11n can stream most HD MKV files, even in the 2.4 ghz band. Full Bluray is possible with some devices, but generally you'd want 802.11ac (and use 5 Ghz). Some mobile devices support 802.11ac.

Interference/throughput variation does create problems though, especially in the 2.4 ghz band.

StephenB wrote:
...but generally you'd want 802.11ac (and use 5 Ghz). Some mobile devices support 802.11ac. Interference/throughput variation does create problems though, especially in the 2.4 ghz band.

I noticed that the Google's new Nexus 5 does 802.11ac.

My rips are all .MPG for various reasons of convenience. Movies, of course, are no problem because I don't have or do BluRay... but as OTA stations go over to HD, they become unwatchable via WiFi except via my Tivo-On-Steroids PC-based app and it's network extenders or it's PC-based client. It's *almost* got me thinking about a Windows Surface tablet..... since the client is smart about bandwidth.

I was even dabbling in SplashDesktop: use a 10" tablet to bring up a desktop in to a PC.... but SplashDesktop had showstopper problems that I can't recall. TeamViewer's remote desktop is just too crude on an Android device.

What do you think about the possibilities of 802.11ad?

What little I've read about ac and ad leave me thinking there are compromises with both when it comes to range and neighboring WAPs and I shouldn't get my hopes up about watching Charlie Rose in HD on my tablet while laying on the couch after dinner.....

802.11ad is 60 ghz, so the range is very short (same room). Interesting, but it would need a somewhat different deployment model to make it practical for most people.

802.11ac is 5 ghz only, so there isn't a lot of problems with neighboring WAPS. At least I don't see any competing 5 ghz SSIDs in my home, while I do see many in the 2.4 Ghz band.

OTA TV is typically ~20 mbps. That is too fast for 802.11g, but within reach for 802.11n. Are you trying the 5 ghz band, or only 2.4 ghz? How far away is the tablet from the AP.

BTW, I don't think something like teamviewer makes any sense, since you are recompressing the video in teamviewer (which likely isn't designed to show good quality video).

StephenB wrote:
I don't think something like teamviewer makes any sense, since you are recompressing the video in teamviewer (which likely isn't designed to show good quality video).

100% agreement on that.

I think I have a workaround within the confines of 801.11n.

It involves a SlingBox and my Tivo-on-Steroids app (SageTV).

I've got a media extender that hooks in to the SageTV server and the media extender's audio and video outputs are connected to a SlingBox.

On my tablet, I've got SlingPlayer and on my cell phone I've got a little app that mimics the media extender's remote control.

Now I'm going round-and-round with screen sizes/aspect ratio... but I think I have proof of concept. As a matter of fact, right now if I don't mind people with really wide heads, I can watch HD TV recordings on my Android tablet with no problem - and the added convenience of SageTV's UI.

Plex would be an option, but if you want HD transcoding you might need to run it on a PC (or get a pro/RN5xx). If you are in the US, the OTA TV is mpg2 - that could possibly be transcoded on on an ultra, since mpg2 has much lower complexity than the newer video codecs (H.264 or H.265). It might be worth a try.