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Forum Discussion
Poor streaming connection/speed
ReadyNAS NV+ v2
WNDR4500
2 x Powerline AV500
Tvix N1 Network Player
Hello. My first post at the ReadyNAS forum (previous Stora owner!).
I hope someone can help me; I'm getting really frustrated with my 'streaming experience'. Alot of folk out there seem to be able to stream HD using the ReadyNAS, so when my Stora had problems, I decided to 'upgrade' to the NV+ v2. I have spent quite a lot of money with Netgear trying to play HD media over my network; over the past few months I have been slowly upgrading my older Powerline adapters to the AV500, invested in the WNDR4500, as well as moved 'up' (?) from the Stora to the ReadyNAS, but I still cannot play HD video from the ReadyNAS through the WNDR4500 and Powerlines to my Network Player.
I did have a gigabit switch (at the Network Player end of the Powerlines so my Sky box can get online, but even with this now removed from the 'pathway' there is no improvement.
I know it's not an issue with the player as the same file will play beautifully (even at double speed) when I attach a USB2 drive directly to the player.
There is such a wealth of settings that could be made within the router and the ReadyNAS, so I'm hoping someone could give me some guidance? I have also upgraded all my cables to CAT6 (there are a couple of CAT5 but these should be OK?)
My setup is pretty basic...
ReadyNAS ---> Router ---> Powerline ---> Powerline ---> Network Player
The Powerlines are both plugged directly into the mains (no extensions). All the devices I have should (according to the literature) be capale of supplying more than one HD stream, so what have I got wrong?! Anyone got any advice please?
On the ReadyNAS I have RAIDiator 5.3.9 and the following Services; SMB NFS, ReadyDLNA, UPnP, HTTP, HTTPS and genie activated. It is setup as X-RAID2 and is fully populated with 2TB WD Reds showing '827.7 GB free of 5.4 TB'.
On the WNDR4500 I have QoS rules giving the ReadyNAS 'Highest' priority.
I had some great support from the Stora forum, so I'm hoping I can finally get to the bottom of my new problems here! Thanks in advance, guys!
Stephen
WNDR4500
2 x Powerline AV500
Tvix N1 Network Player
Hello. My first post at the ReadyNAS forum (previous Stora owner!).
I hope someone can help me; I'm getting really frustrated with my 'streaming experience'. Alot of folk out there seem to be able to stream HD using the ReadyNAS, so when my Stora had problems, I decided to 'upgrade' to the NV+ v2. I have spent quite a lot of money with Netgear trying to play HD media over my network; over the past few months I have been slowly upgrading my older Powerline adapters to the AV500, invested in the WNDR4500, as well as moved 'up' (?) from the Stora to the ReadyNAS, but I still cannot play HD video from the ReadyNAS through the WNDR4500 and Powerlines to my Network Player.
I did have a gigabit switch (at the Network Player end of the Powerlines so my Sky box can get online, but even with this now removed from the 'pathway' there is no improvement.
I know it's not an issue with the player as the same file will play beautifully (even at double speed) when I attach a USB2 drive directly to the player.
There is such a wealth of settings that could be made within the router and the ReadyNAS, so I'm hoping someone could give me some guidance? I have also upgraded all my cables to CAT6 (there are a couple of CAT5 but these should be OK?)
My setup is pretty basic...
ReadyNAS ---> Router ---> Powerline ---> Powerline ---> Network Player
The Powerlines are both plugged directly into the mains (no extensions). All the devices I have should (according to the literature) be capale of supplying more than one HD stream, so what have I got wrong?! Anyone got any advice please?
On the ReadyNAS I have RAIDiator 5.3.9 and the following Services; SMB NFS, ReadyDLNA, UPnP, HTTP, HTTPS and genie activated. It is setup as X-RAID2 and is fully populated with 2TB WD Reds showing '827.7 GB free of 5.4 TB'.
On the WNDR4500 I have QoS rules giving the ReadyNAS 'Highest' priority.
I had some great support from the Stora forum, so I'm hoping I can finally get to the bottom of my new problems here! Thanks in advance, guys!
Stephen
39 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- cat5e is ok for gigabit, but you shouldn't use cat5.
What network player are you using? Do you have a windows PC you can test throughput with (instead of the network player)? - Hi StephenB,
Thanks for the help. I've just checked all the cables and they're either Cat6 or 5e. The only 5e cable runs from the modem to the Powerline.
The network player is the Tvix N1; it's basic, but capable of full HD playback of LOADS of file types, and capable of passing through the audio for decoding by my av amp. ( http://www.tvixbox.net/?module=menu&sub_module=display_content&id=7 )
I could put my old Vista laptop at the player's end. Is LANSpeedTest ( http://www.totusoft.com/lanspeed1.html ) suitable? I use this at the moment on my PC to check transfer speeds from time to time. If you know this software, perhaps you could suggest a suitable packet size and number of packets. I currently use 10 x 5MB packets sent/received successively.
Thanks,
Stephen - I've just carried out a LAN Speed Test sending a 5MB packet 10 times to a laptop (in place of the network player) from my PC (connected to the router directly - same as the ReadyNAS).
With the software firewalls de-activated on both machines, I'm getting averages of 34 Mbps writing TO the laptop ie. same direction as traffic from the ReadyNAS to the player (and 56 reading from the laptop). I don't claim to understand it all, but I seem to recall 10Mbps being required for streaming HD video with HD audio? Hopefully this means that the network itself is OK, and that it must be something to do with the ReadyNAS?
Interestingly, If I try and download a large file (15GB) from the ReadyNAS to the laptop, I'm getting a transfer rate of 4.1Mbps (according to Windows file transfer). - I suggest using NAStester on the vista laptop (http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance)
Streaming BluRay requires about 60 mb/s, a typical HD MKV rip takes about 10 mb/s.
Be careful not to confuse mb/s (megabits per second) with MB/s (megabytes per second). Also, it is impossible to carry a 5 MB packet on ethernet.
Your player is only capable of 100 mb/s (the ethernet support is fast ethernet). One common issue with fast ethernet players is that they sometimes need 802.1x flow control in the router/switch to prevent packet loss. I'm not sure if your router supports 802.1x or not. If it doesn't you can put a gigabit switch that does support 802.1x behind the router, and connect everything to the switch. (Check the spec sheet on the switch, and make sure it supports 802.1x). - Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll measure some transfer speeds using the software you linked - thanks. Just for reference, running NASTester from my PC through to the ReadyNAS gives average read speeds of 27.3 MB/sec... does this sound OK?
Regarding 802.1x, the spec sheet says the following,"IEEE 802.11n version 2.0 , IEEE 802.11n, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11b 2.4 GHz , IEEE 802.11n, IEEE 802.11a 5.0 GH", so I assume it's capable. The same spec sheet says that the router is capable of "multiple HD streaming", which was why I decided to go for this one.
I'll get back to you with the results from the laptop.
Thanks again,
Stephen - Oops - I meant 802.3x...
802.3x is not a wireless protocol, so the specs you quote are not relevant. Netgear does a more complete job on listing the technical specs for their switches than they do for their routers, so it's hard to know if the WNDR4500 supports it or not.
The NAS is connected via gigabit, and the player is only fast ethernet. If the player tries to read too much data, the router needs to buffer it, because the link to the player can't keep up. If the buffering isn't enough, then the router loses data, and the throughput plummets. 802.3x allows the router to tell the NAS to pause its sending, which prevents the problem. The player TCP stack shouldn't allow the player to create this buffer overrun problem, but many do (including the older Netgear media players).
One easy way to diagnose this is to (temporarily) manually configure the NAS to run at 100 mbits. If the performance issues go away, then you need to insert a gigabit switch behind the router which supports 802.3x. They are not expensive.
Also, if you have jumbo frames turned on in the NAS you should turn them off. That can also cause performance issues with fast ethernet devices (which don't support jumbo frames). - Hi,
I've run NASTester a few times from the player end of the network and it is only reading at 4.2 MB/sec (writing to the NAS is at 7.6 MB/sec)?! Am I right in thinking that this is way too slow... despite 'upgrading' to the newer Netgear AV500 Powerlines, would it make more sense to go wireless?
I cannot find any information regarding 802.3x standards from Netgear but the N900/WNDR4500 is from their 'Ultimate Performance' range so I assume it should ne fine.
I'm getting a bit frustrated... I've invested in a NAS, a Router and two Powerline products all from Netgear, and they are all advertised as supporting the sending of multiple HD streams... I'm only after one! I can't help thinking that there's something 'obvious' or a setting somewhere that I've overlooked as plenty of folk seem to run HD with older/lower quality gear than mine.
I can't see any options on the router to enable 100mbit/s networking. I'll have another search through the www later tonight or tomorrow. Weevil wrote: I've run NASTester a few times from the player end of the network and it is only reading at 4.2 MB/sec (writing to the NAS is at 7.6 MB/sec)?! Am I right in thinking that this is way too slow... despite 'upgrading' to the newer Netgear AV500 Powerlines, would it make more sense to go wireless?
(a) Powerline is a hit-or-miss technology. It works well on some circuit pairs, but not so well on other circuit pairs. If you have the XAVB5602, then try using a power adapter that drops the ground lead. I beta-tested that model, and on some circuits that gave better performance.
(b) 802.11n might give better performance than powerline, it is worth testing.
Look on the NAS network interface configuration. There is a pulldown to select 100 mbit. You don't need to do anything in the router.Weevil wrote: I can't see any options on the router to enable 100mbit/s networking. I'll have another search through the www later tonight or tomorrow.
Though the test should ideally would be done w/o using the powerline adapters.
Also, make sure your powerline adapters are not plugged into surge protectors.- Hi,
Thanks for sticking with me! There are no surge protectors 'in front' of the Powerline devices; both are plugged straight onto the wall sockets. They are the XAVB5601 (adertised as ideal for 'multiple HD/3D videos' :roll: )
The network player doesn't have a wireless adapter, but I may try running some tests with the laptop's built-in adapter to see what the wireless signal is like, but maybe I should be looking at running a physical cable rather than trusting the Powerlines... it would be l-o-n-g (in order to be out of sight) but presumably better throughput than I'm getting at the moment? I had thought about putting the ReadyNAS at the network player end, but the thought of such awful transfer speeds when I want to transfer files from my PC (at the other end of the Powerlines) doesn't appeal!
I cannot see any options to alter the network interface speed in the ReadyNAS Radiator... does NV+ v2 have this option?
I'm starting to wonder if I may have been mislead by marketing hyperbole, but it's odd that the forums are not full of others with this sort of problem... I remember reading (before purchasing) of others streaming 2 or more HD streams in their houses with the same kit as mine.
Any other ideas?
Thanks,
Stephen - An ethernet cable is definitely better than powerline or wireless - with the twix you can use cat 5, but it'd be best to use cat 5e or cat 6 (in case a future players are gigabit).
The spec for length is 100 meters - would you be exceeding that? You can get flat cable which is less obtrusive (and can run under carpet) - if that shortens the distance you might look into it.
I have seen similar posts on powerline here. As I mentioned, it is a bit hit-or-miss - depending on wiring, number of power panels (and distance to them), and the circuit load. The most recent units I tested did work with HD streaming in my home, but there were some circuit pairs that were similar to yours in performance. They weren't the ones that were nearest my players, but of course they could have been.
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