Network Speed - continued

http://community.wdc.com/t5/General-Discussions/Network-Speed/td-p/130594

Continuing this discussion…

So I have a fully wired Cat6 infrastructure, with a Gigabit Cisco 48-port switch at home.

My WDTV Live Hub (WDTVLH) is supposedly Gigabit.

I am currently taking a long time to transfer large files (4GB - 10GB) from PC to WDTVLH.

Currently I am using the PC’s on-board Realtek 10/100 NIC - this is one of the bottlenecks in my network.

So I’ve ordered a new Intel Pro 10/100/1000 PCI NIC for my PC, which is a Windows XP box with Intel Core Duo (E8400) chip. 

Have I wasted my time buying this Intel Gigabit NIC?

Do WD plan to update the firmware (indeed can they update the firmware) to give their ‘Gigabit’ port a boost?

Many thanks in advance for considerate responses.

Rich.

In a short answer…Yes, did you not read the thread.

Let me sum up a bit

“the max you can go is 100Mbps which is 12.5 MB/sec”

More relevant to the discussion is that the Hub cpu only runs at 500Mhz. So there is no way you would get anything near gigabit performance.

Its because even though the hub has got a gigabit connection its limited internally.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3990/western-digital-wdtv-live-hub-review/4

And why have you started a new thread.

(I started a new thread because the other is locked isn’t it? I’m new here so I’m not used to the icons used on this board. I assume you are? Anyway, if the other one is NOT locked, please accept my apologies and merge this with the other.)

My question was: “Will a nice new reliably quick Intel Pro Gigabit NIC improve the throughput?”

I think your answer is “No, it won’t help (much).”

Let’s also put the CPU clock speed issue to one side.

Are you saying that, in effect, the Gigabit port on the WDTVLH is pretty much useless (or, being generous, possibly 15% or so quicker than a 10/100 port)?

I bought this device on the premise that it would be fairly rapid at network transfers. So far, when I try to bulk copy 100GB of files across the network, bad things happen. It goes across very slowly, and when I commence the operation before going to bed it crashes my XP PC after only a few files (of 5GB-10GB).

Edit: it’s writing across the network, from the 10/100 on-board NIC in my PC to the GbE on the WDTVLH, at around 15-20 Mb/s.

Ah my bad, never knew it was locked, but I think its locked because thats that really…

But anyway…

I originally bought a WDTV Gen 1 when they came out, I wanted to stream 1080p to it, and wireless did not get a good rap, so I hardwired to a USB Gigabit adapter, hacked firmware blah blah…so I streamed and it was not bad, with this I can stream Full Bluray Disks, but Im guessing its better network, less bits, and no patchy Mounting etc…

My point is though, I thought, happy days, I will be able to transfer files from my PC to my 3 connected Hard drives plugged into the usb hub via the WDTV…how wrong I was, I got about 800 kb/s max, so there was no way on **bleep** I could move GBs about.

So back to the Hub, and another reason I got it was I thought I could move files about with ease… yes it has a Network adapter labelled Gigabit, but the gubbins inside that box are mainly for decoding Film containers, Phones have Double core 1Ghz chips nowadays, this has a paltry 500mhz. So I think you could have all the fancy kit heading all your data towards the box, but in reality the limiting factor is the box itself.

Oh and don’t think I take any joy in saying this, I have the 1tb internal “crammed” with 10 Wallpapers and about 5 Themes, cos I cannot be ar5sed losing the Hub for a whole day moving files, or coming down to it crashed because I wanted to move Gb’s overnight…shame.

(Don’t worry.)

So you’re saying you don’t really use the 1TB hard drive for much. Hmm. I’m growing more dissatisfied with this device day by day.

Is there any chance that, clock speed to one side, WD could improve the firmware to speed up transfers?

I’m in the process of running Intel’s NASPT tool - it’s writing and reading about 5GB across the network. At the moment it is showing the following high-level results (wait, it just finished as I was typing this, here are the full results… which shows that my back-of-an-envelope maths in my earlier post was wrong)

NASPerf Test Results

( HDVideo_1Play )

Transferred 1303690438 bytes (1303690438 read, 0 written) in 217578ms

Average Throughput: 5.992MB/s

NASPerf Test Results

( HDVideo_2Play )

Transferred 1448442252 bytes (1448442252 read, 0 written) in 237476ms

Average Throughput: 6.099MB/s

NASPerf Test Results

( HDVideo_1Play_1Record )

Transferred 950582470 bytes (517258438 read, 433324032 written) in 131663ms

Average Throughput: 7.220MB/s

NASPerf Test Results

( File CopyToNAS )

Transferred 1408958464 bytes (0 read, 1408958464 written) in 1120780ms

Average Throughput: 1.257MB/s

NASPerf Test Results

( FileCopyFromNAS )

Transferred 1244987440 bytes (1244987440 read, 0 written) in 195304ms

Average Throughput: 6.375MB/s

NASPerf Test Results

( Directory CopyToNAS )

Transferred 246972884 bytes (70 read, 246972814 written) in 145119ms

Average Throughput: 1.702MB/s

NASPerf Test Results

( DirectoryCopyFromNAS )

Transferred 246972884 bytes (246972884 read, 0 written) in 52791ms

Average Throughput: 4.678MB/s

Those two “CopyToNAS” tests are considerably slower than the rest. I guess that’s the issue right there.

Ha All that is above my head to be honest.

Heres what I do know.

I am no better really than I was with my WDTV 1, bit of a lie, jumping up from 800kb/s to 9 Mb/s is a bit of a jump I suppose, but I was hoping for USB transfer speeds of 20Mb/s, but thats down to my ignorance a bit I suppose.

A firmware update, I doubt it, if you read the thread that I gave you, WD are down as quoting this…

They also indicated that the bandwidth characteristics of the Live Hub are sufficient for media playback / sharing.

I think they are limited by the hardware they use, to give us the price we want, so I would think definately not, but I don’t want them to touch it anyway, they will just break something else. :smiley:

Well, yes, you’re quite right. If you look at the other tests (copying from the WDTVLH, and streaming one and two videos from the WDTVLH, then you are getting around 50Mb/s (mega bits per second) which, it seems to me, is ample for streaming most HD content.

Thanks for your time on this. It’s good to settle one’s mind, even if it leaves you feeling a little let down!

Right. I am about to start a real transfer of a 10GB file. I reckon that should take about 2 hours and 20 minutes at 1.2MB/s.

(10,000 / 1.2 = 8333 sec = 2.3 hours)

I’ll post back later this evening.

Regards

Rich

Edit: again my f4g packet maths is wrong. Windows is claiming it will take less than 30 minutes. I dunno. Confused now. I’ll be back in 20 minutes to watch what happens.

Edit2: yep, Windows was right. That took about 25 minutes.

No problem.

Actually I should have read the NMT Forums threads, I always thought the Popcorn Hour boxes were the best to have with internal drives etc…

But having read today, they are all in the same boat, it looks like the best way for them is to take the internal hard drive out and put it in a docking station to transfer large files, so its not just us.