1000GB Network only getting 8.2mbps read/writes from WD hub?

I have a 1000gb router/switch network where the WD Hub is showing 1000gb connectivity like my other machines.   I can transfer files from one PC to the other on the same network between 60mbs - 120mbs.  However, with the WD Live Hub, I only get 8mbps to 12mpbs reading/writing to and from the drive.

I tried connecting the hub directly into the router and still get 8mbps.  Or from the same spot on the network where I get 60mbps but still only get 8mbps.  It used to be much snappier although I never quantified the results until now.  I suspect that a firmware update, adding data to the hard drive (currently 700gb stored), a dieing NIC interface, or perhaps the internal hard drive is starting to die?  I would think a little 2.5" laptop drive inside could do at least 30mpbs+

Any ideas?  I’ve noticed when I lose power to the hub it takes a good 10-15min for the library to rebuild.  Suggestions would be appreciated thx.

The hub does have a 1Gig ethernet (certainly not 1000GB) but internaly it is slowed down. The iGig is a bit of a maketing ploy.

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

Well, I wouldn’t exactly call gigabit Ethernet a marketing ploy. Most networking products support 10/100/1000BASE-T nowadays. Keep in mind the signaling is 1 gigabit but  it just takes quite a bit of horsepower to fill up the pipe. 

8Mbps is typical. Like many low (electrical) powered devices, it doesn’t have a powerful processor. Basically enough to get the job done as a media player but not much to spare. Your PCs are a different class of computer. 

The time to re-build can also take that long based on the number of files stored. I suspect when the device was newer you had fewer files. More files, slower to rebuild the database => impression is “why is this thing so slow”. 

chip_r wrote:

Well, I wouldn’t exactly call gigabit Ethernet a marketing ploy. 

If you read the review I attached to my message you will see that its a bit of a ‘marketing ploy’ on the hub. I did not mean in general. We are discussing the hub.

Duh…I screwed up the subject line.  Intended to put 1000mb (1gb) instead.  It was late in the day what can I say lol.  Anyway, thanks for the replies.  I suppose I need to lower my expectations on the transfer speed to and from the WD Hub and other computers in the house.  I just falsely assumed if I can transfer files at 60-120mbps from one PC to another that I should be able to transfer files from one PC to the WDHub at more than 8mbps.  Oh well.  :angry:

p.s. - do any of you mind posting results of your transfer speeds across your network?  I’d be interested to see how you compare to the 8-12mbps speed I am getting!  :laughing:

I am getting anywhere from 5MByte to 15 MByte network xfer speeds on my WDTV Live Hub.

this translates to 40mbs to 120mbs ( my network had other traffic going on the 40mbs transfer)

I agree this isn’t the 128 MByte xfer speed we should be getting with a Gigabit connection, (1024 mbs)

its taking me about 2 minutes per gigabyte movie file to the WDTV live hub.

hope that helps

d

I’m on Wireless N. I’m looking now and it is taking me about 6 to 8 minutes for a 615MB file. :frowning:

If  “there is only one host CPU which handles both playback and transfer” then why can’t data transfer be quicker when not playing back anything? I don’t stream any of my videos. I copy them all to hub and play.

I’m copying over 3.2GB of files now… 19 files… 179MB each… it’s hovering between 43 - 56 minutes. :frowning: Wonder how I can calculate mbps?

Boy you guys are lucky, I’ve been getting > 3MB/second either LAN or Wireless.

Really **bleep** when I’m xfering 700Gb

Just saw this post and Ididn’t look thru all of the replies, but if you haven’t tried this consider checking it out …

Wired LANs should do far better then the speeds you are seeing, but when there is even a slight wiring error (one open or shorted wire) they will “error correct” a lot and the speed goes way down.  Get a LAN wire tester at Home Depot or on-line and check your wiring out.

I had exactly the same issue until I bought a tester and fixed my wiring. My system (CAT6 wired with netgear burstmode switch) transfers a full movie (7.3 Gig) in 5 mins.  Who would want to wait any longer?

Enjoy,

Mike

I have what I would consider a “gigabit” ethernet network.

Router: Apple Airport Extreme (gigabit version)

I have a wired connection from router to PC and WD TV Live Hub and MAC BOOK Pro using CAT 5e cabling.

From PC <–> router <–> MAC BOOK Pro, I get around 32-45 MB/sec

From PC <–> router <–> WD TV live, I get around 7-9 MB/sec

From MAC BOOK Pro <–> router <–> WD TV live, I get around 7-9 MB/sec

Hence, limiting factor is WD TV live :stuck_out_tongue: it is what it is and it’s very disappointing especially since they advertise “gigabit ethernet”

eddie_k_md wrote:

I have what I would consider a “gigabit” ethernet network.

Router: Apple Airport Extreme (gigabit version)

 

I have a wired connection from router to PC and WD TV Live Hub and MAC BOOK Pro using CAT 5e cabling.

 

From PCrouterMAC BOOK Pro, I get around 32-45 MB/sec

From PCrouter ↔  WD TV live, I get around 7-9 MB/sec

From MAC BOOK Pro routerWD TV live, I get around 7-9 MB/sec

 

Hence, limiting factor is WD TV live :stuck_out_tongue: it is what it is and it’s very disappointing especially since they advertise “gigabit ethernet”

 

I say again

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Network/1000GB-Network-only-getting-8-2mbps-read-writes-from-WD-hub/m-p/360619/highlight/true#M2106

QUOTE (RichUK)

If you read the review I attached to my message you will see that its a bit of a ‘marketing ploy’ on the hub. I did not mean in general. We are discussing the hub.

ENDQUOTE

I ,like many others ,made a decision to buy this item based on advertised hardware specs. My entire home network is gigabit. To make a machine that has a gigabit port and then not give it a processor that has enough power to be able to make full use it is just building to the lowest common parts price. In my opinion, one that might backfire. I am now very gunshy about buying ANYTHING by WD. I used to always buy WD hard drives but now I will think twice on my next purchase. I suspect that many other people will also think this way. This might be a marketing ploy by WD but it was wrong.

 

I ,like many others ,made a decision to buy this item based on advertised hardware specs. My entire home network is gigabit. To make a machine that has a gigabit port and then not give it a processor that has enough power to be able to make full use it is just building to the lowest common parts price. In my opinion, one that might backfire. I am now very gunshy about buying ANYTHING by WD. I used to always buy WD hard drives but now I will think twice on my next purchase. I suspect that many other people will also think this way. This might be a marketing ploy by WD but it was wrong.

 

My question is, would you have purchased the hub if it was only 10/100 vs gigabit? The concern would have been “wow, gigabit has been around for years, why doesn’t WD support it”. 10/100 would have been more in line with it’s true capabilities.

There as basic misunderstanding about the speed of Ethernet, SATA, USB, etc that many people don’t appreciate. The signaling runs at these speeds and it supports the protocols of those speeds but the device USING the interface many times can’t either fill or empty the pipe at those rated speeds. 

This is true of all networked devices. Check back in this post for the numbers on the PC<->MAC numbers, they don’t’ approach full gigabit capability. Why? Because even those devices can’t fill the pipe! Yes, it’s much better but PCs have multiple high speed internal interfaces and a processor and heat sink the size of your fist to boot. Don’t forget about the dedicated northbridge/southbridge controllers, GPU chip, and etc that support the processor. These are different classes of machines than the little SoC-based hub. What do you expect for a box with a 1T notebook drive and a street price of ~170?

When products are designed, it’s a tradeoff between performance and price. Would you have been willing to pay more for the hub for higher network performance? Sounds like it. But would everyone else want to pay more? Apparently WD said no.

Personally I find the performance to be fine as it’s a copy once and done thing. It is painful up front but after an initial loading, you tend to forgot it. BTW, I wouldn’t have paid more than ~200 for the box. At higher prices, one can kludge a HTPC together. I suspect WD had that in mind.

Outsider wrote:

 To make a machine that has a gigabit port and then not give it a processor that has enough power to be able to make full use it is just building to the lowest common parts price.

I doubt you have any device in your network that even gets close to gig speeds, let alone “full use” of it…  Except for, perhaps, your network switches.  ;)

Chip, when I decided to buy a media player, I did look at many diferent units and the GB interface was the item that made the final choice for me. It was only after I bought the unit that I discovered this site and read about the problems. In hindsite, would I have bought it? Probably not. I am now building an HTPC and am looking at XBMC (ver.11.0)

Tony, that is true. But, I also don’t get the (1M/sec - 8M/sec)  transfer speed on anything else in my network. I very seldom use the internal hard drive as my home has a 12 TB NAS (actual usage 9TB due to raid5) setup that is accessed by more than the LiveHub.

This thread is somewhat confused by the misuse of abbreviations… as I understand it M b ps or M b /s = mega bits per second and M B ps or M B /s = mega bytes per second. There being an eight fold difference between the two.

I have run my WDTV Live Hub via wireless N and achieved erratic speeds between 1 and 3 MB/s. The network was fine but the performance of the WDTV with wireless was too erratic and slow. I have now cabled it direct and using a Netgear Gigabit router can achieve a steady transfer rate of 15MB/s (120Mbps)

Whilst 120 Mbps is well below the gigabit rate of 1 Gbps, (but above the 100 Mbps older network standard), it would appear this is the internal limit of the WDTV Live Hub, as mentioned by others in this thread. When running PC to PC on my Gigabit wired network I obtain speeds around 750 Mbps

Hard wiring my WDTV Live Hub has made it much more “friendly” in use as I transfer all my video from the computer prior to viewing. I just transferred 9GB in 10 minutes which is totally acceptable to me.

Everyone is talking about network speeds not being where they should be but one other factor that has not been mentioned is the Hard Drive. HD speed will also effectively limit your transfer rates. If the drive can’t write the data, then it will not allow more to be received. I did a quick Google on it but could not find out what is the speed of the hard drive in these units?

George_R wrote:

Everyone is talking about network speeds not being where they should be but one other factor that has not been mentioned is the Hard Drive. HD speed will also effectively limit your transfer rates. If the drive can’t write the data, then it will not allow more to be received. I did a quick Google on it but could not find out what is the speed of the hard drive in these units?

Its a WD Scorpio Blue with a SATA 3 Gb/s interface.

http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=140

I think you will find that the hard disk is fast enough and as has been said its the internal workings of the player that reduces the speed.