I know that this doesn’t appear to be a new issue from the topic title, but I have searched and tested to no avail so far. I have the following issue:
I have a WDTV Live SMP and two WDTV Live in my home. They are all hard wired to my home network. They are all on the latest firmware. ISO playback has been working fine from my ReadyNAS Duo v2
Last week my D-Link network switch packed it in. I replaced it with a Procurve 2824. Now most of my ISO files stutter on all WD devices. I’ve also noticed that some particularly large HD files (MKVs etc) also seem to stop and buffer (on the SMP) periodically. So it seems that there’s some issue with throughput on the Switch.
All ports are set to auto-sense, but i have tried setting them to 10/100 on the WD devices but nothing changed.
I enabled IP routing which did seem to help slightly on the WDTV Live boxes. Still stuttering but sometimes plays for a minute first.
Not sure if anyone has any advice for me. I work in ICT, and am reasonably proficient, but haven’t had to deal with switch or network config for years so I’m a bit out of practice.
Update the Procurve to use the most recent firmware if you haven’t already.
You might need to adjust the default packet size on the switch and make it smaller. Login to the web interface and look for any errors.
Try disabling flow control…or enabling it if it is disabled and see if that makes a difference.
Turn off LACP on all ports. Disable QOS passthrough
I am sure one of those issues I listed are the problem. But not sure which one. I spent a month with a testy Procurve…those were the most common issues with latency and bursty packets being sent across the network.
I’m definitely up to date with the latest firmware. No change.
Flow control didn’t help me out.
I turned off LACP. This was most promising, it cleared things up a bit on my SMP. ISO is almost watchable but glitches after 4 or 5 minutes. FullHD MKV files still take forever to render and are unwatchable. The WDTV Live are still rubbish for ISO.
QOS Passthrough off. No change. (It was already off, but ran the command anyway)
No errors on the switch that seem to matter. I’ve got two FCS Rx errors on my internet router port, but that’s irrelevant i think. I did try taking it off the network just in case it was doing anything untoward, but no change.
Bumped up error reporting sensitivity just in case, but it reckons it’s all good.
You mention changing the default packet size, but i’m not sure how to do this or what it should be?!
I’ve included my running config just in case there’s something that jumps out at you.
Cheers,
R_K
Running configuration:
; J4903A Configuration Editor; Created on release #I.10.101
hostname "ThomasNet"
time timezone 570
interface 1
no lacp
exit
interface 2
no lacp
exit
interface 3
no lacp
exit
interface 4
no lacp
exit
interface 5
no lacp
exit
interface 6
no lacp
exit
interface 7
no lacp
exit
interface 8
no lacp
exit
interface 9
no lacp
exit
interface 10
no lacp
exit
interface 11
no lacp
exit
interface 12
no lacp
exit
interface 13
no lacp
exit
interface 14
no lacp
exit
interface 15
no lacp
exit
interface 16
no lacp
exit
interface 17
no lacp
exit
interface 18
no lacp
exit
interface 19
no lacp
exit
interface 20
no lacp
exit
interface 21
no lacp
exit
interface 22
no lacp
exit
interface 23
no lacp
exit
interface 24
no lacp
exit
ip default-gateway 192.168.1.1
ip routing
snmp-server community "public" Unrestricted
vlan 1
name "DEFAULT_VLAN"
untagged 1-24
ip address 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
ip helper-address 192.168.1.1
ip igmp
exit
fault-finder bad-driver sensitivity high
fault-finder bad-transceiver sensitivity high
fault-finder bad-cable sensitivity high
fault-finder too-long-cable sensitivity high
fault-finder over-bandwidth sensitivity high
fault-finder broadcast-storm sensitivity high
fault-finder loss-of-link sensitivity high
fault-finder duplex-mismatch-HDx sensitivity high
fault-finder duplex-mismatch-FDx sensitivity high
password manager
password operator
Jumbo frames is off. And on the Procurve 2824 the default MTU is 1522 i think, but no documentation on how to change it. May not be possible.
I ended up finding the work-around. The problem obviously lies with the Switch successfully negotiating the difference between the NAS @ 1000FDx and the WD devices at 100FDx.
I changed the NAS port from Auto down to 100HDx and the issues cleared up.
I’d still like to get the switch to negotiate it properly, but don’t know if I’ll be able to.
If you’ve got any ideas let me know, but thanks to both contributors for giving me some ideas and a sounding board!
That would tend to indicate that the switch is dropping frames since they’re arriving faster from the NAS than can be transmitted to the WD.
Down-speeding the NAS to 100 would of course solve that, but it’s far from an acceptable solution.
A Procurve switch should have ample buffer space to be able to manage the difference in speeds between the two ports.
You should be able to look at the interface statistics on the Procurve’s CLI to see if there are “Output Drops” or “Discards” on the WDTV’s port when the NAS is 1000. If so, then the switch is a bad architecture…
Lots of Consumer-grade switches can suffer from this issue, but Procurve switches are supposed to be Enterprise-class, and should never drop frames like that.
But whatever you do – don’t EVER set the configuration to change the speed/duplex on the Procurve unless you do the exact same thing on the other end of the link…
In other words, if you set only the Procurve to 100FDX, your NAS will be messed up (it will be in Half Duplex.)
when i was looking for a switch i read too many bad reviews and others having similar problems with the procurve series in general
So i decided to go with an hp 1910-8g
Set up and management has been effortless
Incidentally (and I am NOT familiar with ProCurve), from what I see online, you WANT to enable QoS passthrough.
QoS passthrough consolidates the packet buffers and allocates more memory to single queues, instead of dedicating memory into specific queues that you’re not using (since you don’t have QoS configured.)
I actually arrived at this solution last night. Whilst reading through pages of switch config documentation it occured to me that qos passthrough should fix the issue rather than create it so i turned it on. Problem appears to be solved!
If you are still around could you please explain how exactly you fixed this?
I have a similar issue:
I recently upgraded from a dlink655 to the Asus N66u. Sadly this has caused some problems regarding playback with my wired wdtv live media players. The players stream from a synology 207+ and both the WDTV’s and the synology are connected directly to the N66u. Everything worked flawlessly with the 655 but now the movies stutter, like the files are buffering. If I connect a laptop to the Cable instead of the wdtv’s the movie plays fine.
Does anyone have any idea what I can do or what could be wrong? I have tried turning jumbo frames on and off with no effect.
I have a home that is pre-wired for CAT 5. I have an Asus RT-N66U.running my network, and it pretty much is set up as it came out of the box. I have done minimum twiddling of settings other than the required ones, and those that fine tune the 2.4 and 5G signals.
I never heard of the switches referred to here, but I have had dlink 10/100 “cheapies” running here for years until I got the Asus router, and then bought 5 or 6 (inexpensive) Trendnet consumer-grade gigabit switches from Newegg in 5 and 8 port varieties. I also have switches ganged to switches. None of my switches have any sort of controls to twiddle. Bottom line is that everything worked perfectly before the newest equipment, and afterward.
When Newegg puts the Trendnet switches on sale, they are a steal. I buy the ones in the metal case, not the plastic case for a few bucks more. Everything is running off the Trendnet switches now, except for one of the older dlinks tapped off a Trendnet (for non-gigabit equipment; e.g. WD Live Plus!).
Stuttering is a non-issue for me except in rare occasions when I push the envelope and stream certain MKV files made from BD disks to my iPad (Yes, MKV can be streamed to iPad using the appropriate apps/programs.) Some work fine, some don’t, and I am sure it is because of the complexity of some movie discs over others. Thess same MKV files converted to m4v for streaming to iPad work fine. I don’t make too many files like these as they can be gigantic. Better to just play the BD disc!
