Need help

Yes, I’m quite sure what equipment I have in my own home.

In both setups, the hub was acting as the server - both via the TwonkyMedia server which I assume is Samba. The player (renderer) as I stated, was my new Toshiba laptop in both cases.

Gotta wait for a mod to approve that image.  We can’t see it… 

DevlshOne wrote:

 

Yes, I’m quite sure what equipment I have in my own home. 

I honestly don’t think you do, or it’s not connected the way you describe.

Earlier you said “the routers in 150Mbps mode on 5.0GHz channel 9.”

There is no channel 9 in the 5 GHz spectrum in most countries.  Unless you’re using Japanese-Rregulated equipment, Channel 9 is only in the 2.4Hz band.  And your routers CANNOT do 150 meg, or even 66… It’s just not possible.  That’s according to NetGear, not me…

And the conversation ends… because apparently you are omniscient. I know what mode it is in, what channel it is set to and what speeds I am getting.

A picture speaks a thousand words, which is why I captured one and emebdded it within my post.

…and as I said, we can’t see it until a moderator approves it.

Like I said, you will never get full resolution BD rips to play wirelessly on this device no matter what network hardware you use. I was barely able to do it when the Live Hub and the router were within 10 feet of each other with no obstructions, but I still had the ocassional stutter in that setup. If streaming this kind of content wirelessly is your aim, you will remain disappointed. As I also said, there are no issues with playing these kinds of files from the internal or external USB hard drive. This is what I bought my Hub for and I use it almost daily.

Okee dokee.  We can see your image now, and I’ll admit that I was wrong – well, 1/3 wrong.  

Your boxes do support 802.11n (though, once I saw your image, I was only able to find documentation of this in a firmware release note, since NetGear didn’t update the manual to include that.)

So, I do appologize for doubting you on that matter.

But it is not 5.0GHz.   It’s 2.4 GHz single-stream N.  

Also, since they only have 100-meg ports, that will inherently limit everything to 100 meg except aggregate WiFi, which you said you’re not using.

And, since your use case eliminated the WiFi when using the Hub, it is, indeed irelevant anyway, so I also appologize for the distraction.

BTW, Twonky is not the same as Samba.   Twonky is a DLNA server which uses HTTP as the transport (basically the  same protocol as a webserver) .  Samba is the the same as “CIFS” which is Microsoft’s protocol for Windows FIle & Printer Sharing.

So, now let’s dig deeper.

As I was doing more research, I was streaming my Iron Man BD rip from my WiFi Hub to my wired desktop, and it was playing without issue – this video has an approximate 28 Mbps bit rate – and it was streaming fine.  I was doing this via a Samba connection (Network Share)

I know whole-heartedly that the Hub is capable of streaming higher bitrate video.   In fact, it’s even MORE capable with Twonky compared to Samba.  

So while this was going on, I started doing some research on your switch; the FS108.

According to the specs, it only has 96KB of buffer memory.  

On many of Netgear’s switches, they allocate that as 12KB buffers PER PORT, though their documentation isn’t specific – it just says 96KB memory – on other switches such as the GS108 (the Gig version of that same switch) it DOES document it as 12KB PER PORT.

This can cause issues if the switch runs out of buffers when the server (the Hub) transmits large amounts of data.  If the switch runs out of buffer memory, it will throw data away, and that requires the data to be retransmitted.   

This will happen any time the client / server negotiate a “Window Size” of over 12KB; and I’ve seen MANY times where the window will be 64K – 5x larger than the switch can handle.

There’s a couple of ways to see if this is happening.

On your Client PC, open up a CMD window while the video is streaming.

issue the command 

C:\Users\tony>netstat -s | findstr /i segments
  Segments Received = 2117844
  Segments Sent = 1677477
  Segments Retransmitted = 0

If you see TWO sets of results, ignore the latter set; it’s for IPv6.   The first set of three is IPv4.

You should see steady increases of the first two numbers: Segments Received and Sent.

You should NOT see steady increases in Retransmitted Segments.   

If you DO see increasing Retransmits, see if you can connect your hub DIRECTLY to your PC  (which would require static IP addresses for both since DHCP won’t work) and try streaming that way.

If that DOES work, then you might investigate the switch.

Now.  As to why your PC-to-PC would work in worse conditions:   Because PCs have much deeper buffer memory inside them – they will buffer a lot more video before starting playback, so if retransmits start happening, they can play from buffer while the retransmits take place.

The WDs have very little memory.