Help On Optimizing Streaming (1 Viewer)

[3guk]

Hey Guys,

I need some help on sorting out my network for the best performance possible, I have been having a few audio sync problems and a few friends have blamed it on the speed of my network, because I am streaming everything from a file server. I also get a bit of stuttering mid way through what ever I am watching, again they have attributed this to network problems, I am running the latest version of media portal with only a few plugins installed, on a clean install of windows XP - the only stuff on the 120GB HD is WinXP and MediaPortal.

At current I have two boxes that do everything in my house FILESEV (The File Server + Torrent machine) and MEDSEV (The Box that sits under my TV).

I have around 6TB of recorded TV and Ripped DVDs. They are all saved over a few hard drives on the fileserver, which is running Vista (Suprisingly in week long tests was the most stable and easy to use with regards to file sharing). I use MPTV to organise all of my TV in to episodes.

The Fileserver also acts as a torrent box, downloading Linux Distros and various amounts of music and TV, I do Seed a fair bit with my upload always being around 200kbps.

Both machines are connected to a Netgear Router / Modem along with a few laptops that connect via wifi. The majority of my stuff is XVID and hence each episode is around 200 - 500mb so nothing huge, I certainly am not streaming HD. Both machines are using the onboard LAN.

Now I was wondering what could be causing the stuttering, it must be the network, if I transfer an episode to MEDSEV built in hard drive it plays perfectly and the sync is perfect. As soon as I stream it there is a tiny delay on the audio and the video stutters once or twice.

Does anyone have any ideas for my set up ?

 

[ugotd8]

Are both machines running at 1000/Mbps ? Directly connected thru a switch? I started with my machines connected thru the router and had similar problems to yours. Once I bought a Gigabit switch, all those problems went away. I stream XVID avi's, 720P and 1080P mkv's thru my network without issue. Although the 1080p mkv's used to stutter a little until I bought a 8600GT video card for $50.

Also, I've noticed when running a torrent client using high upload speed all of my network traffic slows. Do you have stuttering issues when not running a torrent client? If not, buy a $25 Gigabit ethernet card and use both NICs. I'm not sure how to set that up in Windows, but I run OpenSolaris and ZFS on my fileserver.

 

[disaster123]

I've only a 100Mbit/s PowerLAN and it works also inkl. HDTV Streaming without any problems.

 

[Infidelus]

To be honest, you shouldn't need a fast network at all to stream either MPEG2 or XVid files. MPEGs are only around 4Mbps, and Xvids are significantly smaller. A 100Mbps network should be adequate. Hell, a 10Mbps network should be plenty for standard TV.