Streaming Video over 802.11g

I have the Media Center PCs connected via a 802.11g net.
I have set these up so that they can all share their recorded shows.
However when I try to play one of these shows (about 1 gig for a 30 minute
show) over the net the performance is horrible.
I am running a 802.11g net and according to the task basr icon my speed
ranges between 36 and 54.

Any thoughts, Ideas or suggestions?

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> I have the Media Center PCs connected via a 802.11g net.
> I have set these up so that they can all share their recorded shows.
> However when I try to play one of these shows (about 1 gig for a 30 minute
> show) over the net the performance is horrible.

Lessee: 1GB/30min = 1024MB/1800s = 8192Mb/1800s = 4.55Mbps . I get about
6.1 Mbps to my laptop over 802.11b, you get about 3-5 times that, so you're
talking 14% to 24% of capacity. You're probably not out of capacity.
802.11b is half-duplex; maybe there's a significant amount of information
flowing upstream, or at least frequent switching of direction. Increase
your buffer size and see if that helps.

> I am running a 802.11g net and according to the task basr icon my speed
> ranges between 36 and 54.

Copy a large file over the same path to compute your maximum throughput.
Maybe a ping would measure latency? Throughput doesn't account for that.

--
-eben (E-Mail Removed)m home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar
VIRGO: All Virgos are extremely friendly and intelligent - except
for you. Expect a big surprise today when you wind up with your
head impaled upon a stick. -- Weird Al, _Your Horoscope for Today_

Hactar wrote:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> I have the Media Center PCs connected via a 802.11g net.
>> I have set these up so that they can all share their recorded shows.
>> However when I try to play one of these shows (about 1 gig for a 30
>> minute show) over the net the performance is horrible.
>
> Lessee: 1GB/30min = 1024MB/1800s = 8192Mb/1800s = 4.55Mbps . I get
> about
> 6.1 Mbps to my laptop over 802.11b, you get about 3-5 times that, so
> you're talking 14% to 24% of capacity. You're probably not out of
> capacity. 802.11b is half-duplex; maybe there's a significant amount
> of information flowing upstream, or at least frequent switching of
> direction. Increase your buffer size and see if that helps.
>
>> I am running a 802.11g net and according to the task basr icon my
>> speed ranges between 36 and 54.
>
> Copy a large file over the same path to compute your maximum
> throughput. Maybe a ping would measure latency? Throughput doesn't
> account for that.

The network might have nothing to do with the performance. As I
understand, when any avi file operation is commenced, the OS loads the
entire file (or tries to) to verify the audio/video indexes. This
causes major problems with avi file operations. You might verify this
by transferring a moderately large avi file to another computer, noting
the transfer *time*, and figure the rate with the overall time and
filesize. Then do the same with another large file, say a zip file of
something of moderate size. See if there is a significant difference in
the effective transfer rates.

There is a reg hack for deleting damaged avi files. If the file is
damaged, the copying into memory can fail and prevent the subsequent
delete. Supposedly the reg hack prevents the default behavior of
copying the entire file into memory and vastly improves file transfers.
I no longer can find the hack or the reference to it. Google: damaged
avi might pull it up.

Q

Thanks.

When you refer to buffer what exactly are you referring to. A buffer on the
802.11g client? or on the MediaCenter software.

One issue I have is that I cant seem to locate any buffering paramters for
Windows Media Center Edition.

Thanks.

"Hactar" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:c00j7i$2sd$(E-Mail Removed)...
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> > I have the Media Center PCs connected via a 802.11g net.
> > I have set these up so that they can all share their recorded shows.
> > However when I try to play one of these shows (about 1 gig for a 30
minute
> > show) over the net the performance is horrible.
>
> Lessee: 1GB/30min = 1024MB/1800s = 8192Mb/1800s = 4.55Mbps . I get about
> 6.1 Mbps to my laptop over 802.11b, you get about 3-5 times that, so
you're
> talking 14% to 24% of capacity. You're probably not out of capacity.
> 802.11b is half-duplex; maybe there's a significant amount of information
> flowing upstream, or at least frequent switching of direction. Increase
> your buffer size and see if that helps.
>
> > I am running a 802.11g net and according to the task basr icon my speed
> > ranges between 36 and 54.
>
> Copy a large file over the same path to compute your maximum throughput.
> Maybe a ping would measure latency? Throughput doesn't account for that.
>
> --
> -eben (E-Mail Removed)m home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar
> VIRGO: All Virgos are extremely friendly and intelligent - except
> for you. Expect a big surprise today when you wind up with your
> head impaled upon a stick. -- Weird Al, _Your Horoscope for Today_

How would I calculate the max throughput/latency.



"Hactar" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:c00j7i$2sd$(E-Mail Removed)...
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> > I have the Media Center PCs connected via a 802.11g net.
> > I have set these up so that they can all share their recorded shows.
> > However when I try to play one of these shows (about 1 gig for a 30
minute
> > show) over the net the performance is horrible.
>
> Lessee: 1GB/30min = 1024MB/1800s = 8192Mb/1800s = 4.55Mbps . I get about
> 6.1 Mbps to my laptop over 802.11b, you get about 3-5 times that, so
you're
> talking 14% to 24% of capacity. You're probably not out of capacity.
> 802.11b is half-duplex; maybe there's a significant amount of information
> flowing upstream, or at least frequent switching of direction. Increase
> your buffer size and see if that helps.
>
> > I am running a 802.11g net and according to the task basr icon my speed
> > ranges between 36 and 54.
>
> Copy a large file over the same path to compute your maximum throughput.
> Maybe a ping would measure latency? Throughput doesn't account for that.
>
> --
> -eben (E-Mail Removed)m home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar
> VIRGO: All Virgos are extremely friendly and intelligent - except
> for you. Expect a big surprise today when you wind up with your
> head impaled upon a stick. -- Weird Al, _Your Horoscope for Today_

This interesting.
But if it were tryin to copy the entire file across into memory I would
think that I would see a signficiant delay in the video starting which I
dont.



"Quaoar" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:s-udnSVYYZ0QSL7dRVn-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hactar wrote:
> > In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> > Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> >> I have the Media Center PCs connected via a 802.11g net.
> >> I have set these up so that they can all share their recorded shows.
> >> However when I try to play one of these shows (about 1 gig for a 30
> >> minute show) over the net the performance is horrible.
> >
> > Lessee: 1GB/30min = 1024MB/1800s = 8192Mb/1800s = 4.55Mbps . I get
> > about
> > 6.1 Mbps to my laptop over 802.11b, you get about 3-5 times that, so
> > you're talking 14% to 24% of capacity. You're probably not out of
> > capacity. 802.11b is half-duplex; maybe there's a significant amount
> > of information flowing upstream, or at least frequent switching of
> > direction. Increase your buffer size and see if that helps.
> >
> >> I am running a 802.11g net and according to the task basr icon my
> >> speed ranges between 36 and 54.
> >
> > Copy a large file over the same path to compute your maximum
> > throughput. Maybe a ping would measure latency? Throughput doesn't
> > account for that.
>
> The network might have nothing to do with the performance. As I
> understand, when any avi file operation is commenced, the OS loads the
> entire file (or tries to) to verify the audio/video indexes. This
> causes major problems with avi file operations. You might verify this
> by transferring a moderately large avi file to another computer, noting
> the transfer *time*, and figure the rate with the overall time and
> filesize. Then do the same with another large file, say a zip file of
> something of moderate size. See if there is a significant difference in
> the effective transfer rates.
>
> There is a reg hack for deleting damaged avi files. If the file is
> damaged, the copying into memory can fail and prevent the subsequent
> delete. Supposedly the reg hack prevents the default behavior of
> copying the entire file into memory and vastly improves file transfers.
> I no longer can find the hack or the reference to it. Google:
http://reviews.cnet.com/Samsung_SCH_...tml?tag=review might pull it up.
>
> Q
>
>

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> How would I calculate the max throughput/latency.

throughput:

In XP:
ctrl-shift-esc, "Networking" tab.

In 2k:
Got me, I haven't done it. You can get (very) rough info through Start ->
Settings -> Networking and Dial-up Connectors, double-click connection. A
packet is between 40 and 1500 bytes (I think).

In Linux:
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep bytes ; sleep 5 ; /sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep bytes
divide the difference by five
pick a longer time for greater accuracy.

latency:

pretty much any OS:
ping somehost
looks sorta like this:

64 bytes from somehost (i.p.ad.dress): icmp_seq=1 ttl=235 time=110 ms
64 bytes from somehost (i.p.ad.dress): icmp_seq=2 ttl=235 time=112 ms
64 bytes from somehost (i.p.ad.dress): icmp_seq=3 ttl=237 time=74.0 ms

take the last field. iputils-ss020124 is nice enough to give me aggregate
info:

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 74.017/98.816/112.057/17.548 ms

"rtt" = "round trip time"
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? [TOFU := text oben,
A: Top-posting. followup unten]
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet? -- Daniel Jensen

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> When you refer to buffer what exactly are you referring to. A buffer on the
> 802.11g client? or on the MediaCenter software.

On the software. Similar to the buffer that Realplayer (or whatever they're
calling it this week) is filling when it prints "Buffering".

> One issue I have is that I cant seem to locate any buffering paramters for
> Windows Media Center Edition.

Well then MS have deemed that to be one of the things you needn't bother
your pretty haid about. :-( Use a different program, if you can.

--
-eben (E-Mail Removed)m home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar

Unix is user-friendly; it's just picky
about who it makes friends with.

So would that be link speed from Task Manager>Networking?

"Hactar" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:c014oh$shg$(E-Mail Removed)...
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Robert Desel <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> > How would I calculate the max throughput/latency.
>
> throughput:
>
> In XP:
> ctrl-shift-esc, "Networking" tab.
>
> In 2k:
> Got me, I haven't done it. You can get (very) rough info through Start ->
> Settings -> Networking and Dial-up Connectors, double-click connection. A
> packet is between 40 and 1500 bytes (I think).
>
> In Linux:
> /sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep bytes ; sleep 5 ; /sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep
bytes
> divide the difference by five
> pick a longer time for greater accuracy.
>
> latency:
>
> pretty much any OS:
> ping somehost
> looks sorta like this:
>
> 64 bytes from somehost (i.p.ad.dress): icmp_seq=1 ttl=235 time=110 ms
> 64 bytes from somehost (i.p.ad.dress): icmp_seq=2 ttl=235 time=112 ms
> 64 bytes from somehost (i.p.ad.dress): icmp_seq=3 ttl=237 time=74.0 ms
>
> take the last field. iputils-ss020124 is nice enough to give me aggregate
> info:
>
> rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 74.017/98.816/112.057/17.548 ms
>
> "rtt" = "round trip time"
> --
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? [TOFU := text oben,
> A: Top-posting. followup unten]
> Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet? -- Daniel Jensen