[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #2708: patch: Allow remote FE/BE to prefer to use the myth protocol

[Chris Pinkham]

* On Tue Nov 21, 2006 at 03:38:57PM -0800, Bruce Markey wrote:
> Chris Pinkham wrote:
> > * On Tue Nov 21, 2006 at 04:35:47PM -0500, Daniel Kristjansson wrote:

<snip our comments, just showing who Bruce was replying to.

> Not sure if either of you read these messages correctly
> or if I misread your responses:
> 
> "FWIW: My in experience streaming works far better...
>   ...several posts in the dev & users lists that suggest to
>   use streaming rather than nfs mounts."
> 
> "I am one that finds streaming via protocol better than
>   nfs mount."

In my response, I was trying to say, "Hey, I've seen that scenario
also a few times, so I can see the value in the concept of the
patch."

In my case, using the myth:// protocol actually doubles my network
traffic since my NFS server is not one of my Myth backends.  In
order for the frontend to stream a file from a backend, the backend
first has to read the file from the NFS server, so the data is going
over the wire twice.  It's a 100-Mbit switched network, so it's not
that big of a deal, but the backend is just reading data in the NIC
just to push it back out the NIC to another host.  This was my main
reason for wanting to allow frontends and other programs to be able
to read directly, to cut down on network traffic in cases where the
NFS server was not the actual backend.

It's been so long since I used the myth:// protocol on a day-to-day
basis that I can't comment on it or remember if I ever even had
any issues.  My main issue was reducing network traffic.  There was
no need for the backend to have to be reading/writing another
stream when it was already recording a few and possibly commercial
flagging others.  That 12MBytes/sec can go pretty fast. :)  That's
why I recently upgraded my fileserver to Gig-E connected to a Gig-E
switch that fans out to my other main Myth boxes and dev workstation
and then connects to a 100Mbit switch for all my other stuff.

--
Chris