[mythtv-users] 802.11n for a frontend?

[Rudy Zijlstra]

migmog wrote:
> On 31/12/2007, John D. Friesen <john at frieware.com 
> <mailto:john at frieware.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for the input everyone. I guess I`ll start figuring out parts 
> for a completely silent FE then.
> >
>
>
>
> <http://linpvr.org>
> Just to scotch comments above, I live in a crowded apartment block in 
> the UK, there are 16 Wifi networks in range according to netstumbler, 
> I never get better than 30% throughput on the connection, yet I get 
> stutter-free SD playback on my wifi laptop using MythTVPlayer
>
Considering:
- modern 11g has (undisturbed) throughput rate of about 20Mbps (on TCP 
level) (you will never get the medium rate performance of 54)
- SD needs about 5 Mbps (and can be lower, i simply encode on high bitrate)

remark 1:
this will indeed work as long as AP and client are within close enough 
proximity (signal must be strong enough, and distance will kill 
performance as well)

remark 2:
when using USA HD which is using MPEG2, and thus needs between 12 - 16 
Mbps, this starts getting tricky... especially when taking the 30% 
throughput remark above into consideration).

A colleague of mine tried to get a wifi link working in his Paris 
appartment, between two rooms estimated distance about 7 to  8 meters. 
Bathroom in between. It was utter failure.


in other words: Your mileage may vary, and some of the parameters are:
- amount of neighbors in reach
- usage of said neighbors
- distance between AP and client (important one)
- type of obstruction(s) between AP and client (important)

So the end result is very dependent on both local setup and local 
requirements. an SD only setup has different requirements than a mixed 
SD/HD setup, with again differentiation between USA HD (MPEG2 = 12 - 
16Mbps) and EU HD (H.264 = 6 - 12Mbps ).

> My frontend box recently died. It was connected by ethernet and 
> netbooted but otherwise looked like the one I listed above.
>
> Good luck