[mythtv-users] HDHomerun and network problems?

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 12:16:08PM -0700, Michael Rice wrote:
> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:16:08 -0700
> From: Michael Rice <mikerice1969 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] HDHomerun and network problems?
> To: Discussion about mythtv <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> 
> On 10/19/07, John Welch <jrw3319 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Could be a totally different problem, but I had similar symptoms when I
> > first setup an HDHR on my network and Myth backend.  I was banging my head
> > against the wall trying to solve the problem because there were no obvious
> > error messages or anything like that on either the backend or the frontend.
> 
> Right.  I'd like to be know which piece of the network is having
> trouble.  It could be the NIC in either the frontend or backend or the
> router.  I don't know much about diagnosing networking problems.  Can
> anyone point me to some tools or commands to use to help pinpoint
> network problems like this?
> 
> I thought from my investigations that a 100Mb network could handle 2
> HDHR recordings plus streaming to a frontend.  Do others have this
> setup working?
> 
> Eventually moving to Gig and/or moving the HDHR to its own NIC is
> probably a good idea but I'd like to make sure I understand the
> bottleneck before I throw hardware at it.

Your "switch" is doing a lot of work.  It is acting as a WAN link (I bet
it is doing NAT & firewall too), acting as a wired 10/100 switch, and a wireless
bridge.  My bet is it is not capable of sustained 100Mb/s throughput.  2
HD streams from the HDHR (40-50Mb/s total) plus lets say 10Mb/s for the
SD stream, filtering your internet traffic at 2-5Mb/s, and finally add in 
wireless broadcasting of the ssid and any internet traffic bridged to 
the wireless side, and any WEP or WPA on the wireless side.
That's a lot of traffic for a consumer grade device.

Either put the HDHR on a dedicated NIC, or get a gigabit switch (they
are about as inexpensive as a 10/100 now - a 10/100 should work too) to
separate your network into HDHR & Myth backend (off the new switch) and
everything else (off your existing switch/router/whatever).

I've been through all 3 configurations and can tell you I noticed a big
difference when I added the second switch, and then a smaller (but still
noticeable improvement) difference when I moved the HDHR to a dedicated
NIC.



-- 

Patrick Ouellette                 pat at flying-gecko.net
kb8pym at arrl.net                   Amateur Radio: KB8PYM 
Living life to a Jimmy Buffett soundtrack
"Crank the amp to 11, this needs more cowbell - and a llama wouldn't hurt either"