Airport, Eyehome and a Windows PC

A

AndyD

Registered
Sorry this is a bit long winded, but please help, I'm going mad.

I have an Eyehome media streamer sitting under my TV. This is connected to Airport Express via an Ethernet Cable.

I have an Airport Extreme BS, an iMac G5 with airport and an XP PC with a D-Link Xtreme G+ PCI wireless card installed.

My PC is in the garage and holds my DVD collection.

All machines are no more than 25 feet from each other and it's a new build house so the walls are like paper!

Eyehome's media server runs on the iMac and alias's in the movie folder point to the files contained on the PC's HDD which, up until recently, played with no problem at all on the TV via the network. This was with all the devices out of the box, no messing.

Just recently the movies have been very slow, stuttering etc, for no apparent reason. Also any SMB connection to my PC regularly just drops out and disconnects. I can leave a file transfer going overnight to find in the morning that it's been disconnected. This never happened before.

The Windows box says (supposedly, it is Windows after all) it has an Excellent signal and is connectd at 54Mbps(I know this won't be the true speed). The iMac signal strenth varies but has no problems with the Internet (again I know this is different to sending big chunks of data like movies) through the AEBS.

I have messed around with multicast rates on all devices, setting them high, medium and low with no results and turned on and off the Interference robustness which does nothing (as I suspected it would).

I thought it may be the connection from the iMac to the BS as it's the weakest signal so I played a .vob file residing on the iMac's HDD through the network to the Eyehome and it's as smooth as anything. As you know a .vob file is nowhere near as compressed as the normal DivX files (around 3000kbps) I have been unable to play smoothly that reside on the PC.

So, not being very network minded, I am ok with most technical things and can get things to work by trial, error and luck, I have come to the conclusion that something is not pumping the data out at proper 802.11g speeds and causing everything to slow down to the slowest link in the chain.

Today I reset everything, re-installed everything.

Any ideas what's happening?
 
Since you seem to have eliminated any of the possibilities of network or setup problems, I'd start looking at problems for the servers themselves.

- Check network responsiveness to the PC by pinging it. If its slow, then you most likelly have a network problem, while if it is fast then you most likely have a software or setup problem.

- The PC may be infected with adware, spyware or viruses causing it to run slow. You can bring up task manager to see if any processes are hogging the CPU. You could also use a network analyser program like Ethereal to see if any other traffic is going through our network that you should know about. What antivirus precautions have you taken with the PC? You should be aware that no antivirus program detects 100% of malicious programs, so its best to use a few different soluions in concert. On my work PC, I run Symantec, Adaware and Clam antivirus as well as a Zonelabs firewall. Usually, each program manages to detect different attacks that the others didn't spot.

- A new device in the area may be interfering with the signal, such as a microwave oven or a cordless phone (allthough these would almost certainly change the value you see for signal strength, so its not as likely). Have you or your neighbours started using anything like this recently?

- A neighbour may be utilising some of your bandwidth, if they've gotten access to your network. Set the wireless secrity settings to the highest mode supported by all devices, and change your passwords.
 
Wireless networking is very complex compared to old fashioned CAT5. It is most likely interference from other 2.4GHz Wireless devices like Cordless Phones or a Faulty Microwave oven.
It could also be someone nearby trying to use another Wireless Network on the same Wireless Channel. Wireless Networking Hardware was a #1 Seller this Christmas…

If you have access to a Portable Wireless Device, like an iBook or PowerBook, have a bit of a WarWalk around your property to see if you can find any neighbouring Wireless Networks.
 
Thanks for your replies guys.

The PC has all the precautions regarding spyware and viruses and updates and scans in the early morning each day. I don't use the machine for surfing the web and there was a clean install/update of windows when I booted it out to the garage where it belongs.

Security is 128bit WEP.

I have been sniffing around my neighbourhood with my PDA for other networks and there is only one which is on channel 6 (I'm on 11) and in the next block, I can't detect it from my house.

I have however neglected to mention that I bought a 300gb HDD for the PC to hold the media. This a 7200rpm with a 16mb cache (ATA 133).
Inside the PC the instalation is as such:

Primary Master: OS HDD
Primary Slave: CD-ROM

Secondary Master: Storage HDD (120gb)
Secondary Slave: Storage HDD (300gb) where the movie files are kept.

Would the fact that the movies are stored on the secondary slave have any effect on the data transfer? At the time of streaming, the Secondary master is not in use. This would explain why it streams perfectly from the Mac I suppose.

At least I'll have something to do this Sunday!
 
Unfortunately, this is a little late, but I have an answer for you...

The problem is that you were starting to clog the network and add latency to the streaming by routing the PC through the Mac to the EyeHome. And since everything is wireless, using WEP, that adds even more latency.

More specifically, you get things like:
EyeHome -> Mac (Request)
Mac -> PC (Request)
PC -> Mac (Response)
Mac -> EyeHome (Response)

This doubles the round-trip time... for loads of fun. One thing you can do (if you don't mind using a non-Elgato interface), is try the Neuston media server. The Virtuoso MC-500 is similar to the EyeHome, and uses the same media server software (with some custom tweaks on both sides, obviously). Neuston has a version of the server package designed to run directly from the PC, so you could try downloading the Windows server and see if EyeHome can detect it. :)

http://www.neuston.com/en/mc500downloadold_win.asp
 
Thanks Krevinek! I'd forgotten about this post as it was some time ago.

I sorted it all out quite simply in the end by enclosing the hard drive(s) in an external firewire enclosure and plugged them straight into the Mac.

Now everything runs great.

Got one thing to ask though, slightly on the same line.

Why, do you think, the Eyehome can stream an uncompressed .vob file from the above setup over a wireless network (all be it with no sound) smoothly, but struggles to play a DIVx'd movie at much less the streaming rate?

I have to make sure that any DIVx'd movies are little more than 1GB in total filesize.
 
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