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Small home network netflix problem

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panchdhar

New Around Here
Can anyone suggest what to do? Netflix buffers and stalls with streaming.

1. Time warner cable modem (new) connected to Netgear router ( 5 years old).
2. Router connected to Cisco PLE 300 AV bridge
3. Bridge transmits to Cisco PLS 4 port ethernet switch

4. Switch is connecedt to Oppo BD 103 media server

(Oppo server is connected to Nuforce 9 DAC which is connected to Panamax 5100 surge protector which feeds into NAD t775 then finally Samsung TV)

Why does download on the Oppo take so long?
Is it a problem with how the 5Gz is set up in the router?

Do I need to get a new router or new ethernet adaptor kit?

help
 
bridge to router

The Netgear router and Cisco PLE300 are wired. So I get 20MBPs. I suspect the signal is downgraded by the ethernet port PLS 300 which is wirelessly communicating with the bridge. ???:(
 
Connect the Oppo player directly to your router to answer your question of whether you need a new router.

Are you measuring 20 Mbits/s or 20 Mbytes/sec?

What are you expecting for throughput?
 
Connect the Oppo player directly to your router to answer your question of whether you need a new router.

Are you measuring 20 Mbits/s or 20 Mbytes/sec?

What are you expecting for throughput?

Also, instead of using 5 year old router (guessing it's simple draft N?) and then powerline to connect to your Oppo, if you're into A/V enough to buy something as top of the line as Oppo, I'd have that thing hard wired to my router or minimally get a new router & bridge (and you able to do that significant upgrade for less than the cost of your surge suppressor alone) and you can probably get a more solid connection to your a/v equipment than you have now, if it was me, IMHO.

For example, all a/v stuff in my home is wired over gigabit, or uses a wifi bridge back to my AP (I can do internal TiVo to TiVo streaming at around 60Mb/s (7.25MB/s) and one the TiVos is connected over a 5ghz bridge, even higher when using all hardwired TiVos). They are rock solid, if I have any streaming gremlins ever it tends to be because I'm hitting Netflix or Youtube servers at peak times. Here is a screenshot from the bridge's DD-WRT mid-TiVo-transfer:
Itqe9hd.jpg


hth
 
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Netflix is quite low bandwidth (rate). They estimate the speed of your connection, and they can get it wrong.

Assuming on self-induced problems like using WiFi for Netflix and with heavy use by neighbors, same channel as you within 2 chans., then I'd blame your ISP.

Test that theory using ping -t your first router, usually a net 10 address right after your router's address.
 
For the record, here are Netflix's suggested bandwidth needs (not just to your router, but this is the speed your device should be connecting to Netflix at + some buffer).

- typical Netflix bandwidth needs

- Most people will want to make sure they have set their netflix quality preference here to highest

- And to see if your neck of the woods w/ your ISP qualifies for "Super HD" (they actually put their servers at your ISP, and offer to do it at no cost to the ISP) you can check that here. If your ISP doesn't support it yet, write them emails and tweet them to ask why not.

Here is a screenshot of my Asus's traffic monitor, the only thing I'm doing right now from WAN to LAN is streaming Netflix. I'm watching House of Cards on my TiVo which should be in Netflix's HD mode, or even potentially Super HD (though my ISP doesn't have the servers officially yet, and when I go to the test web page mentioned above it says I'm not in a Super HD area yet, however my TiVo's screen for House of Cards says "available in Super HD on this device"). So I don't know quite what to make of that, but. . .I'm currently getting around 460 KB/s average over trailing 5 min, which is about 3.5 Mb/s, which Netflix says puts me in just sub-HD quality(in a very peaky [and I believe variable compression], up and down stream). I'm only watching on a 32" TV, but it looks quite good.

EoOLITv.jpg


Just for yucks I'm trying streaming on my AppleTV-3, plugged into same media bridge as TiVo above, streaming same show, and sweet jesus there is a definite difference in KB/s. I just waited for the entire graph to fill with samples from the ATV streaming, and a weird thing happened, once it pushed the first 5min, or whatever that is, all the way out and was replaced with a fresh 5min, the actual plot of the graph just went away in a poof. However, it did update the trailing average number to reflect over the past 5min (all of which were streaming Netflix to the ATV3, over same 5ghz-N bridge), and it's very odd but the #s were almost double what the TiVo did, same media bridge, same ISP, same network, same show and same time of day.

I ended up getting about 950KB/s which is 7.125Mb/s, on the ATV-3 which is exactly what Netflix says it requires for SuperHD (which I may or may not be getting, still unclear).

Here's a picture of the corrupted graph, but the average downstream # is still accurate and useful.

oINJeQ8.jpg


I will try more streaming services on more devices tomorrow, FWIW.
 
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A relative of mine, in a rural area, has DSL from Verizon landline. It's about 2-3Mbps down.

He uses that speed, then into a cheap 11n WiFi AP, through 3 walls to the living room, and gets near flawless Netflix via a Roku box tied to an old TV. Probably not even using 3Mbps and they're happy. Not expecting super HD quality though.
 
A relative of mine, in a rural area, has DSL from Verizon landline. It's about 2-3Mbps down.

He uses that speed, then into a cheap 11n WiFi AP, through 3 walls to the living room, and gets near flawless Netflix via a Roku box tied to an old TV. Probably not even using 3Mbps and they're happy. Not expecting super HD quality though.

Netflix has a pretty amazing infrastructure, and DSL though slow tends to be super solid. . .it certainly makes sense, especially if it's not a big TV w/ HD expectations.

**Update. . .24hrs after prior test, all wired to same 5ghz bridge, streaming same episode of the same show I get (all samples below taken within an hour of each other, and all samples were average over approx 3-5 minutes):

- 2.67 Mb/s Netflix streaming direct to Vizio smart TV
- 5.37 Mb/s Netflix streaming to ATV3
- .92 Mb/s streaming to TiVo Premiere (!!)

This is a funny screenshot of my overall downstream bandwidth changing radically when I switched from the ATV3 to the TiVo.

DxaKids.jpg


From 10' away on a 30' LED-LCD lower middle of the road TV, I could definitely notice the ATV was a better picture than the TiVo stream, the TiVo stream looks decent, it looks like the best YouTube HD I've ever seen, but it just doesn't pop like the ATV stream did, it has some slight, but conspicuous jagginess to it, honestly it doesn't look bad and I'm kind of surprised that it looks as decent as it does for being less than 1 Mb/s. I really wasn't comparing with a very critical eye, I'm mostly looking at stuff on my computer, but for the record, differences were visible in the streams.

I'll try this again on another night, and maybe since it's late on a Friday night, I might be getting into a period of peak Netflix traffic that was especially unkind to the TiVo, maybe the ATV has some secret sauce in it, I don't know. I will also test the HBO GO app on ATV, its quality seems pretty impressive.

And, as a baseline, to make sure I'm coming nowhere near the limits of my 5ghz bridge (it's 12 ft away, directly above my RT-N66), I just transferred a 1GB file from my Synology NAS up through the bridge at an average of 128 Mb/s.

***Update***
I tested HBO GO app on iOS tonight and am getting 3.97 Mb/s watching Game of Thrones, it looks solidly good, but not amazing in quality. I'd say about as sharp as a good DVD with minor nuances that plague most streaming video if you're looking for them.
 
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I learned Netflix uses different servers to serve traffic to different kinds of devices, so though it is unfortunate that my preferred Netflix streaming device gets 1/7th the bandwidth that my AppleTV does, that is not necessarily by design or intention. Netflix utilizes a dizzying array of cloud storage, cloud servers and other elastic things, all at Amazon (AWS), to serve this stuff up and I guess it depends on which resources they choose to put where at any given moment.

Netflix actually open sourced a program they wrote to help them compute their cloud resource usage because it was so expansive (allegedly a third of internet traffic on any given night) and encompasses so many of Amazon's different cloud services.
 

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