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Help with home network for media streaming

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Defcabbie

New Around Here
Hey everyone just hoping someone could help me out with this:

I have a media server running freenas & plex, and at any point it may be streaming to multiple clients on both LAN and internet.

Currently the server is connected directly to my router, via a single ethernet port, with no switches or anything, and I have a 200Mb/s fibre internet connection. I understand that regardless of anything I'm always limited by my upload speeds, and I also understand that having multiple Ethernet connection won't speed up any single connection but will allow concurrent connections.

So my question is which of these setups is better, will they improve things? or is there a better way?

(1)
2016-01-10 09.58.19.jpg
(2)
2016-01-10 09.58.30.jpg


As you can see there are a few small question marks on the images as well (sorry!), if anyone could help me out that would be brilliant!

Thanks!
 
I have a TWC 300 Mb/s connection and I have guaranteed 20 Mb/s upload so what is your up load speed? The other question is how many outside devices and inside devices? Also we need a rough estimate on what type of streams? 4K,HD,SD etc.

With 20 Mb/s upload there are not going to be many internet streams. More than likely one GIG Ethernet wire will be enough bandwidth. Even if you have 200Mb/s internet up load speed one wire will carry the load. I think you still have more than enough for local HD streams leftover. If you want to send movies as data files or back up the server then I might consider a second Ethernet wire but only if you think it be often enough to impact video streams. Your CPU and hardrive system is going to need to be robust to substain a full Ethernet connection. Have you tested your system?

What is your reasoning for so many Ethernet wires? Is there something I missed?

PS
I think I would hook it up with one wire and see where the bottle neck is.
 
Last edited:
Hello Coxhaus, thanks for your reply!

I just did a speed test on speedtest.net and got a 12.18Mb/s upload speed and in terms of devices, there will normally be one device inside but there is sometimes two, and outside there could be up to 3 concurrent clients all 1080p HD - therre wont be any file download or backing up.

Currently i am doing this from an old laptop which is obviously failing under stress - so i'm now building a new media server that i know will handle load, and i want to get as much out of my network as possible so the whole system is at it maximum potential (that's when i came here), i was hoping that having multiple ethernet wires would give me more stability when multiple clients are connected?

Thanks!
 
well since you are using a full PC you can get the network card for multiple NICs later on. non windows server OS cannot do LACP but linux supports LACP over different NICs.
the 1st gen iseries or even the AMD phenom ii can handle multiple concurrent 1080p streams depending on how many cores.

Another thing you may want to look at is something like a mikrotik CCR1009 or ubiquiti ERPRO because they both have SFP and multiple ports (CPU connected) and enough ethernet ports so they can do LACP, manage your network and have SFP for fibre optics. You will need the SFP module compatible with your ISP though. This solution is more power efficient, gives you more performance, lets you do more and reduces the number of devices that are always turned on. Since they dont have wifi you will need an AP. The cheaper option would be something like a mikrotik AP with SFP and wifi and connecting it to a managed switch. Some managed switches have POE out.

Your first picture is better. Just do port forwarding/vpn. Instead of a complicated setup just have everything connected to a central switch/router. 1080p encoded streams use 8- 12Mb/s but raw streams use a lot more (depending on what you use to watch and encoding options you set).
 
Hello Coxhaus, thanks for your reply!

I just did a speed test on speedtest.net and got a 12.18Mb/s upload speed and in terms of devices, there will normally be one device inside but there is sometimes two, and outside there could be up to 3 concurrent clients all 1080p HD - therre wont be any file download or backing up.

Currently i am doing this from an old laptop which is obviously failing under stress - so i'm now building a new media server that i know will handle load, and i want to get as much out of my network as possible so the whole system is at it maximum potential (that's when i came here), i was hoping that having multiple ethernet wires would give me more stability when multiple clients are connected?

Thanks!

You don't have enough outside bandwidth to run 3 HD streams. With your speed I would only count on 1 outside HD stream. Your internet traffic will require a certain amount of upload bandwidth to communicate responses to your other download internet traffic.

Your inside bandwidth will be fine. I think you will have enough bandwidth with 1 GIG Ethernet wire.
 
Thank you very much both of you for replying i will use this as a reference! just waiting on my ISP now then :D
 
Would it make sense to first confirm this works for local clients?

Then move one at a time out of local lan to Internet

Slowness could be upload from your fileserver or anywhere along the way.
 
"More wires" isn't going to solve anything. Your upload from your ISP is going to limit the speed (and quality) of what you can possibly hope to stream over the internet. Also, depending on how you build your Freenas box (assuming you're going to stick with Freenas for your new build) will also, in part, define where and how your server bottlenecks. Internal streaming is going to, in large part, be defined by what sorts of router you are using, whether you will be running cable or attempting to stream over wifi, using 802.11AC or N, and externally, it's a question of ISP bandwidth.

Freenas on an old laptop is fine as a "proof of concept" or for simple streaming internally to your own client devices on a LAN, but to use Freenas properly, you need/should be using a much more robust system than an old laptop. Minimum, you'll need a Gigabit ethernet port (most old laptops had only 100), and with Freenas 9.3 and above, you will need a crap-ton of memory to properly use the ZFS file system which means if you care about your data, a lot of costly ECC memory, and a decent mid-to-higher end Intel or AMD processor (although most Freenas afficianados will tell you Xenon or i7's), and a dedicated Asrock motherboard built to work as a server, and not some crapware cheap gaming board that may fail in a year or less. Solid HD's, generally WD Reds at a minimum, and perhaps some SSD's for cache.

Once you get your server built. these are the three things that will limit how many clients/people to whom you can stream: Processor Speed, Upload Speed and Hard drive throughput. If you are streaming direct both LAN and WAN, (i.e., without using something like Plex), that uses more bandwidth (of which you don't have a lot). If you use something like Plex, that transcodes whatever you are streaming, and would likely improve your situation. The purpose of transcoding is to drop the stream size down to a more reasonable level. In most cases hard drive throughput won't matter unless you are streaming multiple streams off a single harddrive or if the drive is connected externally via USB 2 etc. Processor speeds only matter if you transcode multiple streams at once. If you directly stream a file (i.e. over local network) you likely won't see any processor usage.

For streaming to others, upload speed is king. If you had a high upload speed, you really wouldn't need to be concerned about transcoding, but if you have 10mbps up speed and three to five people watching, you would need to transcode those streams down to 2-3 mbps for them to stream without buffering. Five transcodes at once would require a higher end processor, so keep that in mind when you do your new media server build (or when you buy one).

The best scenario, if you have a lot of friends who want to watch from your library, is to get Plex Pass to enable syncing. It transcodes and then stores on each client's local hard drive so it takes some of the burden off of your upload speed limitations (and your processor) since it doesn't need to be done in real time. I do not use Plex Pass so I am not familiar though with how it actually treats multiple users (i.e., there may be limitations on the number of simultaneous users you can serve to).

Anyway, welcome down the rabbit hole....your adventure has just begun with media streaming.....good luck.
 

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