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Before You Ask About Wireless Streaming

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thiggins

Mr. Easy
Staff member
Success with using wireless to stream multimedia content is very dependent on the bandwidth requirements of the content you are trying to stream.

Music generally requires in the 100s of Kbps and will be ok using even slower 802.11g connections. 1080p HD video, on the other hand can require 20+ Mbps of throughput with peak throughput twice that. So even 802.11n might not provide a trouble-free experience.

You should first profile the bandwidth of typical content you'll be streaming by running Netmeter on a PC that is playing the stream. Be sure you run the stream long enough and include fast-action scenes, which can really spike throughput.

One you know the requirements, then you'll have a much better idea of what you're up against. The lower the bit rate of the stream, the more likely you'll have a good experience.

Wireless is not as reliable as Ethernet and especially has higher speed variation. It also has periodic "dropouts" where throughput drops virtually to zero for over a second. Unless you have a lot of buffering in your player, you'll see problems in the video.

Read through these articles for more background:
Video Streaming Need To Know: Part 1- Encoding, Bit Rates and Errors
Video Streaming Need To Know: Part 2 - The Real World
HD Streaming Smackdown: Draft 11n vs. Powerline

Profiling media bandwidth requirements is also essential for choosing NASes, although usually not as critical. Many current-generation NASes have speeds in the 20 - 40 MB/s (or ~ 160 - 320 Mbps) range, which is more than fast enough for HD streams.
 
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