RT-AC68U - too much unstable mediaserver

[kishork]

Friends,

one of the reason i went for RT-AC68U from my earlier TP-Link was built-in mediaserver of AC68U with belief that this will reduce my dedicated mediaserver desktop to be continuously on and its subsequent relatively higher power consumption as mediaserver capability is advertised for this product..

bought this product, bought one 2TB USB 3.0 Seagate harddrive with 500GB partition for media, loaded my media in it, but i am very much disappointed with the mediaserver instability of RT-AC68U..

1. sometime if one client is working with AC-68U mediaserver, then other clients cant find the mediaserver atall
   
   
2. sometime if other client gets to find AC-68U mediaserver and works with it, then the first one gets disconnected

thats very very bad and defeats the basic purpose of this so called advertised AC68U mediaserver.. one cant say ow ya that is how it is - it is advertised but it does not work !.. what I paid for in that case..

if this is how it is then this particular implementation of AC68U media server is useless for me as my kids cant have benefits of the media which is on the mediaserver as they cant access it from their clients when they need it.. that creates lot of disappointment..

it is substantial money i have putin in this AC-68U router and after all this i cant wish to have one more dedicated mediaserver desktop also.. i have tried few firmware by now but the mediaserver is bad anyway, so i think it is not that by installing that certain firmware this will be resolved.. will be happy if that is the case.. i am on latest 454 from 371 and merlin 35_4..

i am not able to understand how does all this pass from QA and verification gates of the organization before putting in the customer field.. if it is not going to work then the feature should not be in the product and not advertised so that customer like me wont buy it.. i am not their QA and verification team to verify these half baked products so that they can keep putting newer firmware in the market and we keep verifying that.. dont take me wrong, i understand market feedback is necessary to enhance the product but here i feel to have an unfinished alpha product having many issues which is already released in market as a final gold version.. product released to market needs to work for the advertised features else what did they verify before release..

mediaserver cant be said to function dedicated to one client at a time.. it needs to function on 3 atleast.. not sure if that is high expectation?.. else i was good with a USB in my DLNA Samsung TV with dedicated media in my kids Samsung galaxies and TP-Link giving me wan internet through its N300 wifi, atleast it was functioning.. if this AC68U mediasever is not going to work than atleast for me i have a costly brick not sure at this stage if i will get a refund.. will be hard for me to believe that a car is released to market with a "minor defect" that its advertised disk brake wont work.. if that gets to be true its a market recall they do..

please help what needs to be done for this so that this AC68U media server will function on atleast 3 clients properly.. will that be possible or this is inherently instable?..

 

[ikoul]

I haven't tried streaming from multiple clients simultaneously... I might try it tomorrow and I'll report back if I have any success. Maybe a few more people can do the same with different combinations of wireless/wired clients and we can figure out if it's a limitation of the router's processor or just a matter of not having enough throughput. Are all of the devices you're trying to stream to wireless?

 

[kishork]

I haven't tried streaming from multiple clients simultaneously... I might try it tomorrow and I'll report back if I have any success. Maybe a few more people can do the same with different combinations of wireless/wired clients and we can figure out if it's a limitation of the router's processor or just a matter of not having enough throughput. Are all of the devices you're trying to stream to wireless?

Thanks for the responses. .

Please let me know the updates at your ends. .

One is wired ( Samsung smart TV DLNA) others are wifi (one on 5ghz and few on 2.4ghz).. issue has been realised from wired, 5 and 2.4 if any of this combination is together. .

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

 

[ikoul]

Works fine for me on the Asus 454 firmware. I tried streaming three different files (two 1080p rips and one 720p) simultaneously from the same HDD connected via USB2. One of the 1080p files was streaming over ethernet to a PS3, one was over ac wireless to a pc, and the 720p file was over 5ghz n on an iPhone.

So at least in my experience, it seems like it's not the router or the USB connection that can't handle delivering the streams. I did have a bit of trouble with my clients not detecting the server very quickly though.

The only thing I didn't try was multiple 2.4ghz clients, but I know from experience that the other 2.4ghz networks near me ruin my performance with interference. So you might be running into that same issue.

 

[RMerlin]

If you enabled QoS, try disabling it. I have seen some bandwidth management issues when QoS was enabled.

Keep in mind you are still trying to use a 800 MHz device, and serving data over USB. If you try to stream three high definition movies, your device might simply lack the power to achieve this simultaneously. The media server does work, there are plenty of users using it, but it will be limited to the capabilities of the hardware it's running on.

 

[kishork]

Thanks for your inputs ikoul and merlin. . There is some merit in what you have mentioned. .

QOS is by default off or I need to do that manually. . I have not changed it. .

Some time the case is that it is just the lowly mp3 playing on my wired samsung tv dlna and I start a video on my galaxy note2 5ghz and there it goes the disconnection on tv dlna and it says device disconnected. . That I don't understand.. But if that is playing alone without any other client starting then it plays for hours no problem. .It is just that more than one client it is having some difficulties. .

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

 

[kishork]

now below is confirmed:

mp3 music / video anything on any one client - works hours and hours no problem..

just music mp3 on wired samsung dlna and if i play video on galaxy note 2 5ghz than wired disconnects after around 30 second to 1 minute saying device disconnected..

 

[ikoul]

When you tried the various firmwares before you posted, did you reset to factory settings after updating? Sometimes when you upgrade to a new firmware the old settings won't work quite right and you run into all sorts of weird issues until you do a reset and configure everything manually again.

Also, I doubt this is it (but it's worth a shot): On the USB Applications -> Servers Center -> Miscellaneous Settings page try setting your maximum number of concurrent connections to a higher number.

 

[kishork]

Yes factory reset was done after firmware update. .

On that page max it takes is 5 and it is 5..

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

 

[RMerlin]

When you tried the various firmwares before you posted, did you reset to factory settings after updating? Sometimes when you upgrade to a new firmware the old settings won't work quite right and you run into all sorts of weird issues until you do a reset and configure everything manually again.

Also, I doubt this is it (but it's worth a shot): On the USB Applications -> Servers Center -> Miscellaneous Settings page try setting your maximum number of concurrent connections to a higher number.

This option is only for SMB access.

 

[luka_w]

I find mediaserver very unstable too ... unfortunately.

 

[kishork]

Most of the time client can not find media server and one client disconnecting on next connection as mentioned above.. asus, this must be a defect somewhere. .

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

 

[ikoul]

The issue could be with the client. For example, in my tests VLC on a Mac refuses to connect to the media server, but VLC on iOS works fine. Also, the windows explorer built in browsing seems to have issues finding the server half the time for me. I haven't had issues connecting with Windows Media Player on PCs or with the PS3's client.

Which clients are you using?

 

[kishork]

The issue could be with the client. For example, in my tests VLC on a Mac refuses to connect to the media server, but VLC on iOS works fine. Also, the windows explorer built in browsing seems to have issues finding the server half the time for me. I haven't had issues connecting with Windows Media Player on PCs or with the PS3's client.

Which clients are you using?

I have three type of clients:

1. Samsung DLNA Smart TV (Wired)

2. 2 Samsung Galaxy Smart Phones (Note 2 and S2) which has Samsung DLNA client and MediaHouse Android DLNA client

3. 3 Android 4.1.2 smart phones with MediaHouse Android DLNA client

Scenario is like this:

If the AC68R media server is "discoverable", then all the clients can find it (but only one will remain to be in working condition as mentioned above)

If the AC68R media server is "not discoverable", then none of the clients find it

what is the meaning of media server not found

none of the client find the media server in such cases, not smart tv, not MediaHouse and not even the basic Samsung Music player can find it like go to Music, context menu, click "Search near by devices" and it will say no devices found..

What am i doing if it is "not discoverable":

I go to router admin page and turn MediaServer to Off.. and then i make it On again.. this is making it discoverable for all the clients to be able to find it again (note i make it ON this way again even though it was in ON state earlier anyway)

and all the clients can now find it instantly..

Then what happens

after few hours (i dont know how much) again the mediaserver will be non-discoverable even though in the router admin page it would show as ON and then i will off it again and on it again and the cycle repeats after few hours.. dont like when i cant access it when i need to access it..

not sure whats incorrect..

 

[ikoul]

It's possible there is some media on the drive you're using that's making the dlna server unstable. I think some people have been having issues with NTFS formatted drives because of the third party driver Asus uses to support them.

Just as a test, do you have another drive you can try? Like a flash drive that you can format as Fat32 and put just a few media files on it?

The reason I bring it up is that my drives are all Fat32 (because I used to connect them to Windows, Mac, and Linux machines and there's no recent file system that has good support on all of them), and I've had no issues at all with the server side of the media server (except that scanning is kind of slow).

 

[luka_w]

It's possible there is some media on the drive you're using that's making the dlna server unstable. I think some people have been having issues with NTFS formatted drives because of the third party driver Asus uses to support them.

Just as a test, do you have another drive you can try? Like a flash drive that you can format as Fat32 and put just a few media files on it?

The reason I bring it up is that my drives are all Fat32 (because I used to connect them to Windows, Mac, and Linux machines and there's no recent file system that has good support on all of them), and I've had no issues at all with the server side of the media server (except that scanning is kind of slow).

You don't use files bigger then 4GB ?

I fight with this 'media' server from the beginning, and now formatted disk to EXT4 and we'll see ...

 

[ikoul]

You don't use files bigger then 4GB ?

None of the drives I have in my machines are Fat32, so I have other places where I keep files bigger than 4 gigs. The file system choice for my usb drives was just one that used to be the most convenient/compatible solution at the time and I haven't gotten around to reformatting the drives (transferring all the files back and forth before/after the format). I'll probably do ext3/4 when I get around to it.

Once you have a chance to test your EXT4 formatted drive for a bit, be sure to report back if it's more stable.

 

[kishork]

You don't use files bigger then 4GB ?

I fight with this 'media' server from the beginning, and now formatted disk to EXT4 and we'll see ...

i am now trying with EXT but i am new to non-NTFS.. i have MiniTool Partition tool so i can make EXT on this disk on Win 7..

i will be making 4 partitions of 500 GB on this 2 TB..

i need to know about below:

1. Should i make EXT3 or EXT4?

2. Should all the partitions be Primary or Logical or what combinations of partitions? (there are two options in MiniTool Partition program per partition - Primary / Logical)

please let me know..

once done i will recopy my media on this and then lets see if this helps in MediaServer stability?

 

[kishork]

okay i made 4 EXT4 partitions all primary..

but in the router admin page it shows as:



and i cant see any of these partitions while selecting the media folder etc.. also nothing in the network share..

any idea what to do?

 

[ikoul]

Did you format/partition the drive while it was connected to the pc, and then just plug it back in to the router?

If so, try restarting the router with the drive connected. Maybe it just didn't load the right file system drivers.

Also, your partitions have labels right? I think I read some posts on the forum about people having issues when they didn't have them.

I don't have much experience with ext4 myself, but I can't think of much that can go wrong formatting a disk if you've got the data backed up elsewhere.