[RT-N66U] Hiccups streaming LAN to LAN

[marmaladejackson]

Hi All,

Got a set up where I have a computer with a large hard drive in one room and a Raspberry PI/Kodi in the TV room. Both are wired to the Asus. When streaming video from the hard drive to the Pi (via SMB), the stream will sometimes pause/hiccup/buffer (stop for 5-10 seconds, then resume) or just totally stop. It doesn't seem to matter what the actual size of the video file is. I've had it happen on 100 MB half hour programs as well as 4GB 2 hour movies. Sometimes, it doesn't happen at all.

There are absolutely no issue when streaming from the internet. It only seems to happen going PC to PI through a wired connection. I've even tried steaming PC to tablet (PC wired to Asus wireless to tablet) and that seems to work ok, though honestly I haven't done this enough to be conclusive.

I've trouble shot it down to the router, as I've been running the identical set up for over a year with out issue with a Linksys router. The only change I've made was to disconnect the Linksys and connect the Asus. I've swapped them multiple times to assure that it is directly related to the router.

Originally, I returned the router and swapped it out to a new one as I thought it was just a piece of faulty hardware. No improvement. I upgraded firmware, no change. Flashed the latest version of Merlin (just this weekend), no change. Contacted Asus, I don't thing the help desk even read my complaint as they just sent back a bunch of boiler plate "how to connect to the internet" troubleshooting.

I've en/disabled Jumbo Frame
en/disabled QOS
en/disabled cut through forwarding
changed the actual ports the cat 5 plugs into

tried basically every setting I can think might have an effect on the system to system streaming and have noticed little, if any difference.

This a pretty robust router, I find it really hard to believe it is choking on this throughput, but I really have reached the limits of my knowledge in trouble shooting. Anybody else experiencing this or have any suggestions?

Oh, for the record the PC I am streaming from is a 6 core Linux system with 8 gigs of RAM, I haven't had any issues with its performance. I steam from 2 different hard drives, and it doesn't seem to make a difference either.

Thanks in advance!
Brian

 

[Zirescu]

What are your cable types? You'll need a minimum of Cat 5e, best is Cat6. I've had issues with Cat5 and the LAN ports but resolved when replaced with Cat6.

 

[mstombs]

The router lan ports should behave as a dumb switch for lan-lan transfers, I suspect the issue is Samba on the router which can be used for sharing usb drives attached to router and pauses for master browser renegotiation etc - so try disabling the router usb sharing services. Isn't there a better way of sharing disks between Linux server and RPi than using a opensource reverse engineered version of a Microsoft proprietary protocol?

 

[marmaladejackson]

Zirescu,

As they are fairly inexpensive, I ordered some CAT6. They'll be here next week and I'll give it a try. I was planning doing this in the near future anyway, I guess I just needed a bit of motivation.

Mstombs,

Good suggestion, I'll also give that a try and see what happens. Yes, there are better ways to share these directories, however I don't just access them from the RPi, They are shared with a bunch of wireless devices and virtual machines. While it may not be the best solution, it is fairly easy to set up and pretty universal. Interesting, though... If I have some time this weekend I'll set up an NFS share and see if that is also a solution.

Thank you both for your comments. After some testing I'll report back.

Regards,
Brian