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[nickharambee]

hi,

i have recently bought a laptop with integrated wireless b connectivity, which connects to a wireless g router.  on my main computer i have a wireless g card.  my music is on external hard drives connected to the main computer.

i have installed MC on the laptop and imported all my music via the network.

the problem i am having is that when i click on tracks to play them on the laptop the response is rather slow (maybe 5-7 seconds) when on my main pc it is instantaneous.

if i add tracks to playing now then transitions between tracks and cover art are smooth on the laptop.  the problem only comes when i want to access tracks directly from my media library by double clicking on them.

do you think the problem would be resolved/improved if i bought a wireless g card for the laptop, or is there something else i could do to improve the performance?

thanks

nick

[sapnho]

I am also in the process of optimizing my setup for wireless. I have a jukebox and a separate music server both connected via wireless. G Network, APE files.

It takes quite a bit longer than ethernet and I also wonder how I can speed it up. Especially the library server (although a great concept!) is quite slow. Loading a 7MB library with searching etc. (despite specification of library) takes about 45 seconds.

The one thing that has surprised me very positively is that I never experienced any music drop out which I feared initially.

A move from b to g should speed things up but I wouldn't expect a major step-up.

Maybe someone else here has suggestions for improving speed.

[Robert Taylor]

I thought I'd read somewhere that having a 802.11 B device on your 802.11 G network slowed the whole thing down.

I'm new to wireless however, and have just started playing around with this stuff. Mine's all 802.11 G though...

[marketability]

I use a wireless g network to feed laptops and some PCs - no problems with speed (other than lib server being slower to load than on a wired PC)

Personally... I'd strongly recommend making all devices G and then looking at signal quality / strength on the laptop

In my experience it is very rare for the wifi bandwidth to be so low that it limits the ability of the server to deliver files - usually the bottle neck is the read speed of the server disk

[nickharambee]

In my experience it is very rare for the wifi bandwidth to be so low that it limits the ability of the server to deliver files - usually the bottle neck is the read speed of the server disk

so if the issue isn't due to wifi bandwidth, why the need for wireless g. 

when you say the bottle neck is usually the read speed of the the server disk, what exactly do you mean?

and i am not sure what a library server is?  is this a way of storing my library from my pc on a server, and then downloading to my laptop?

thanks

nick

[RobOK]

I thought I'd read somewhere that having a 802.11 B device on your 802.11 G network slowed the whole thing down.

I believe this is true.  The whole network runs at the speed of the slowest device.  You need to be all G or you might as well be all B.

5-7 seconds still seems long even on B though.  I go over B via Tivo and it seems closer to 1-2 seconds.  Quick enough that I don't really think about it.

I doubt it has anything to do with your disk drive.  Disk drive access is measured in milleseconds or less.

[Brookstaylor]

I have been playing with video over IP using wireless over the last couple of months. Although G shows remarkable improvement over B, the true problem seems to be in the overhead associated with  the wireless transmission. Eventhough the link speed is showing a high number, the actual data throughput is much less.
However, I have found a company called Compex that makes a line of wireless products using a new algorithm that really increases actual data throughput. The products use what they call Nitro PRISM technology which I believe is just a new algorithm with less overhead. When I tried the VoIP, the frame rate improved a great deal.
So, the short answer is this. Wireless transmissions need some work and Compex may be on to something.

BET

[marketability]

so if the issue isn't due to wifi bandwidth, why the need for wireless g. 

In my experience - if the WiFi connection has a good signal quality (50 - 70%) an 11Mgbit connection is more than enough to handle MC. A while ago I monitored the max bandwidth used to deliver a remote APE file to a WiFi connected PC - it was only circa 2MgBit.

when you say the bottle neck is usually the read speed of the the server disk, what exactly do you mean?

The hard disk can't deliver data to the network fast enough to use up the network bandwidth

and i am not sure what a library server is?  is this a way of storing my library from my pc on a server, and then downloading to my laptop?

You can
a) store the music files on a different PC/Sefver to the one on which you run your MC
b) get MC11 running on one machine (A) and using the new library server -  a remote installation of MC11 (B) can then connect to the library of (A). It allows you to have many copies of MC running around the house and keep them all updated with new music, playlists, etc