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Author Topic: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link  (Read 2804 times)

KingSparta

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MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« on: November 20, 2006, 06:20:12 pm »

I Am Not To Hip With Some If The New Devices So I Was Wondering If This Router Would Work With MC12 And Allow My Wife To Access My Hard Drives To Play Music?

If So This May Be The Ideal Router For Me.

Any Ideas?

What Would The Drive Path Look Like?

I am Guessing All I Would Need To Do Is Plug A USB Drive Into This Device And The Network Would See It As A Drive Or Something?

Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
Start a Wireless Network With Up To 4X the Range and 12X the Speed!

http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1162354643512&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

Internet-sharing Router and 4-port Gigabit Switch, with a built in speed and range enhanced Wireless Access Point Also connects hard drive or flash-based USB storage devices directly to your network to share music, video, or data files MIMO technology uses multiple radios to create a robust signal that travels up to 4 times farther and reduces dead spots Up to 12 times faster than Wireless-G, but also works great with Wireless-G and -B devices 
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Two Wire

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2006, 09:40:11 pm »

KingSparta, This new unit from D-Link looks like it may be the ideal device for wireless streaming. I think the Linksys has received som bad reviews   http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=530
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KingSparta

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2006, 09:22:33 am »

The Difference Is That One Will Allow You To Connect USB Drives Directly To The Network And The D-Link Extreme You Must Have Special Drives.

The Major Question Is On Both Of These Does The Drive Show Up As A Drive Like "E:\"

If That Is True Then It Should Work With Media Center 12 Correct?

I have Heard Some Users Talking About Some Sort Of Network Drive And MC Was Rather Low And Or It Would Not Allow For Correcting Tags.

But I Could Also Be Confused.
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glynor

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2006, 10:32:48 am »

I would be very careful with any of the Wireless-N "draft" routers out there.  The standard has NOT been finalized yet, and already the Draft-1 N routers have been superseded by a new "draft" of the standard.  The companies in the standards body are still fighting it out though, and it's likely going to change again.

The problems with this are multiple but mostly: a) any Wireless-N devices you buy now are not guaranteed to interoperate with other brands (and in most cases do not), and b) once a standard is approved, it is very likely that the "new" devices will not be backwards compatible with the older "draft" devices.  So you could be stuck with a router and no way to buy wireless access cards that will work for it other than eBay.  Also, new laptops/devices that support "true" N will likely not work.  On top of it, most of the current Draft-N routers out there have been shown in testing to have worse performance (speed and range) than the 802.11g Routers they "replace"!!

Here's some articles that describe the current sorry state of affairs and reasons to avoid them:

Ars Explores the Sorry State of Affairs (a bit old but still valid)
Anandtech Draft N Router Coverage: When the "n" in 802.11n really means "not yet"
Anandtech D-Link DIR-625: Another Draft N Router comes up short
Ars - Gartner: don't rush on 802.11n (again, old but good background)
Ars - Some Draft 2 "Certification" News
PC Mag and ABC News What Not To Buy (yep, Wireless-N devices are on the list)
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glynor

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2006, 11:03:41 am »

As far as using MC over a network.  This works great and you really won't have too many performance problems, as long as you get reliable network equipment.  There are a few things you need to know though...

Mapping Network Drives...

The way it works is you can "share" the contents of a folder on one of your computers with the network.  This is quite easy using Windows XP Professional (and Home too though home edition is slightly less capable).  Here's a good article from Microsoft on how to do it.  And here's an article about "Simple File Sharing" (XP Home's way and Pro's default).  I much prefer Non-simple file sharing.  I actually find it much "simpler".

Some routers now have this capability "built-in".  So, instead of sharing the contents of a drive on one of your computers with the other computers on the network, you can simply put the files you want to share on a drive connected to the router.  Other, similar, solutions are to buy standalone NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices that do effectively the same thing.  Generally these work okay, but aren't quite as featureful as using an actual computer to "serve" the files.  The one nice thing is that you don't have to worry about setting up and configuring a computer to "serve" the files (and you don't need to have XP Pro to use the better "non-simple" sharing methods).

When you want to use these shared files on your other computers, the simplest way is via a Mapped Network Drive.  Essentially all this means is you tell windows: "This shared folder on the computer called FileSharingMachine?  I want you to automatically connect to that share all the time and call it drive M on my computer."  Here's a tutorial from Microsoft.

So, when using this with MC, the easiest thing to do is to put ALL of your media all in one "folder" (you can divide it up into subfolders of course) on a computer (or a NAS or one of the fancy router-drives).  Then, map that folder as the same drive letter on all your machines (including the one where the media lives).  So, for example, my setup is like this:

1. All my media (or at least most of it) lives on a RAID5 volume that lives inside my HTPC.  (It used to be in my Linux box and it will be again but for now it's in my HTPC.)  That drive is called Drive M (for "media") in Windows on my HTPC.  I selected the drive and shared it (right-click on the drive icon in Windows Explorer, choose sharing, click "New Share" and give it a Share Name).

2. All my other machines in the house are connected to the network (mine's wired but wireless would work as well -- certainly perfectly well for music).  On each of those machines, I mapped the media shared folder on my HTPC to Drive M.  That way they all match!  When MC's library points to the file at "M:\music\Bright Eyes\I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning\07 - Another Travelin' Song.mp3" that file is there and at the same place on any of my machines, since they're all mapped to drive M, so it works on all the computers!

MC's Library...

As far as using MC, there are a few options about how to handle the library files themselves.  The performance things you heard about generally aren't regarding having your media files themselves on a network drive, but mostly regarding the database files (MC's library).  The way I do it is I have each computer's MC have it's own "copy" of the library on their individual C drives, and then I have a few scripts that use the HTPC's copy of the library as the "master" and automatically updates the library files (overwrites them) on the other machines once or twice per day.  Since the library all points to the files on Drive M on the HTPC, and all the other computers can also "see" the same files on Drive M, it works fine.

Playing files back over the network works fine (with a wireless system you might have some trouble with big video files, but I've even done this without trouble with a high-quality 802.11g router).  If you do any "management" of files on the "network" machines (such as rename files from properties or whatever) that will be much slower, but it still works.  I've found MC12 is much better behaved with network files than MC11.1 was.

The other option is to just put the library files themselves on Drive M and have all the copies of MC use the same library files.  This is a new capability of MC12.  When I did this with MC10 and MC11, there were all kinds of performance problems.  You also ran the risk of damaging your library (if two computers tried to update it at the same time it could become corrupted).  The way MC12 works is the first computer that "opens MC" becomes "in charge" and can make changes to the library.  Any subsequent copies of MC that open (while the first copy is still running) can still use the library, but can only open it "read-only", so all tagging is completely disabled on those machines.

I have not tried this because my system works well.  I don't know if they've solved the performance problems I saw before when trying a similar system myself with MC10 and 11 (MC would freeze up periodically when playing back with an "updating database" message).

I suppose a third option is to just have each copy of MC maintain it's own separate library and keep all the tags stored in the files, and just let Otto keep them in sync.  This would only work if all your file types support all the tags you use.  I use video a lot (and MC doesn't save tags inside AVIs or most other video file types) so this isn't an option for me.

There are lots of threads about this stuff here, but if you want to set up a system like mine (with each system having their own library, but having them automatically "synced"), you can use my scripts which I posted over here:  http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=35978.0
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KingSparta

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2006, 07:28:13 pm »

I see

Kind Of Reminds Me Of The Old Non Compatible Modem Nightmares with 9600 And So On Baud.

I did notice the "Draft" note, and Best Buy On-line Is Sold Out.

So I Guess I Will Wait It Is Non-Draft.
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glynor

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2006, 07:44:21 pm »

Actually, I remember that well!   The 9600 baud problem (and early 33.6 kbps modems too if I remember correctly) was almost exactly the same thing.  Companies jumping the gun and releasing hardware before the standard was finalized.

Sometimes they do this for simple reasons (greed), but more often it's an attempt to jerrymander the standards process.  A lot of times these companies have signifigant financial interests in the standards working out one way or another.  For example, Cisco might have a bunch of patents that would cover a certain implementation of the proposed standard, that other companies would have to license from them if the standard were approved containing their IP.  Of course, the other companies don't like this and they fight to try to change the standard before it's final.

So, what they sometimes do is Cisco directs it's subsidiary Linksys to release "draft" products using their IP.  The goal is that even though the standard isn't final, if enough people buy the "draft" products the "facts on the ground" will force the hand of the standards body, and then the part of the draft that Cisco likes (because of the patents) gets kept.

Of course, when you have 30 different companies all with selfish motives all trying to rig the process back and forth it quickly turns into a nightmare!  Behold 802.11n!
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Two Wire

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #7 on: November 21, 2006, 08:24:58 pm »

Hey KingSparta, the mention of the 9600 baud modem brings back memories. I got my start on a 400 baud. These young kids don't know what slow is. LOL
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KingSparta

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2006, 12:49:43 pm »

400 Baud?

Well I Had A Hayes 300 Baud Smart Modem As My First Modem, After I Seen It Blaze Text Across The Screen. That Was Before X-Modem CRC Where They Actually Figured Out A CRC And Not Just Count How Many Chars Were In A Block Prior To That.

Oh The Days Of Dropping $700 For A New State Of Art Dial Up Modem.
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glynor

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2006, 12:53:12 pm »

This was my first modem ever (okay, well, it was my dad's, but I used it more than he did):



That was many, many moons ago.  300 baud as well!
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KingSparta

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #10 on: November 22, 2006, 01:08:20 pm »

Sweet!

And It Had A High Quality Error Free Transmission Routine.

SomeTimes I Wish I Would Have Kept All My Computer Junk\Door Stops.
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Alex B

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Re: MC12 & Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
« Reply #11 on: November 22, 2006, 03:00:38 pm »

My first modem was this:



1200 bps was fast enough back then.

I still have some of my oldest PC parts. I am going to rebuild my first 10 MHz 286 PC someday. The only missing part is the AT case, but I can use a newer case. It has a 5.25" 21 MB Seagate HD that worked without problems when I tried it last time a few years ago. :)
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