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Author Topic: What speed Router  (Read 2028 times)

MikeO

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What speed Router
« on: November 04, 2014, 05:54:11 am »

Hi

So far I have always used a PC with the data drives directly connected to the TV and DAC.

I use wireless to copy files to the PC and edit tags etc remotely, and to control it all with JRemote and an iPad.

I am thinking about creating a Media Server to hold all the data remotely and to stream with the current PC purely as a renderer. I may even consider the Id as I progress simply to get the living room (theatre) tidier.

If I do this the highest data loads I will have is a mix of Blu Ray Rips, and some 24:192 audio files. The current router is 300Mb/s and for "brick wall" reasons will probably have to run on wireless (it has to connect to ADSL as well and there are no phone lines close). I will be able to hard wire the network cable into the server router connection.

The simple question is this router quick enough to stream the highest data loads I will have ?

Cheers
Mike
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MikeO

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Re: What speed Router
« Reply #1 on: November 05, 2014, 04:22:34 am »

OOPS , forgot to mention the router is a 300 Mb/s version

Mike
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Arindelle

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Re: What speed Router
« Reply #2 on: November 05, 2014, 07:23:16 am »

If I had to run wireless ... I wouldn't think of anything less than 1Gb and using the new WIFI mode 802.11ac. I read that Asus has a router doing 1.7Gb which seems faster than wired?! Netgear has a couple of reasonable ones.

If you are on ADSL and not cable/fiber remember that other people in the household might be needing some bandwidth too. So even if it is possible to stream films and hi rez audio, your media wouldn't be the only criteria. And as far as administrating over 300mps -- thats slow transfers of large flies. You won't regret the 150 bucks I think.
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mwillems

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Re: What speed Router
« Reply #3 on: November 05, 2014, 07:39:55 am »

The main thing to recognize is that any rated speed on a router is at best aspirational.  It's the maximum theoretical throughput if the receiving device is right on top of the router using channel bonding, etc.  I have never, ever in the real world gotten close to full-rated performance from a wifi product, and that's with an odd dozen cards and routers over the last 15 years.

I currently have a router that is "rated" for wireless N 900 Mb/s.  The fastest speed I've ever actually monitored coming out of it was about 300Mb/s and that was under fairly ideal conditions.  Move the laptop 30 feet (and a wall) away, and 100Mb/s is more typical.  My three wireless receiving devices have AC cards that are capable of receiving more throughput than the router can provide, so the router is the rate-limiting factor in my setup.

My advice to you is to test what you're real world bandwidth actually is.  Many people use a service like speedtest, but that's misleading as that only tests your internet uplink; you want to test your intra-LAN speeds, which are typically faster.  Try transferring a large file from one (preferably wired) place on your LAN to another (wireless) place and see what the actual real-life throughput is (ideally if you could temporarily hook up one computer/drive directly wired to the router and transfer to a computer connected wirelessly, that would be the best way to test).

An average Blu-Ray main feature is between 20GB and 30GB and is about 90 minutes long, or about 333 MB per minute, or 5.5 MB per second.  That means realistically your wireless network needs a minimum real world throughput of 50Mb/s to have a chance of streaming Blu-Ray quality files, but realistically you'd want at least twice that to avoid stuttering and underruns.  

So if your specific hardware can 1) reliably achieve 100 Mb/s and 2) that's all that's happening on your wireless network at any given moment, then you may have a workable solution.  I don't know how realistic either part of that is:

1) if your hardware is rated to 300Mb/s, the best I would hope for is 100Mb/s so you may be disappointed once you test (unless you meant that you actually measured a connection to your router and saw real transfers of 300Mb/s, in which case you're probably golden).  

2) I'd also test if your router can provide decent throughput to multiple clients at once; mine seems to be able to provide about a gigabit of total bandwidth to different clients at any one time (maybe that's what the 900 Mb/s* referred to  ::) ), but rarely much more than 100 or 150 Mb/s to any one client.

* It actually refers to the speed achievable with maximum connectivity on both bands, but no consumer card can actually connect on both bands at once, so it's not even a theoretically achievable number.
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MikeO

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Re: What speed Router
« Reply #4 on: November 05, 2014, 11:51:19 pm »

Thanks for the advice , looks like I certainly need a bigger better router or a rethink !!

Mike
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mwillems

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Re: What speed Router
« Reply #5 on: November 06, 2014, 07:30:52 am »

Check out this article:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7127/the-joys-of-80211ac-wifi/2

The router being tested in that article is rated to provide 450 Mb/s in the 2.4 GHz band and 1300 Mb/s on the 5 GHz band.  Have a look at the results with various Wi-Fi cards from 20 ft away in the next room and I think you can see why Wi-Fi might be a problem even with the best router in the world. 

You might want to look into getting a wireless bridge or an extra router.
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BartMan01

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Re: What speed Router
« Reply #6 on: November 07, 2014, 10:06:18 am »

Don't forget about MoCA (Ethernet over COAX), or Ethernet over power line methods if you can't get wireless to work. My TV downstairs is in a bookcase 'nook' in the wall and I could never get a clean/stable wireless connection to it.  I ran Ethernet over power to it for a while till I found the faster (at the time) MoCA solution and switched to that (hijacking my cable run to that location).  Since then Ethernet over power line has gotten faster.
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ssands

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Re: What speed Router
« Reply #7 on: November 11, 2014, 05:26:59 pm »

I was having a ton of trouble using MC to stream Hi-Res audio to my DAC. I would keep getting drop-outs. It was really frustrating. (16/44.1k CD quality audio worked fine.) I had a nice Asus N router set up, but ultimately, the walls inbetween the router/AP were reducing the signal too much. Nominally, I should have had a strong enough signal even with the attenuation, but what I suspect were occasional dips in strength, etc. were causing the dead moments of audio.

Luckily, I had a spare hard-wired port in the kitchen area that was line-of-sight to my laptop. I had an older router that I hadn't yet sold on ebay. Hooked it up and configured it as an AP only and, voila!, I can now stream hi-res music. I now get 240 - 300 mbps at my laptop where before it was a nominal 54 mbps. The 54 mbps should have done it, but I suspect it was not always constant (there are other wireless devices in the house, like 2 phones, another laptop, and two tablets).

Be careful with powerline ethernet. A lot of them will not cross a circuit breaker (or something like that). Basically, it doesn't always work.

Hope this helps.
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