Gigabit Ethernet PLEASE

Community Archives WD TV Live Networking
1

I know I know you don’t need gigabit speed to stream content BUT it is more compatible with a gigabit local network.

I find that if my computer makes a connection at 1000 full duplex I have to shut my computer down so that my WDTV Live can make a reliable connection at 100 full duplex. If the WDTV Live was 1000 full duplex compliant I would not have this issue.

If WD brings out a new WDTV Live Plus Plus which is more hardware capable it would make life easier for the programers and users alike. I don’t care what the cost, I will buy it!

Come on WD a faster cpu, more memory and gigabit ethernet… I will buy it and I am sure many others will too.

2

Bobby wrote:

I find that if my computer makes a connection at 1000 full duplex I have to shut my computer down so that my WDTV Live can make a reliable connection at 100 full duplex. If the WDTV Live was 1000 full duplex compliant I would not have this issue.

That has nothing to do with it.

You ought to be able to mix any combination of 10, 100, and 1000 with no issues.

All of my NAS devices are Gig…  and there’s not a problem one with a few 100 meg WD’s on the net…

3

Bobby wrote:

I know I know you don’t need gigabit speed to stream content BUT it is more compatible with a gigabit local network.

 

I find that if my computer makes a connection at 1000 full duplex I have to shut my computer down so that my WDTV Live can make a reliable connection at 100 full duplex. If the WDTV Live was 1000 full duplex compliant I would not have this issue.

 

If WD brings out a new WDTV Live Plus Plus which is more hardware capable it would make life easier for the programers and users alike. I don’t care what the cost, I will buy it!

 

Come on WD a faster cpu, more memory and gigabit ethernet… I will buy it and I am sure many others will too.

    • *> As stated previously, there should be no issues with mixing speed or duplex on the same switch provided that the switch they are connected to is operating properly.  As an example, my network is fully gigabit switched and the majority of devices on it connect at gigabit speeds.  The exceptions to this are the WD TV Live and four Cisco 7940 VoIP handsets.> As far as ease of development goes, supporting gigabit ethernet is a non-issue.  The WD TV Live is Linux-based, under which gig-E networking has been a known quantity for close to a decade at this point.  Building its firmware to support gig-E is simply a matter of setting a flag to include it, but as the hardware isn’t capable of it there’s no point in rolling in support for it.> I’ve run into speed and duplex issues in the past with either malfunctioning or poor-quality switches, and from the description you’re giving of the behaviour you’re seeing you may want to try swapping your switch out and see what happens.  Note that I’m not saying this to let either the WD TV Live or desktop machine immediately off the hook, but it’s not uncommon for the switch to be the issue.
4

WD could choose to support Gigabit Ethernet today, on the existing WDTV and WDTV Live. They simply have to support a USB gigabit Ethernet adapter in their firmware.

5

But WHY?    No one has posted a substantive reason WHY they should add the additional expense for that.   What possible value would it add?

6

Right now, you can’t play large files over the network. For example, if backed up a bluray disk to a network share (say you put it into a MKV file which is 40 Gigs), the network link is too slow, you will eventually get stuttering.

7

It has NOTHING to do with the network.

And it has nothing to do with the SIZE of the file, it’s the BIT RATE that’s at issue here.  And 100 Meg is PLENTY fast for Blu-ray playback.

it’s the PROCESSOR that can’t handle it, due to limitations of SAMBA.   Not the network.

Heck, you can put a “300 Meg” interface (Wireless N) and you’re still going to get stuttering on a 40mbit/second M2TS stream…

8

I’m not sure if it is allowed to post external links or not, but on some other sites some have claimed to reach bitrates in the 70 to 90 Mb/sec using a good quality wireless link and NFS shares (with the WDTV). Those speeds are not possible with 10/100, so it sounds like it is true that a 300 N wireless link can go faster than the built in 10/100. But wireless is not as consistent as a wired link, so there could be some benefit to having support for a gigabit Ethernet adapter. 

Of course, having NFS would be an even greater improvement. Both features are achievable, as they are already supported by Linux.

9

ottawaguy wrote:

…Those speeds are not possible with 10/100…

I doubt quite a bit that any WDTV has reached 90 mbits per second doing ANYTHING.   You can post your links; no prohibitions on that as long as the content is benign…

As to that not being possible with 10/100 ethernet: Horsey-poo.  It certainly is.   

NFS has absolutely no security by itself; that’s why I don’t use it…  Even my QNAP NAS which does do NFS natively doesn’t have any security for NFS other than IP address…No User authentication possible.

NFS is definitely more efficient than SMB, though…  That’s for sure…

10

Here is a link:

http://www.qooglesearch.com/?source=rmac&said=2129&ref=http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=5393.0

One persons claims (it seems quite likely to be true, he has posted the benchmark script he used). Another claims to have reached 90 something Mbits/sec. The 70 something Mbit/sec claims certainly look legit. Not sure about the 90 something mbit/sec claims.

Do you really think that a 100 Mbit link could transfer 90 something mbits of file content data? There is protocol overhead.

In any case,  with all of this discussion, probably if we had the transfer speed be just a bit faster it might be able to play most normally encoded videos over a network. This might be accomplished by supporting NFS mounts in the official firmware.

Regards

11

I wanted to clarify that my original intention was just to point out that gigabit ethernet is possible to add without changing the hardware. It is certainly debatable if that will help with anything or not. 

12

Yes, I can get 90 Mbit/sec on a 100 meg link.   Protocol overhead IS THERE, but with TCP-based systems protocols, the overhead is LOW on efficient protocols (like NFS, which “usually” is UDP anyway, but can be TCP) but higher on inefficient ones like SMB/CIFS.

13

I’m going to add something here from my own experiences and observations that may be relevant.  Having said that, in this particular example it’s highly-dependent on how media is being served to the WD TV Live, so may not be applicable.

While it’s correct to say that 100Mbit is more than adequate for Blu-Ray streaming, I have noticed that certain UPnP-based media servers that transcode media formats can spike up to around 80Mbit of transfer in places during playback.  However, when I say that these are spikes, I mean exactly that - a few seconds at most before settling back down to a much lower sustained data rate.

The specific instance where I’ve noticed this is on my PS3 using PS3 Media Server to transcode and stream DVD ISOs to it.  Typically, playback of a DVD ISO in that combination would sustain around 6Mbit of data transfer on average - except for the occasional spike.  The spike was noticeable because the PS3 was connected over 802.11g wireless, which would result in stuttering playback until things settled down.  Turning on the playback info for the PS3, it was measuring around 80Mbit of attempted transfer.  This is interesting, because the most 802.11g can handle is 54Mbit - and given that particular device’s proximity to the access point, I’d say somewhere between 24 and 32Mbit would be more realistic.

With the numbers not adding up, I double-checked the figures the PS3 was giving me against what MRTG said the machine running PS3 Media Server was pushing down the cable.  As it turned out, it really was trying to serve the amount of data that the PS3 thought it was - or close enough as didn’t matter.

The next step was to turn off wireless on the PS3 and connect it directly to the switch for that end of the house.  Note that the PS3 has a gig-E NIC, and that the entire home network is also gig-E.  Results were the same: occasionally, PS3 Media Server would shove around 80Mbit of data down to the PS3, as measured by both MRTG and the PS3.  Stuttering was a non-issue as the bandwidth was there to cope - but it did suggest that something in the way that PS3 Media Server handled its transcoding was the culprit.  I have no idea why this was happening, and, frankly, didn’t have the inclination to dig too deeply into it since the fix was obvious: don’t use wireless for streaming DVD ISOs to the PS3.

So, the summary as this may relate to the WD TV Live: if your media server is transcoding in order to send a stream to the WD TV Live, you may be seeing similar results to the ones I observed with the PS3.  Different media servers have different performance characteristics and this can impact overall network performance.  If you are seeing issues, you may want to try a different media server or method of streaming to it.

One thing that I will note that is related to the above, however: with it connected to my gigabit network at 100Mbit, I have never encountered a situation whereby the WD TV Live has not had sufficient bandwidth to play back any media file that I’ve thrown at it.  This suggests to me that there simply is no advantage to it having a gig-E interface given the types of media it is designed to handle - about the only real advantage I’d see out of it would be to change the link light on the switch port that it’s attached to from amber to green.

I’ll definitely throw my hat into the ring for NFS support, though.  That would be very nice to have.

14

OK, I have found a way around my own networking problem. If I TURN OFF “Discovery Services” AFP Apple File Protocol and UPnP and just leave CIFS Common Internet File System, the WDTV Live appears to makes a more reliable connection and stutter free when it encounters high bit rates.

Mind you all this effort is to accommodate the the WDTV Live player. I have no problem playing any of my HD video on my computer no matter what the settings. In fact I have actually played three HD videos at once on my computer from the same network drive, so I know that it is MORE than capable of streaming at a fast rate.

If the WDTV Live player was more hardware capable I would not have to make so many exceptions to my gigabit network just to make it operate NORMALLY.

15

Bobby wrote:

OK, I have found a way around my own networking problem. If I TURN OFF “Discovery Services” AFP Apple File Protocol and UPnP and just leave CIFS Common Internet File System, the WDTV Live appears to makes a more reliable connection and stutter free when it encounters high bit rates.

 

Mind you all this effort is to accommodate the the WDTV Live player. I have no problem playing any of my HD video on my computer no matter what the settings. In fact I have actually played three HD videos at once on my computer from the same network drive, so I know that it is MORE than capable of streaming at a fast rate.

 

If the WDTV Live player was more hardware capable I would not have to make so many exceptions to my gigabit network just to make it operate NORMALLY.

 

 

    • *> Hm.  Interesting.> Let me ask a question here: what platform and OS is your computer running on, and what are you using to stream to both it and the WD TV Live?  I didn’t see this mentioned in your earlier posts, but the combination of AFP and UPnP has me wondering.> One thing I will mention in relation to the original question, however, is that if disabling protocols fixed the issue, putting a gig-E interface in the WD TV Live would likely have had no effect.  A better processor might arguably have improved the situation, but it sounds more likely that there’s an underlying factor with how the protocols are implemented at one end, the other, or both - and that’s a whole other ball of wax.
16

I am using a Mac Pro Desktop but only to access my nas drives for copying and housework purposes.

The nas drive is a Netgear RND2000 ReadyNAS 2-Bay with two 2TB WD Green SATA drives hooked up as Raid 0 4TB to a Cisco gigabit router and switches. I have them all set to “Auto Negotiate”

I have 5 of these nas drives running at once, 20TB through a Cisco switch to one port on the router and the WDTV Live connected to another port on the router. 

I can achieve write speeds of 20 Mb/Sec and read speeds of about 32 Mb/sec with “Jumbo Frames” turned OFF. More than enough to run at least three HD movies at once on my computer.

It would appear from my perspective that AFP and UPnP announcing it’s self on a regular basis is enough to interrupt the data flow to the WDTV Live? But only noticeable when high bit rates are required.  With AFP turned off I cannot immediately see my network drives from my Mac but can access them manually by addressing them as a SMB server with the relevant IP address.

To me it just demonstrates that there is a good reason for WD to release a more capable WDTV Live player with a faster CPU more memory and a more network compliant port.

17

Bobby wrote:

I am using a Mac Pro Desktop but only to access my nas drives for copying and housework purposes.

 

The nas drive is a Netgear RND2000 ReadyNAS 2-Bay with two 2TB WD Green SATA drives hooked up as Raid 0 4TB to a Cisco gigabit router and switches. I have them all set to “Auto Negotiate”

 

I have 5 of these nas drives running at once, 20TB through a Cisco switch to one port on the router and the WDTV Live connected to another port on the router. 

 

I can achieve write speeds of 20 Mb/Sec and read speeds of about 32 Mb/sec with “Jumbo Frames” turned OFF. More than enough to run at least three HD movies at once on my computer.

 

It would appear from my perspective that AFP and UPnP announcing it’s self on a regular basis is enough to interrupt the data flow to the WDTV Live? But only noticeable when high bit rates are required.  With AFP turned off I cannot immediately see my network drives from my Mac but can access them manually by addressing them as a SMB server with the relevant IP address.

 

To me it just demonstrates that there is a good reason for WD to release a more capable WDTV Live player with a faster CPU more memory and a more network compliant port.

 

    • *> Okay.  Potential points of conflict here are possibly becoming a bit clearer.  FWIW, I’m running mainly Macs here as well.> The one area here that gives me the most concern are the multiple NAS devices.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but depending on how they’re configured this may be causing problems.  If all of them are set to announce their AFP or UPnP capabilities with the same settings (i.e., if hostnames were set the same on all or some of the devices, or just the defaults were used) you could be experiencing conflicts when the WD TV Live tries to access them that the Mac or other machines aren’t.> If this is indeed the case, it indicates to me that the issue is not with the WD TV Live specifically but rather that you’re seeing expected behaviour when multiple NAS devices that are essentially clones of each other are attached to the network.  OS X may have some internal ability to work around this conflict; note that this should not be taken to that OS X’ behaviour should be necessarily considered to be ‘right’, just that it’s obfuscating the underlying issue.> Frankly, with the amount of storage and number of NAS devices you have online right now, I would strongly recommend consolidation of your drives into a much smaller number of devices.  This will help greatly to alleviate both the potential for conflicts as well as ease administration.  Whether or not this is something you’re in a position to consider is up to you, but I will mention that the NAS hardware you are using really never was intended to be implemented on this scale.  Sure, it can do it - but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good idea to use it in that way.> Disregard jumbo frames for now; at this point, they’re essentially a non-factor and should be kept off in order to avoid adding another potential layer of complexity to the situation.> You should be able to see the SMB shares on your NAS in the Finder the same way as you do AFP shares.  That you are not leads me to further suspect that NAS configuration is not entirely as it should be.  I realise that you can reach them by IP address (presumably via the Go | Connect to Server menu in the Finder), which at least means that SMB is up on the NAS side, but it still leaves its configuration in doubt as you should be able to reach them by machine name without requiring a DNS or WINS server present on the network.> 20MB disk write speeds and 32MB read speeds translate out to to 160Mbit and 256Mbit of transfer, respectively.  For even a consumer-level gigabit network and storage devices, these numbers sound low.  This again has me suspecting that NAS configuration is not where it needs to be - or that there are issues with the network infrastructure.> It was mentioned that you have a “Cisco gigabit router and switches”.  What models are the routers and switches?  Also, which version of OS X are you using?> Something related to that last point that is causing me concern: from your description of how everything is physically connected, the WD TV Live appears to be the only device connected directly to the router; everything else is connected to a separate switch which is daisy-chained to another port on the router.  If you connect the WD TV Live to that daisy-chained switch, does the problem go away?  In general, most consumer-level switch hardware does not deal well with being daisy-chained to other switches as they typically lack the features necessary to make this configuration work properly; this could also be a factor in the read and write speeds that you’re seeing.> There’s a lot more going on here than was at first apparent.  While I’m far from being the last person to point fingers at the TV Live’s shortcomings (and believe me, it certainly has some in my opinion), by the same token it has to be understood and accepted that the configuration of both the network infrastructure and the other devices attached to the network can impact the performance of the TV Live.> What I’m trying to get at with the above is that more CPU, more memory, and a gig-E network adapter on the TV Live aren’t going to fix the symptom you’re seeing if there are other underlying issues that are external to it.  Remember that what you are seeing is a symptom - the cause may not be internal to the TV Live itself.
18

All my nas drives have different volume identities and I do not have any issues with my network other than WDTV Live.

I disagree with you regarding the 32 MB/s of transfer read speed as being too low, it is more than adequate.  As I have already pointed out I have no problem playing THREE HD movies at once on the computer. I say only three movies because I haven’t tried playing any more. It could be as high as 6.

You appear to be thinking of every problem with my setup rather than the obvious failings of the WDTV Live, the only real weak link on my system, unfortunately.

I guess the obvious solution for me is to abandon the WDTV Live and play my movies from my computer to my amp and LCD TV and wait for a more capable media player to arrive.

19

Bobby wrote:

All my nas drives have different volume identities and I do not have any issues with my network other than WDTV Live.

 

I disagree with you regarding the 32 MB/s of transfer read speed as being too low, it is more than adequate.  As I have already pointed out I have no problem playing THREE HD movies at once on the computer. I say only three movies because I haven’t tried playing any more. It could be as high as 6.

 

You appear to be thinking of every problem with my setup rather than the obvious failings of the WDTV Live, the only real weak link on my system, unfortunately.

 

I guess the obvious solution for me is to abandon the WDTV Live and play my movies from my computer to my amp and LCD TV and wait for a more capable media player to arrive.

 

*Shrug* your call on how you want to proceed, but if you are unwilling to investigate the possibility that this is an issue external to the WD TV Live itself, there’s not a whole lot I (or anyone else) can do to help you at this point.  Maybe you got a bad unit, maybe it just won’t work in your configuration.  Without looking into it further, there’s no way to make a good assessment.

I will say this, however: from the way you’ve described things on your end, there are at least three areas that are immediate areas of concern external to the player.  My living isn’t dependent on how many TV Live units are sold so I really don’t care if you decide to go with something else, but speaking as someone who does make his living dealing with the sorts of issues the network design you have described can introduce, it’s an area that warrants further inspection.

Best of luck to you whatever you decide.

20

Anyone still wondering why WD didn’t bother with GbE on the Live/Plus should check out Anand’s review of the new WD TV LIve Hub, specifically the part about transfers over GbE:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3990/western-digital-wdtv-live-hub-review/4

They were unable to get any transfer speeds above 12MB/s and more often got a lot less. The problem lies with the processing power of the units, not the lack of GbE.