SOLVED: NAS streaming performance issues

[ranj]

Hi

 

I have just recently brought a Netgear ReadyNAS box RND2000 and one of the main purposes I purchased it was so I could keep all my music centrally and then listen to it via a networked mapped drive and then use something like windows media player or VLC to play the music.

 

Problem is I am justing find accessing music, video even pictures to be a struggle, it just seems really slow generally (for example it can take a minute or two just for a song to buffer or a picture preview to show up).

 

I am trying to establish where the problem may be. Maybe its my wireless router (it has a 4 port 100mb switch bullt in), the readynas is 1gbps, would I see an improvement if i gpgraded the switch to gigabit?

 

It seems to perform slightly better on my wife's Mac, she used iTunes and the readynas is setup as an iTunes server and performance generally is better through iTunes. I also use my nokia phone to stream music from the Nas box and that seems to be ok too.

 

If anyone can advise on how I could better improve the performance it would be most appreciated. I would rather not upgrade my switch if i didnt have too as it does a decent job to serve wireless and the internet to all computers.

Edited June 28, 2009 by ranj
resolved

[SYNACK]

If it is having trouble streaming MP3s then it would need to be an insanely serious bandwidth issue. 100Mbits will quite happily stream DVD. What kind of machine is it that is having the problems - does it run Vista? Vista has a feature called auto TCP/IP tuning which can cause rather nasty issues with older or less MS tollerant technology.

 

My first recomendatios would be to try the offending computer plugged in via a cable to the router and see if it is limited to the wireless. If the offending computer is Vista you could try turning tcp tuning off. It would also be worth upgrading the firmware on both the NAS and the router if new stuff is avalible which may solve the issue.

 

It may also be worth timeing a file download off the NAS to figure out how fast it is actually going and try direct connecting to the NAS and doing the same test again to isolate or implicate the router as the cause.

[mattx]

Duplex mis-match perhaps ?

[ranj]

If it is having trouble streaming MP3s then it would need to be an insanely serious bandwidth issue. 100Mbits will quite happily stream DVD. What kind of machine is it that is having the problems - does it run Vista? Vista has a feature called auto TCP/IP tuning which can cause rather nasty issues with older or less MS tollerant technology.

.

 

I tried this as well as adjusting a registry entry and the MTU rating on both the network card on the laptop as well as the NAS box and it has worked a treat. No more long delays in playing back music, pictures also load a lot faster. Haven't tried video playback though.

 

Some useful guides I looked at to resolve the issue:

 

Disable TCP Auto-Tuning to Solve Slow Network, Cannot Load Web Page or Download Email Problems in Vista My Digital Life

 

::. Kitz - Vista MTU .::

 

Thanks for the help. much appreciated.