What do you use for HTPC networking?

Clipsey

Clipsey

Clipsey

Soldato
Joined
26 Nov 2004
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Location
Near Windy City, USA
Fellas,

I have the HTPC in the front room, which has about 4TB on it, getting full :(
My gaming rig which is on the network has a spare 2TB drive with a few movies on it. Just tested a Blu-Ray rip (mkv) and was not even close to working properly (stuttering big time). Tried a regular dvd, and much better.
Thought I'd just transfer a few big blu-rays over that I won't be watching anytime soon - 1 transfer was going to take 3+hrs.

So, what does everyone with Windows Home Server etc have as their setup?
What am I missing?
Both PC's are running Win7 Ultimate and cabled into the router.
 
router is probably 10/100 you'd get a fairly hefty increase if you had a gigabit switch and then into router. so internet>router>gigabit switch>networked pc's
 
erm why? If the 2 pc's are into switch then you'll get the benefit of inter pc transfers faster, just internet will be slower. I have that very setup and get a good 20 meg transfers...cheap switch might not work that well however...
Also get a better transfer from my nas too
 
3dcandy said:
erm why? If the 2 pc's are into switch then you'll get the benefit of inter pc transfers faster, just internet will be slower. I have that very setup and get a good 20 meg transfers...cheap switch might not work that well however...
Also get a better transfer from my nas too
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Most switches automatically sense the lowest speed on the network and drop to that speed.
 
Swordfish said:
Most switches automatically sense the lowest speed on the network and drop to that speed.
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um no they don't, you can even have a router with a 10Mbps port connected to a gigabit switch and everything behind the gigabit switch will run and transfer at gigabit speeds assuming the devices support it ( internally that is )
 
kg648 said:
um no they don't, you can even have a router with a 10Mbps port connected to a gigabit switch and everything behind the gigabit switch will run and transfer at gigabit speeds assuming the devices support it ( internally that is )
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Swordfish said:
Most switches automatically sense the lowest speed on the network and drop to that speed.
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To fully guarantee then it is best to ensure all equipment is Gigabit and use Cat5e or Cat 6 cable.
 
Aye, I did say cheaper switches can switch down...however it usually seems to give (in my experience) a faster speed just because a lot of routers aren't great switches.
I do have a managed dell switch by the way...
 
Ok thanks guys,
So if I get a gigabit switch, plug that in to the router and then plug my cables in to the switch, speeds should increase? (assuming internal parts support this).
Typical data transfer speeds?
 
I've got the cheapeast Netgear 8 port Gigabit switch I could find, it has 2 100Mbps devices on it and the Gigabit connected devices talk happily to each other at 1Gpbs.

Edit: Just to add I've just copied a 20GB file across between machines, Win7 told me the transfer was 67MBps. Probably limited by the write speed at the destination.
 
I have a 10/100 router connected to a 10/100/1000 cheapo TP-Link switch, transferring a 1GB file from my server to my HTPC when connected to the switch starts at about 120MB/s and then levels out to about 80MBs, transferring a 3GB file starts the same and then slowly drops to level off at about 60MBs.

Swordfish said:
Most switches automatically sense the lowest speed on the network and drop to that speed.
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No, most are the exact opposite, you would need to buy a pretty damn old switch for it to be affected by having a 10/100 only device connected to it.
 
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I also have the tp-link switch that is shown above. Transfers from my computer to my Nas shows as anything from 80 - 120MBps. Safe to say it can easily stream bluray rips.
 
Gigabit switches with cat6 everywhere here.

(and I too would disagree with the statement about most switches dropping to the speed of the slowest attached device as made by Swordfish. Having had various models of switch on home and work networks for many years I have never seen that happen ... with old hubs maybe but not with switches at all.)
 
I have to be honest here and say I would do some testing before spending money. If your network is running at 100mbit then you should be able to stream a full BDROM with no issue as even the highest of bitrate BDROM's peak out at 75mbit. You were merely streaming a rip which would have a significantly less bitrate.

Just do your self the favour and run some speedtests and get some figures before spending money and haveing it make no difference. If your 100mbit network is only running at half that due to a cable or something else, buying a gbit switch and having it run at 50mbit isnt going to help much. Just my 2p :)
 
ubern00b said:
I have to be honest here and say I would do some testing before spending money. If your network is running at 100mbit then you should be able to stream a full BDROM with no issue as even the highest of bitrate BDROM's peak out at 75mbit. You were merely streaming a rip which would have a significantly less bitrate.

Just do your self the favour and run some speedtests and get some figures before spending money and haveing it make no difference. If your 100mbit network is only running at half that due to a cable or something else, buying a gbit switch and having it run at 50mbit isnt going to help much. Just my 2p :)
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for £20 though a gigabyte switch is worth it.
 
vintage-x said:
for £20 though a gigabyte switch is worth it.
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For £20 a GigaBYTE switch is definitely worth it :D My point however, which you completely missed, is that any switch be it 100mbit, gbit, or gbyte... isn't going to make a difference if there is some other underlying reason for the speed problems.
 
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