Basic home network question

rubberduck · 10 Nov 2018 at 12:50

I have a home cinema set up in my garage with the devices connected to my home network via a powerline plug and switch. In my garage I have a Kodi box and NAS. The speed I get in terms of transfering or downloading movies etc to the NAS is fine as I can simply leave it for a couple of hours to transfer over. The problems arise when I want to watch a high bitrate movie as despite the NAS and Kodi box being attached to the same switch the data has to go through my main router in my house via the slow powerline connection. To solve this issue would it be as straightforward as adding a second router in my garage such that data can stream between the Kodi box and the NAS without having to go via the slow powerline link? Obviously I still want my NAS visible to my main home network.

Hopefully that makes sense. Any suggestions welcome.

bremen1874 · 10 Nov 2018 at 13:40

Adding a second router isn't likely to be a solution.

The answer is probably going to using a network cable instead of the Powerline connection.

Post up a diagram of your network so be can see what's connected to what.

ChrisD. · 10 Nov 2018 at 15:16

If it's on the same network, it won't need to go back to the router, the switch will switch the packets onto the right ports.

Glanza · 10 Nov 2018 at 15:23

How are your Nas and Kodi box connected in the garage, are they on their own powerline adapters or are you using a switch?

pepp77 · 10 Nov 2018 at 15:38

rubberduck said:
as despite the NAS and Kodi box being attached to the same switch the data has to go through my main router

If they are connected to the same switch then the switch will move data directly between their ports, it will not be sending it down the power lines to the router.

rubberduck · 12 Nov 2018 at 22:20

Thanks for the replies. Yes you are right in that they are both connected to the same switch. I started a movie streaming from the NAS to the Kodi and then turned the powerline adapter off and the movie continued to stream so yes data is just going via the switch. I still get breakup of high bitrate movies however so assume the problem is because my Kodi box doesn't have gigabit ethernet... The same movie plays fine when put on a flash drive and played via usb.

Sin_Chase · 12 Nov 2018 at 23:29

Make sure your NAS isn't doing any transcoding and Kodi is playing the file in its native format.

100Mbit ethrrnet should be fine, whats your media bit rate (video + audio)?

Avalon · 13 Nov 2018 at 07:42

rubberduck said:
Thanks for the replies. Yes you are right in that they are both connected to the same switch. I started a movie streaming from the NAS to the Kodi and then turned the powerline adapter off and the movie continued to stream so yes data is just going via the switch. I still get breakup of high bitrate movies however so assume the problem is because my Kodi box doesn't have gigabit ethernet... The same movie plays fine when put on a flash drive and played via usb.

By 'KODI box', do you mean some horrible Chinese cloned PoS? If so, then yes, that's very likely your problem. Kodi only direct plays content, if the box lacks the hardware capabilities to deal with your 'high bitrate' content and attempts to do it in software then either choose more appropriate content, or choose a device that's less likely to be based on cloned & crappy design along with a PSU without any safety testing that's likely to burn your house down. Confirm by testing playback on another device via a wired connection and see if you get the same issue in the same place, if you do then it's likely your media and not the client.

Sin_Chase said:
Make sure your NAS isn't doing any transcoding and Kodi is playing the file in its native format.

100Mbit ethrrnet should be fine, whats your media bit rate (video + audio)?

KODI is direct play, it doesn't require a separate server to serve media and transcode content. For transcoding to be an issue you'd expect the op to mention Plex or emby running somewhere and not KODI.

ChrisD. · 13 Nov 2018 at 07:52

Agreed, the issue is most likely the playback source.

rubberduck · 13 Nov 2018 at 11:57

Avalon said:
By 'KODI box', do you mean some horrible Chinese cloned PoS?

Yes, it was £22 from eBay.

Avalon · 13 Nov 2018 at 13:59

rubberduck said:
Yes, it was £22 from eBay.

Check the media plays back on something suitable like the laptop wired directly to the same switch as the NAS, but assuming the media is OK and you’re not trying to stream a full 4K remux or something equally silly, then look to the android box.

pepp77 · 13 Nov 2018 at 14:34

It could be something as simple as you have a 100mb network connection on the playback device and some 4k files can easily be over 100mb - I know I have some 4k rips that use about 125mb of bandwidth when streaming from my server to my TV - this is why I have to have my TV connected via 5G wifi and not the 100mb ethernet port the TV has.

ChrisD. · 13 Nov 2018 at 18:19

pepp77 said:
It could be something as simple as you have a 100mb network connection on the playback device and some 4k files can easily be over 100mb - I know I have some 4k rips that use about 125mb of bandwidth when streaming from my server to my TV - this is why I have to have my TV connected via 5G wifi and not the 100mb ethernet port the TV has.

His Kodi box is only 100 Mbit.

rubberduck · 14 Nov 2018 at 18:17

The high bitrate movies plays fine when I plug a PC in to the same switch as the NAS. Guess it is my Kodi box that is the weak link.

Sin_Chase · 15 Nov 2018 at 07:47

What encoding are the files?

h265 for example is very demanding, even an overclocked Pi3 will struggle with high bitrate 1080p h265 media. I'm not sure what SFF hardware for a media centre comparable in size is out there with hardware acceleration for h265 media, if it is does happen to be that. I tend to stick to h264 stuff.

rubberduck · 17 Nov 2018 at 14:47

The files are in MKV format and play ok on the KODI box if I put them on a USB 3 flashdrive and plug it in to the kodi box directly. It would seem that the non-gigabit ethernet is the problem. I wonder if a ethernet to USB 3.0 adapter would help or if the only solution is to buy a non-POS kodi box?

Caged · 17 Nov 2018 at 20:09

If you added your NAS shares to your Kodi box via the UI then it’s using some ancient version of Samba which performs like toilet.

Either move to NFS if your NAS supports it, or mount the shares outside of Kodi if you have access to the underlying OS.

I couldn’t reliably stream HD content to my Pi running OSMC until I ditched the built-in Samba client.