Directly linking 2 PCs with a crossover cable which are on the same LAN

PhilGQ

PhilGQ

PhilGQ

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Joined
10 Sep 2007
Posts
683
Hi guys

Is it possible to directly link 2 PCs with a crossover cable which are also on the same LAN as I am having a little trouble with bandwidth.

I am using OBS with NDi for a dual PC streaming setup. What I need to happen is for the Gaming PC to send the signal over the network to the gaming PC. But both PCs also need to reach the internet .

If I send 1080p across the LAN its about 150Megabits per second and if I downscale to 720p its 30Megabits per second. When I send 1080p the network becomes very saturated and basically nothing else from the gaming PC reaches the web. If I switch to 720p then its mostly fine except for ChromeCam which can’t seem to validate itself so has a watermark on the processed image. So I can manage but would rather be able to send the 1080p.

I looked at 10Gb ethernet but its too expensive at the moment, I also briefly looked a FiberChannel and some old FireWire solutions, but both are non-starters. In addition, I checked out Link Aggregation but its not supported by Windows 10. I see that bridging allows the second PC to see the first PCs internet (or vice versa) but this isn’t what I need.

I was wondering can the network be set up so that, both computers see everything on the Network as they do now except for they would see each other via a direct Ethernet connection between them using USB ethernet connections and CAT6?

My LAN is all GB Ethernet and all CAT6, (both computers connect to a switch and switch connects to the router).

I am aware I can buy a Capture Card instead but would prefer this NDi solution if I can.
 
Maybe install extra Ethernet cards in order to connect the PCs together via cross over cable?

Are you able to select output/input devices separately via each application?

Not really ventured into something like this so maybe not work, but you can pick up NICs cheap enough.
 
Swifty55 said:
Maybe install extra Ethernet cards in order to connect the PCs together via cross over cable?

Are you able to select output/input devices separately via each application?

Not really ventured into something like this so maybe not work, but you can pick up NICs cheap enough.
Click to expand...

Thats what I was asking, will this work?
 
bledd said:
150Mbit is nothing for a gigabit network.

Not sure what obs and ndi are..
Click to expand...

I didn't think it was much, if it was 150MB that would be different.

OBS is Streaming Software for Twitch and the like, NDi is a plugin which send an un-encoded stream from one OBS to another on a different PC on the same network.
 
150Mbit on a 1000Mbit connection is not your problem and yes, NDi is vastly superior to a capture card in this scenario.

Are you using something awful NIC wise? Eg from Realtek that pretends to be a NIC but doesn’t support hardware offload etc.

Who is your internet provider and what package are you on? Twitch used to get bent out of shape at 6Mbit+ so i’m guessing you are re-encoding this prior to streaming it, what settings are you using?
 
Sounds like the switch or router either doesn't have the processing power to cope and/or something only has a 100Mbit port?

Might also need to tweak things like MTU and/or jumbo frame, error correction offloading and other settings like that as well.
 
ISP is Zen FTTC (70+Mb, we are near the exchange)
Router is ZyXel VMG 8924-B10A (they did give me a newer one when I switched to FTTC but it was less well speced and the old one was working and already set up)
Switch ia ZyXel VMG 8924-B10A (both computers and connected to this via patch panel)

The NIC on the Gaming PC is Killer (device manager says E2400)
The NIC on the Stream PC IS Realtek (it says GBE in device manager and on mothboard makers website)
 
Avalon said:
150Mbit on a 1000Mbit connection is not your problem and yes, NDi is vastly superior to a capture card in this scenario.

Are you using something awful NIC wise? Eg from Realtek that pretends to be a NIC but doesn’t support hardware offload etc.

Who is your internet provider and what package are you on? Twitch used to get bent out of shape at 6Mbit+ so i’m guessing you are re-encoding this prior to streaming it, what settings are you using?
Click to expand...

Twitch limit is still 6Mb (unless partnered who get a bit of grace), so yes I do encode the 150/30Mb down to 3.5-5Mb on the second PC.
 
Rroff said:
Sounds like the switch or router either doesn't have the processing power to cope and/or something only has a 100Mbit port?

Might also need to tweak things like MTU and/or jumbo frame, error correction offloading and other settings like that as well.
Click to expand...

I was careful to make sure I have only Gb stuff and CAT6, the only exceptions are my printer and possibly my BD player. Those settings you talk about, do you have any suggested settings at all? I assume these are settings on the router and switch.
 
Best way to test network speed between two machines..

https://iperf.fr/iperf-download.php#windows

Download that, extract the files on both machines to a simple folder..

ie C:\iperf3\

So in this folder, all you have is..

cygwin1.dll
iperf3.exe

On both
machines
open up command prompt (CMD)

type..
cd c:\iperf3
Hit enter

On PC1
ipconfig
Hit enter

This will give you the IP of the machine.


iperf3 -s
Hit enter

This will launch iperf in server mode.

On PC2
iperf3 -c 192.168.1.X (IP of first machine)
Hit enter

This will show the throughput between the PCs :)



----


Also works on Linux, before hand type in..

sudo apt install iperf3 /y
 
iperf says 824Mb - I also did it the other way around and it said 818Mb

So thats pretty good I thought, clearly not the problem as its more 150Mb.
 
Ok so I have been fiddling just now and now at 1080p I am only using 75Mb. I am also not getting the saturation problem I was.

I fixed a seemingly unrelated issue with my monitor losing signal yesterday. Apparently Windows installed duplicate drivers for my AMD card but that can't be related can it. Its all I have changed though.

edit

Seemingly spoke too soon, Chromacam had the same issue just now, but OBS did crash so possibly an unrelated problem
 
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