Speeding up wireless network

Andybtsn

Andybtsn

Andybtsn

Don
Joined
23 Oct 2005
Posts
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Location
North Yorkshire
I have a MyBook World Edition external network hard drive connected to my router, I have video's etc on the hard drive and I'd like to stream them to my laptop upstairs.
Unfortunately the data transfer is so slow the interruptions whilst watching a video becomes more and more frequent.

Is there any way to speed up the data transfer? Be it a quicker wireless card for my laptop or anything? I'm not sure if I have any options..

Thanks
 
I've always had problems with streaming over normal wireless (802.11g etc.).

If your router already supports 802.11n then get an 802.11n network card. If it doesn't support 802.11n then you'd need to buy both a router and a network card that does support it.

The best solution (IMO) would be to get it wired up, it'd be cheapest. I've never had a problem streaming on 100Mbps cables.
 
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My router is a DG834GT by the way, not sure what that supports?

Can I turn encryption off?
 
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Routers compatibale with Sky BB?

Relating to my other thread here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17941432

I want to be able to stream video's etc from a wireless hard drive downstairs. At present the wireless cannot transfer the data quick enough to be able to watch a film without it stopping, juddering etc.

So I need to upgrade my router, what are my options when it comes to working with Sky BB?

I can't used wires so please don't suggest this :)
 
Sky's no different from any other ADSL2+ service, so take your pick from any of the routers recommended elsewhere.
 
One that comes with a long cable? No, really, don't expect miracles with wireless...

You never said whether the wireless got better if you got nearer the router, what the signal strength was like etc. Fiddling with the encryption is unlikely to change anything.
 
TBH, if the wireless did get better being closer I can't have it lke that so it's pointless.

Really disappointed as I forked out £60 for a network hard drive so I could stream to it from my laptop so I don't have my PC on all the time.
I'd have to destroy my house to get cables in.
 
only videos that have issues over the wireless are ones that are encoded using a bitrate higher than that of the network transfer speed. 54mbit is gonna get u around 5 megabytes per second at the most, cant think of anything other than a blueray disk that has that can saturate the wireless bandwidth.

what sort of content are you trying to stream?
 
Cyber-Mav said:
only videos that have issues over the wireless are ones that are encoded using a bitrate higher than that of the network transfer speed. 54mbit is gonna get u around 5 megabytes per second at the most, cant think of anything other than a blueray disk that has that can saturate the wireless bandwidth.

what sort of content are you trying to stream?
Click to expand...

Basically just avi video files that around 350mb each. Not sure on bitrate or anything.

I went into the lounge with the laptop where the router/external hard drive is and the video's played pretty much fine. So it is do the with the range I guess...

Is there anything I could buy, boosters or anything?
 
Problem is that is the signal isn't particularly good, the throughput of wireless drops off pretty quickly because packets start getting lost. How far from the router is the laptop? What signal strength/connection speed does the laptop report?
 
andybtsn said:
Basically just avi video files that around 350mb each. Not sure on bitrate or anything.

I went into the lounge with the laptop where the router/external hard drive is and the video's played pretty much fine. So it is do the with the range I guess...

Is there anything I could buy, boosters or anything?
Click to expand...

something else is wrong with your setup there mate, you sure its the wireless causing the issues? if you copy the file to your lappy and then run it does it still stutter? seems to me if its a wireless issue your suffing massive packet loss, i can play videos encoded at 12mbit/s over the wireless network which is 54mbit, some of my 12mbit video encodes are 1080p content encoded with x264.

run some wireless network throughput tests and see what sort of speed your getting.

a 350mb xvid/divx clip is gonna be around 600ish kbit/sec and should stream fine over anything but dialup connection.
 
Right, signal strength is low..

The router is in my lounge, the laptop is upstairs and in our spare room (not on top of the lounge)

So it's quite a bit away, I have a PC in the same room with a Linksys WUSB300N wireless device and the signal strength of that is high. I may try this in the laptop and see my results?

If I could get the signal strength of the laptop to high could this solve my problems do you think?
 
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