Where is this network bottleneck?

dekez

dekez

dekez

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Hey all, I need a little help to work out this problem with my network that is bugging me.

I do all of my downloads (steam games etc) at night (due to ISP limits) but I find that as soon as the download starts it causes any film I'm watching via streaming through the PS3 to stutter every now and then.

My set up is as follows:

networki.jpg


The whole network is gigabit so I wouldn't have thought that would be the problem (I'm not streaming bluerays or anything and the max download possible is 6-7Mbps). So I'm thinking it must be either the NIC on the server can't handle uploading and downloading at the same time. Or it's the reading and writing to and from the hard disks that is the issue.

How would I go about determining the reason and what are possible solutions?

Another NIC in the server, or a raid configuration on the hard disks?


Any help is much appreciated, cheers.
 
I would hazard a guess the gigabit switch part of that Netgear router is poor. Also, what NIC is in the Server?

Intel Pro NIC and HP Procurve switch would help a lot.
 
Thanks, I hadn't thought about the Netgear

I've got another switch (albeit a cheap TP-link one) which I'm not using at the moment so I'll try that first before buying a HP Procurve to see if there is any improvement.

It's just the standard motherboard NIC on a MSI K9A2 platinum, yeah so probably not very good.

The Intel Pro looks like a good option, is it possible to to have both NIC active, one handling uploads and one downloads?
 
dekez said:
The Intel Pro looks like a good option, is it possible to to have both NIC active, one handling uploads and one downloads?
Click to expand...

Not sure on that, the Intel ones are good though, I use one myself I picked up on members market (same as the switch) :)
 
Cheers, I'll keep an eye out for one, although they are pretty cheap new as well. :)
 
Check your port settings and make sure speed and duplex is manually set and not on auto-negotiate. You'd be surprised just how quickly a "confused" port can drag a network to it's knees!
 
Not using PS3 media server at the moment, I'll give that a go.

I don't think my router is good enough to have those settings, I think the bottom line is if I want a decent network I've got to buy decent gear. Thanks for the suggestions.
 
The current hardware is more than capable. What's the average bitrate of the media you're streaming?
 
Just had a quick play with performance monitor on the server, if I've converted it correctly:

The server sends 20Mbits/s streaming to the PS3

The server receives about 5Mbits/s downloading from the internet.
 
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