Slow transfer music in Wlan 108mbit. Streaming lagg

[NiQ]

I have a server with all my music on and that music is shared through my Wlan at home. When I try to listen directly to the music from my other computer the sounds lagg with about 20sek intervall.

Any idea why this is happening? Shouldn't 180mbit be enough to be able to stream music and movies wireless without lagg? I know I never will get exactly 180mbit/sek through a likewise specced Wlan but I didn't think it would lagg this much.

Is this common or am I having some other problems?

[Steve B]

your maximum wireless throughput is 108Mb/s, but what is it actually connecting to the AP at?

[jimbouk]

Wireless just isn't a reliable connection, especially when it's trying to stay at such a fast rate. You could try forcing the speed of the connection down to 11mbps or something, plenty fast for music and hopefully more constant.

Also if you're playing straight off the harddrive rather than through any sort of software then it won't buffer enough to cope with a minor wireless drop. If you use winamp I think there was an option to set the buffer size, ramp that up as far as possible, dunno about other media players.

[charleski]

Actually I think the lag is caused by the buffering. Your software is delaying the playback in order to cover for any dropouts. 180mbps is far more than you need even for movies and jimbouk is right about turning the speed down - this will give you a more reliable connection, and then you can turn off any buffering in your software to get the music without lag.

[peterb]

If it is constant lag, then it is as charleski says (although 20 seconds indicates a very large buffer!). You will never get truly real time playback, but does the lag really matter?

(As an aside, digital radio lags an FM transmission by a couple of seconds for the same reasons. It doesn't matter - part from the time signal!)

[aidanjt]

A few facts:
a) wireless is a steaming pile of crap.
b) there's only a limited ammount of space in the airways, you're competing with your neighbours and your other devices for bandwidth.
c) 802.11n is a DRAFT standard, it's not even ratafied, by stupidly buying draft hardware you can expect your hardware to be completely useless if (and probably will) changes are made. And if I worked for the IEEE, I'd tear up the draft and redo the next wireless standard just to teach greedy companies what happens when you mislead customers and call your hardware compliant with non-existing standards.
d) trying to squeeze unrealistic speeds without accounting for data integridy into a small bandwidth alotment will ultimately cause horrible performance.

Also, it sounds like you're using dodgy software. Although we can't be sure since you didn't disclose any actual useful information for helping to locate your problem, so we're all taking shots in the dark, in trying to guess your problem.

[peterb]

A few facts:
a) wireless is a steaming pile of crap.
....

I wish you would come down off the fence and say what you really think!

[aidanjt]

I wish you would come down off the fence and say what you really think!

I try to show restraint

[Funkstar]

a) wireless is a steaming pile of crap.

I wouldn't go that far as long as you know its limitations, it does it does the job for basic network conectivity, especially if you are just using the internet. Wired is a complete PITA if you have a laptop

b) there's only a limited ammount of space in the airways, you're competing with your neighbours and your other devices for bandwidth.

Completely true that. There are at least a dozen other networks around me at home, most of them HomeHubs too.

c) 802.11n is a DRAFT standard, it's not even ratafied, by stupidly buying draft hardware you can expect your hardware to be completely useless if (and probably will) changes are made. And if I worked for the IEEE, I'd tear up the draft and redo the next wireless standard just to teach greedy companies what happens when you mislead customers and call your hardware compliant with non-existing standards.

108mbit wirless isn't 802.11n, it's G+ or turbo, or something. Now that shouldn't be allowed. It was never part of the IEEE spec and it doesn't work between brands of wireless adapters.

As wirless transmitters/recievers are mostly software besed now, it is pretty easy to make them conform to any changes in the spec between Draft and Final.

d) trying to squeeze unrealistic speeds without accounting for data integridy into a small bandwidth alotment will ultimately cause horrible performance.

Indeed


Now, NiQ, what software are you using? Is all your wireless equipment 108mbit and by the same manufacturer? If not, turn off the turbo mode and see if this helps. I've read of problems using mixed hardware on turbo speeds. How about temporarily wiring up your PC to the router, thn you can see if it is a wireless or just a networking issue.

[aidanjt]

Wired is a complete PITA if you have a laptop

Ug, I know, if it wasn't I wouldn't have spent £40 on an AP and nearly 2 days trying to get the transmitter working in linux on my laptop. It's still a crap medium as far as networking goes though.

108mbit wirless isn't 802.11n, it's G+ or turbo, or something. Now that shouldn't be allowed. It was never part of the IEEE spec and it doesn't work between brands of wireless adapters.

Well, MIMO, or SuperG or whatever non-standard they call it, as you say, they shouldn't be sold/marketed as such.

[Funkstar]

Ug, I know, if it wasn't I wouldn't have spent £40 on an AP and nearly 2 days trying to get the transmitter working in linux on my laptop. It's still a crap medium as far as networking goes though..

linux... now there's your problem

[aidanjt]

linux... now there's your problem

Not at all, the problem was the MiniPCI card was an atheros rebranded ZyDAS chip, so it took me several hours just to find that the hardware was actually a zd1211 chip, but with the PCI ID changed (which is a very evil thing to do). Then atheros, not contempt with fiddling with PCI IDs, they decided to change the transmitter as well, so I had to hunt down pre-existing source code for that to tie into the kernel driver. The process wasn't difficult, it was time consuming because Atheoros provided no support or even basic information to point me in the right direction. In short, hardware manufacturers that do stupid things, *and* ignore open platforms loses them sales.

If I had of bought the wireless module myself, I would have got an Intel wlan card, they are very well supported because Intel maintains the drivers along with community developers, which is a great symbiotic relationship that works to both their mutual advantages.

Anyway, all OT.

[Funkstar]

Understood all that, but no way i could do it myself, hence why i understand Linux bu can't get my head round actually using it

But yeah, this is going way OT

[roddines]

108mbit wirless isn't 802.11n, it's G+ or turbo, or something. Now that shouldn't be allowed. It was never part of the IEEE spec and it doesn't work between brands of wireless adapters.

Actually 108Mbits is simply 2 x 54Mbit Wirless G Channels and thus the radio does conform to the standards. It is the software driver and the processes embedded in the Wireless Acess Point that are a little different between brands. But they all fall back to a single standard 54Mbit link OK enough and it doesn't interfere with other 54Mb communications. Other than taking up bandwidth as would any connection. So really there is no problem other than marketing issues where ill informed people get conned by stupid PC world sales people into thinking they are somehow interoperable. Or just people making an ASS out of U and ME!

[Funkstar]

But they all fall back to a single standard 54Mbit link OK enough and it doesn't interfere with other 54Mb communications.

Not always so. A while back there was constant problems with SqueezeBox 3s not playing well with Turbo networks. Turning the turbo mode off solved these problems.Tthe firmware of the SB and the embeded wireless card has been massively upgraded to cope better, but there can still be problems with some brands.

I have heard of other senarios where mixed hardware didn't play well together even when tey should default down to 54mbit

[NiQ]

Actually I have just monitored the network speed on my WLAN and when I send 3GB of data the speed is about 3-4mb/sek. That is about 30mbit/sek. The speccs says 108mbit/sek. What a lie..

I knew I wouldn't get 108mbit/sek from this stuff but 30mbit/sek is way under my expetensions.
Now it's going to be GBlan and SATA2 harddrives in my home LAN. With WLAN ofc