Is wireless N woth investing in for streaming media

[mrochester]

I currently have a wireless G router, but the signal is sufficiently rubbish on any channel for media streaming that I have miles of ethernet cable to hook up 3 PCs that are dotted around the house, and the cables are just messy and unsightly. I was looking at wireless N as a solution to this problem, but I frankly have no idea whether it would be capable enough for my needs. I know the theoretical speed of an N connection, but of course this varies wildly in practice. Does anyone have any experience of switching from a wireless G setup whereby streaming video was jumpy and buffered frequently to wireless N? Will N solve all my problems and allow me to banish the wires forever?

Many thanks for any advice and experiences.

Michael.

[Funkstar]

It might work, or you could spend a lot of money on new wireless gear and it still doesn´t work as well as cable.

I would spend the time effort and money in pulling the ethernet cables through walls and under floors. A much better investment in my opinion

If you do want to go N, you will need to make sure all the equipment is dual band, i.e. it will use the 5GHz spectrum, this is far less likely to get interference from other equipment or near by networks.

The other alternative is Powerline networking. This can also suffer from issues with your home wiring and general performance issues.

[mrochester]

It might work, or you could spend a lot of money on new wireless gear and it still doesn´t work as well as cable.

I would spend the time effort and money in pulling the ethernet cables through walls and under floors. A much better investment in my opinion

If you do want to go N, you will need to make sure all the equipment is dual band, i.e. it will use the 5GHz spectrum, this is far less likely to get interference from other equipment or near by networks.

The other alternative is Powerline networking. This can also suffer from issues with your home wiring and general performance issues.

Exactly - I don't want to spend a fortune on N equipment only to find it no better than what I already have. I would need a guarantee from wherever I bought it that it would be capable of what I am trying to achieve, so that if it wasn't, I could send it all back as it wouldn't be fit for purpose. One major retailer of networking equipment certainly wasn't prepared to make that guarantee, which seems to me to make a mockery out of the whole N thing. I think I shall just have to live with the wires strewn up the stairs until I get some major work done to the house that would allow the ethernet cables to be tidied away somewhere.

[Terbinator]

Have you checked all the reasons that may be cuasing your stuttering before splashing out ?

[mrochester]

Have you checked all the reasons that may be cuasing your stuttering before splashing out ?

Short of trying every wireless channel on the router, I'm not sure what else to try?

[Terbinator]

Short of trying every wireless channel on the router, I'm not sure what else to try?

What is it your streaming exactly (HD/SD/720p/1080p etc), the only problems i've had when streaming to the PS3 over 'G' was when i was streaing the new transformers film and it has a bit-rate of around 20Mbps and brought the poor PS3 wifi to its knees during frantic scenes.

[gagaga]

Have to agree - you're probably best sticking with cables.

I use an Apple Airport on N at 5GHz - benchmarked it at over 14MB/s (that's megabytes, not bits) on a straight filecopy, yet I still get occasional stuttering when playing HD video over the connection in XBMC.

I do think that the issue is latency, not bandwidth - the wireless does not respond quickly enough to variations in the bitrate of the video, so you might have better luck with a different player ...

[jim]

Usually the problem is dropped packets = dropped frames.

Ethernet is the only route I've considered as it's the only one that virtually never drops a packet.

[mrochester]

What is it your streaming exactly (HD/SD/720p/1080p etc), the only problems i've had when streaming to the PS3 over 'G' was when i was streaing the new transformers film and it has a bit-rate of around 20Mbps and brought the poor PS3 wifi to its knees during frantic scenes.

It's just SD content - 200mb Simpsons episodes for instance.

[Lee H]

I would personally hard-wire the network for things like media players and leave wireless for devices like laptops, mobiles and hand-held gaming devices.

Too many wireless devices connected can have an effect on your network and start to slow things down.

[Apex]

I would need a guarantee from wherever I bought it that it would be capable of what I am trying to achieve.

No shop in their right mind will do this without (if they offer) doing a site survey.

If your internal wiring is newish and the consumer box you have is newish then powerline should work ok.

We have a pair with one upsatairs and one in the new extension running the XBox and it seems to max the bandwidth out.

[Apex]

Short of trying every wireless channel on the router, I'm not sure what else to try?

One simple test, bring both bits into the same room, does it suffer ?

Check what other 2.4ghz based stuff is in the area.

Cordless phones, beepers and stuff like that.

What other wireless networks are in the area ?

Also you havn't said what the router is ?

[Biscuit]

I have had similar problems on wireless G networks before and i found (as mentioned earlier) some media players can handle it better than others. VLC was rubbish as was quicktime and a whole host of other basic players (on my mac) but XBMC worked like a dream.

If you do decide to shell out on some wireless hardware i have had good results with Netgear Rangemax stuff although it is expensive.

[abaxas]

Both mplayer and vlc allow for greater caching.

Providing you have enough bandwidth, either will play everything without stuttering.

[Terbinator]

XBMC doesnt work with PS3

[GlasgowGuy]

Powerline networking, as mentioned by Funkstar, is certainly a possibility, but you really need to know a bit about how your house is wired up. Since speeds tend to really drop off if a socket is on a different ring main to your other device, it is important to try and borrow some kit to try first (see if a friend would let you have a shot of theirs for an hour, if you can find someone who has it).

One way to try and guess (note it's still a guess) what rings are in your house is to find out what sockets stop working when each circuit breaker (presuming you have breakers in the house, though) is tripped. If everything goes out when one is tripped, then you might be OK on powerline.

But for me, I have each room in on a seperate breaker, so it is practically useless for me (I can't even get an ancient 'powerline doorbell' to work upstairs in my house! (And all that doorbell uses is a high frequency pulse down the line. 1 bit of data essentially. So imagine something sensible like your videos. No chance in my house unfortunately.

So, ethernet or N seems the way to go. Ethernet would be my preference, any day (cost of N equipment is still high where I've looked)