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Hi guys,
I work for a company which advises to use your software in conjunction with a product we support. (I shall not name the company for obvious reasons)
I subsequently installed it on a file server i had built at home to use, as i had advised to use it, but have never used it for anything other than fault finding and "customer education".
I was using it playing through to a piece of software on my Android device, and as i was using it i decided to use windows built in resource monitor to watch the files coming and going, to get an idea of how it worked.
I came across what i perceived as a flaw which could explain some of the difficulties our customers face, this is how it went:-
I started playing a song (Flac uncompressed 30-50mb ~>), and obviously i could see the file being read from and transmitted across my network.
I then flicked forward to another track within a few seconds of the first one starting, and noticed that the song i had skipped, was still being read.
So i skipped a few more and still, these too were still being read and more importantly being sent across the network (or as far as i could tell).
So i decided to try and experiment, i skipped forward a load of songs (30-40+) and noticed that when i had done this in quick succession, i managed to not only nearly peak the read limit of the hard drive (60+MB/s), but also reached about 50% utilisation of my network (1gbit > 5Ghz Wifi). Along with crashing the app a few times
I then tried to skip a few more songs, and then started experiencing issues with drop outs and excessive "buffering", i had to admittedly skip into the EXTREME to get this to happen.
On an ethernet connection, this really is never going to be a problem, as sending 30-50 FLACs even at their largest, isn't really going to tax a network, with more conventional "skipping", i really had to push it to get any problems.
However, when using 2.4Ghz WiFi, i can see this becoming a serious problem, as you are going to run out of bandwidth extremely quickly, if you take into consideration, what else could be running on that 2.4Ghz network at the same time taking up bandwidth, along with channel congestion, attenuation and other factors such as inferior ISP routers.
I did some further testing and found that, when skipping tracks the bandwidth used would not peak as wildly as the read's from the disk. So the possibility is that it is not actually still sending the file but only reading it and caching it?!?! But why cache or send a song which you have skipped???
If it is not actually still sending the data for the song you have skipped, the bandwidth is not the most serious problem.
However, the reading of the data even after it is skipped, seems to read at the speed and duration of what it would take to send the song, so i still think it could be transmitting it.
My main concern, if we can determine if it is not sending the data, it is still physically reading the data off of the drive, if this is a SSD or a more modern USB 3 external drive, then i really don't think this is an issue, my USB 3 2TB WD element > Macbook Pro will send data at 100MB/s and is not going to struggle sending thousands of FLAC files.
But, an older device, like a laptop with a mechanical drive at 2.5" with a spin speed of 5,400RPM or at best 7,200 RPM with read speeds of roughly 20MB/s?? (Personally i think 20MB/s is frankly generous) I transferred 43.6GB across the C:/ drive of my laptop (A fairly modern HP Laptop, and got a peak read speed of 26MB/s, and this laptop was running nothing, and has no software and is basically just a back up laptop) I think devices such as this are really going to struggle with operating system and other software overheads and running this, and if its running from USB, its going to kill it very soon.
Going through the settings in the app i was using "UPnPlay" by default it had any form of "Cache to SD" switched off.
To give a general idea of my network it goes as following ADSL > Router (Homehub4) > CAT5 (Gbit port) > 2nd Router (BT Homehub5) {Configured as an Access point} > 4 Port Netgear Gbit Switch > Server
The Phone was connected to the 5GHz WiFi off the access point which supposedly transmits at "1300Mbps" (which is BS but whatever)
I have very little channel congestion as i have only 4 WiFI routers in range and everything from the 2nd router forward is in the same room.
So in summary :-
When skipping, is it still sending the data of previous tracks?
When the reading continues of tracks previously skipped on the "server" is this a feature or bug?
I know i have spoken in regards to 5Ghz WiFI but the product i support can only use the 2.4GHz frequency, so could replies take this into consideration please? And also, most routers use synced 2.4/5 and most of the time users would most likely be in the 2.4 range as 5 has weaker range, less interference but more attenuation (as far as i know).
Any questions or further information you require i would be happy to test it. I am trying to figure out how to packet sniff the data to figure this out even further
Hardware -
Server
Win 10 X64
2.4Ghz Q6600 2.4GHZ
2GB DDR2
150GB Raptor 10,000RPM (Main Drive)
10TB Drives (9 drives in total)
Gbit NIC
ASUS P5n32e-sli plus motherboard
Macbook Pro 13.3"
2014
16GB DDR3 1600MMHZ
256GB SSD
Phone
HTC ONE M8
Latest Android
UPnPlay Free App
5GHz WiFi Not 2.4
Regards
Burkey
I work for a company which advises to use your software in conjunction with a product we support. (I shall not name the company for obvious reasons)
I subsequently installed it on a file server i had built at home to use, as i had advised to use it, but have never used it for anything other than fault finding and "customer education".
I was using it playing through to a piece of software on my Android device, and as i was using it i decided to use windows built in resource monitor to watch the files coming and going, to get an idea of how it worked.
I came across what i perceived as a flaw which could explain some of the difficulties our customers face, this is how it went:-
I started playing a song (Flac uncompressed 30-50mb ~>), and obviously i could see the file being read from and transmitted across my network.
I then flicked forward to another track within a few seconds of the first one starting, and noticed that the song i had skipped, was still being read.
So i skipped a few more and still, these too were still being read and more importantly being sent across the network (or as far as i could tell).
So i decided to try and experiment, i skipped forward a load of songs (30-40+) and noticed that when i had done this in quick succession, i managed to not only nearly peak the read limit of the hard drive (60+MB/s), but also reached about 50% utilisation of my network (1gbit > 5Ghz Wifi). Along with crashing the app a few times
I then tried to skip a few more songs, and then started experiencing issues with drop outs and excessive "buffering", i had to admittedly skip into the EXTREME to get this to happen.
On an ethernet connection, this really is never going to be a problem, as sending 30-50 FLACs even at their largest, isn't really going to tax a network, with more conventional "skipping", i really had to push it to get any problems.
However, when using 2.4Ghz WiFi, i can see this becoming a serious problem, as you are going to run out of bandwidth extremely quickly, if you take into consideration, what else could be running on that 2.4Ghz network at the same time taking up bandwidth, along with channel congestion, attenuation and other factors such as inferior ISP routers.
I did some further testing and found that, when skipping tracks the bandwidth used would not peak as wildly as the read's from the disk. So the possibility is that it is not actually still sending the file but only reading it and caching it?!?! But why cache or send a song which you have skipped???
If it is not actually still sending the data for the song you have skipped, the bandwidth is not the most serious problem.
However, the reading of the data even after it is skipped, seems to read at the speed and duration of what it would take to send the song, so i still think it could be transmitting it.
My main concern, if we can determine if it is not sending the data, it is still physically reading the data off of the drive, if this is a SSD or a more modern USB 3 external drive, then i really don't think this is an issue, my USB 3 2TB WD element > Macbook Pro will send data at 100MB/s and is not going to struggle sending thousands of FLAC files.
But, an older device, like a laptop with a mechanical drive at 2.5" with a spin speed of 5,400RPM or at best 7,200 RPM with read speeds of roughly 20MB/s?? (Personally i think 20MB/s is frankly generous) I transferred 43.6GB across the C:/ drive of my laptop (A fairly modern HP Laptop, and got a peak read speed of 26MB/s, and this laptop was running nothing, and has no software and is basically just a back up laptop) I think devices such as this are really going to struggle with operating system and other software overheads and running this, and if its running from USB, its going to kill it very soon.
Going through the settings in the app i was using "UPnPlay" by default it had any form of "Cache to SD" switched off.
To give a general idea of my network it goes as following ADSL > Router (Homehub4) > CAT5 (Gbit port) > 2nd Router (BT Homehub5) {Configured as an Access point} > 4 Port Netgear Gbit Switch > Server
The Phone was connected to the 5GHz WiFi off the access point which supposedly transmits at "1300Mbps" (which is BS but whatever)
I have very little channel congestion as i have only 4 WiFI routers in range and everything from the 2nd router forward is in the same room.
So in summary :-
When skipping, is it still sending the data of previous tracks?
When the reading continues of tracks previously skipped on the "server" is this a feature or bug?
I know i have spoken in regards to 5Ghz WiFI but the product i support can only use the 2.4GHz frequency, so could replies take this into consideration please? And also, most routers use synced 2.4/5 and most of the time users would most likely be in the 2.4 range as 5 has weaker range, less interference but more attenuation (as far as i know).
Any questions or further information you require i would be happy to test it. I am trying to figure out how to packet sniff the data to figure this out even further
Hardware -
Server
Win 10 X64
2.4Ghz Q6600 2.4GHZ
2GB DDR2
150GB Raptor 10,000RPM (Main Drive)
10TB Drives (9 drives in total)
Gbit NIC
ASUS P5n32e-sli plus motherboard
Macbook Pro 13.3"
2014
16GB DDR3 1600MMHZ
256GB SSD
Phone
HTC ONE M8
Latest Android
UPnPlay Free App
5GHz WiFi Not 2.4
Regards
Burkey
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