Actiontec MI424WR - a cheap MoCA bridge for all! - Page 4

Originally Posted by BioSehnsucht

Are you streaming to a netbook? They haven't a whole lot of processing power to spare, if it's doing the decode in software entirely then that plus the overhead of getting data over the network may be just a hair too much. If it plays fine from local storage on the netbook then it just may be that you're so close to maxing out the processor time just playing the video there isn't enough to handle network IO. Considering the differences in transferring 1 vs several files I suspect the network drivers / hardware on the netbook may be your limitation.



Really not going to be a problem. Assuming even if you had a 50mbit FiOS connection, fully saturated with a slew of DVRs doing VOD/PPV at once, you'd still have over 50mbit in raw bandwidth left in MoCA - MoCA can handle more data than the 100Base-T Ethernet a MoCA bridge would be limited to.

Originally Posted by stanglx

I already talked about that the netbook was the limitation... the last test I did was on a quad core with 4 GB of ram that I already stream HD movies to over Gigabit ethernet from my meda server with no issues. Using in the same location, same movies, same player BUT the only difference is that MoCA is now the medium I cant stream my HD movies without them stuttering...

MoCA in theory should have enough bandwidth (175 Mb/s per the spec), same latency, etc. but I am not seeing this - which could be due to the distance and number of splitters... OR interference from the other Verizon STBs on the network.

Keep in mind for browsing the web, playing music, pictures even streaming a DVD I did not have an issue... but it choked on my HD movies - my HD movies are Blurays which I remuxed the video H.264/VC1/MPEG2 and rerendered/remuxed Audio TrueHD, DTS-MA, DTS-HD into a MKV container... I also have remuxed M2TS container files with original video and original audio.... again.. no issues with the above system and ethernet... using Moca (unplug one ethernet cable for the other) bam! Stuuttteerrrrring... On and off though so I will be honest... H.264 little issues VC1 forget it... cant watch it... VC1 is very intenstive...

You may be asking why I am venturing down this road.. well the 2nd floor of my house is wired for Gigabit which I spent the time wiring... currently my upstairs rooms have HTPCs (mixutre of quad and dual core machines)... my 1st floor I have nothing just wireless... (My 1st floor movie TV is only 1080i so is a waste right now) but I am planning on finally pulling the trigger to get a larger 1080p TV for the first floor... My den is not directly located under the main house there for I will need to do some trickery to run the Ethernet cable... so I figured an alternate technology could help me here.. Powerline, N Wireless, etc... NOTHING has worked so far with streaming HD content (and dont believe the bull about N.. even on the same floor in the same room it barely works - again VC1 it chokes) ... MoCA seemed promising and based on my testing (with out the netbook) is definitely the fastest... but unfortunately can not handle streaming HD video... Unaltered.. What your cable companies send you is no where near the type of video stream I am sending.. your lucky if their streaming 5 - 10 Mbs of highly compressed (recompressed actually) video streams... Original blueray streams need at least 45 Mb/s with very little jitter and little latency....

So far using the above link in a previous post I am getting about 8 - 9ms of latency which is fine and dont believe I was successful in measuring Jitter.. it wasn't even posting and I cant believe I have 0ms of jitter.. I might have been doing something wrong...

PS... Im a computer architect... I dont have experience with MoCA and would like to contrast its characteristics with Fast Ethernet for streaming unaltered hd content. I believe QoS could help me but need to better understand how this implemented on the Actiontech router and if it will make a difference as this is now bridged and no longer a router... PLUS I do not want to disrupt my FIOS service..

Anyway... Like I said I need a MoCA expert...

Originally Posted by BioSehnsucht

OK, I wasn't sure from your previous posts if you were still using the netbook or not. Yeah, the PC shouldn't be the limit then.



MoCA does introduce a few ms of latency (switching from MoCA for the broadband interface at the ONT to Ethernet has a noticible impact in some games). However I wouldn't think it would impact it enough by itself to keep you from streaming HD content. How many STBs do you have in your house ? Other STBs shouldn't interfere but if they are actively receiving data obviously the total available bandwidth goes down and the latencies may go up.



I see you tried a bunch of different playback software, so I doubt this is the case, but I wonder if the file IO is being done with small enough blocks that the quantity of requests per second and the small latency increase might be enough to be an issue.



Yeah, 8-9ms of latency is nothing to worry about on it's own, but if the data was being requested in small chunks rather than large ones the 8-9ms could add up per request. And yes, I realize that the cable company streams are much smaller (hence why I said you'd need a 'slew' of DVR's doing VOD/PPV at once to even saturate the FiOS link). Certainly the raw bandwidth is there... I doubt QoS is going to help unless you were streaming with other active streams for the DVRs at the same time.

Something that does occur to me, from having recently done some more googling, apparently MoCA splits up the available spectrum in the range it operates into 50Mhz channels and will then work around whatever is used by the existing cable channels, so perhaps there isn't actually 175Mbit/s of bandwidth available in the unused channels, and instead is far less ? Even so, you've tested it at 65Mbit/s which should handle your HD streaming needs just fine.

At this point the only thing I can guess you could try would maybe be to switch out the Actiontec for a Motorola NIM100 off ebay. They used to go for $30 but seems to be over twice that now. The NIM100 is a simple MoCA / Ethernet bridge (additionally it has an RF pass through so you can possibly eliminate a T by just placing it in the middle of where the T was). Not sure if traffic passing through the MoCA port on the Actiontec has to traverse the routing table or not, but the Actiontec was never exactly a high performance router (due to it's firmware, really, the hardware itself is awesome). I run a NIM100 to bridge the FiOS DVR into my network behind my DD WRT'd Linksys router.

I doubt we're likely to find anyone who claims to be a MoCA expert, for one thing apparently there's only one chipset manufacturer and it's almost universally deployed by FiOS and nobody else really yet. Certainly the limits of Verizon techs in diagnosing problems is going to be swapping components out and making sure the cables / etc are good, it's not like they're going to be doing speed tests and optomizing the MoCA for streaming 45mbit Blu-Ray remuxes.

If it's not the Actiontec slowing things down then it's probably just not enough consistently free channels in the wire for the necessary speed. Perhaps try bypassing the real coax network and just run a long coax from Actiontec to the router ? If that works fine then we can suspect it's interference from cable channels or just noise in the coax ..

Originally Posted by GooberedUp

stanglx-

How big of movies are you talking about? I can experiment with it. Would what you do be the equivalent of streaming a 40-50GB 2-hour movie in a .x264 MKV container?

Originally Posted by xnappo

Yes, it will work - however those have typically been selling for considerably more than the older revs.

xnappo

Originally Posted by stanglx

Has anyone tried streaming HiDef yet? I am having a hell of an issue getting it to stream smoothly even while getting at least 65 Mb/s. MKVs with FLAC for audio or M2ts with TrueHD/DTSMA, etc.

Originally Posted by stanglx

Has anyone tried streaming HiDef yet? I am having a hell of an issue getting it to stream smoothly even while getting at least 65 Mb/s. MKVs with FLAC for audio or M2ts with TrueHD/DTSMA, etc.

Originally Posted by ocZZZZ

ack, that is bad news. I am looking at this for streaming 1080p x264's. Can anyone confirm this solution works for streaming larger files (10g-20g)?.

Originally Posted by stoked

I highly doubt it's a MOCA problem that he's having. If I can stream 1080p x264 over Wireless N in ideal conditions, MOCA should be no problem.

Originally Posted by stanglx

You have missed the point.. its not a bandwidth issue.. and I have a N router and unless your in the same room using 5.0 Ghz you cant stream Bluray ISO or MKVs of the same bit rate... keep in mind I am streaming Blurays with VC1 / H264 plus TrueHD/DTSMA/FLAC couple the audio and video you way above the 50 Mb/s which for the most part I have yet to sustained using N... with MOCA I am seeing this BUT I still get the stuttering... I have changed some splitters out... I will retest tonight and check back..

Originally Posted by stanglx

You have missed the point.. its not a bandwidth issue.. and I have a N router and unless your in the same room using 5.0 Ghz you cant stream Bluray ISO or MKVs of the same bit rate... keep in mind I am streaming Blurays with VC1 / H264 plus TrueHD/DTSMA/FLAC couple the audio and video you way above the 50 Mb/s which for the most part I have yet to sustained using N... with MOCA I am seeing this BUT I still get the stuttering... I have changed some splitters out... I will retest tonight and check back..

Originally Posted by stanglx

Nope didnt work... splitters didnt help. It seems on my network monitor my network utilization goes up and down... from 70 Mb/s to 33 with an average of about 65... I think the up and down is causing Jitter.. anyone have a good application to measure jitter?

Originally Posted by stoked

What protocol are you using to stream the data? Is it just reading off a Windows Share? If so, I noticed SMB does spike and dip a fair bit. Have you tried running iperf to see if it also spikes/dips?

Originally Posted by ocZZZZ

Good point, going from smb to nfs would be the best bet if you're running a *nix fileserver. If not, you should be Also, perhaps you can enable jumbo frames (even though it's over 100Mb). I'm not sure if the FIOS bridge supports this or not but it might be worth looking into.