NFS vs SMB for Streaming

NFS is generally faster as it has less overhead than smb. But your problems may be with WHS as it has background processes that can slow down transfers. Try to turn off demigrator and any other services that are in really needed.

I would set up NFS on your WHS and compare the results:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009...up-nfs-in-whs/

SMB works perfectly fine on my WHS, but I do have NFS set up as well (was using it when the PCH C200 was first released as their smb implementation sucked)

SMB from the WHS should have no issue feeding three concurrent high bitrate BD ISOs. Even when my WHS is reading from one of my drives attached by USB, I can still stream three high bitrate BD ISOs to three media playes concurrently with zero issues.

I'm streaming from a NAS to a NeoTV550 (that has a 100 Mbit ethernetport).

On SMB I got around 65Mbps, when I switched to NFS I got 90Mbps. Tested via the built-in network test of the NeoTV. So I'm using NFS now.

Depends on the player/server combination

I generally have better luck with SMB. Several streamers combined with several servers seem to have more problems with FF/REW and chapter skip over NFS than SMB.

What ever is best is what ever works for you


Sean

I personally like SMB over NFS. Nothing wrong with either one, pick what you like. In my network I use only SMB and have no issues maxing a gigE connection.

I assume the WHS is a custom build? What procssor did you use, which network card?

Is TCP/IP Offloading enabled for the nic?

Well ,I was going to start a new thread but maybe I'll hijack this one instead...sorry.

I don't know if it's due to my old pentium 4 PC, bad wiring/U-VERSE router or what, but I get stutter using my Popbox media player when watching many of my higher bitrate 1080p mkv's around 10-15 GB's. This was also happening with my WD live on my same network. Using the WD live's "media server" opton, instead of shares optiion, I was able to get non-stutter using W7 built in media server. Unlike WD-Live, Popbox doesn't have media server, so I was going to try to do a NFS share to fix my stuttering. In the past I tried following some tutorials to setup haneserver nfs program with my WDLIVE but I was unable to figure it out. I'm hoping it will be easier to setup with my Popbox. Someone advised me to try a program called Cygwin and linked me to the following tutorial: http://www.csparks.com/CygwinNFS/index.xhtml
This tutorial and it's length seems intimidating. Is it basic skill level? Is this my best bet to get stutter free playback? Do I uninstall hane program first? Should I instead be using W7 ultimates integrated NFS server? Or is there something else I can be doing to diagnose stutter on my network? I'ts about a 40 ft cable run from my PC to my Popbox. I was also thinking of trying out different ethernet cable?

If your movie's Bitrate is less than 35M, it should work fine through SMB.

However, it does not. So...

+1 for NFS. I can stream 1080p over WiFi using NFS whereas SMB gives me problems to no end on higher bitrate material ...

sorry for necro bump, but is 35M the limit for SMB? I'm having a stuttering issue with an MKV that is clocking in at 35556kps and someone had suggested switching to NFS for my WHS.

That will depend on what you are streaming to.  For instance, the old Popcorn Hour A-110 cannot handle full bitrate files via smb, but it can via http.  Also, it can handle higher bitrate in .ts than .mkv.  

And I'll add people with the newer popcorn hours can stream full res bluray via smb without issue and those can be 40plus mbps

I have two PC coupled though 300Mbit Wi-Fi (WPA2 encryption) channel. I shared the whole partition on one PC and mounted it from other one through Wi-Fi.

I am able to reach 90Mbit/sec doing just copy and paste operation.

When I run MPC-HC (or for example VLC) to play 1080p (average bitrate is about 40Mbit/sec) movie though Wi-Fi, maximum transfer speed is about 40-42Mbit/sec (I use task manager to control this speed). And movie does not play flawlessly.

If I use KMPlayer transfer speed jumps to 60+ Mbit/sec and movie plays perfect.

It is obvious, there is nothing (almost) to do with SMB. Multiple components (like player, Wi-Fi link, file system driver, etc.) are involved in the playback process. Each of these components has their own “character” size of data they are optimized to operate with (cache size, buffer size, encryption/decryption size, Wi-Fi frame transfer size etc.). The entire system is not tuned up well.

So, I would not state that HD playback / WiFi issue is only determined by overhead/performance of SMB. Indeed, in wired ethernet environment, SMB and NFS perform pretty similar.

BTW, If you check MPC-HC developer’s site, you should find that ticket was open couple of years ago about MPC’s caching capabilities.