[ericlovestivo]

I've had very good results for the past year or so with MRV ($3/mo) and my 2-HR20s and 2-HR22s running over GigE switches and Cat6 cables throughout the house (1 router and 4 switches). Then about a month ago (not sure if it was a s/w update that did it), I started to get very choppy playback to and from one HR20 and one HR22. The video and audio will stop/start for a second and sometimes jump ahead as if a quick fast fwd was pressed. I tried restarting the router and the switches, but that rarely helps. Restarting the DVRs also gives very little satisfaction. It's now gotten to the point where those two DVRs are unwatchable from other rooms and vice versa.

I'm resisting the DECA route because of the investment in cabling and the wild path a lot of my cables take throughout the house (walls, floor-to-floor, etc.).

Thanks, in advance, for your help.

 

[ShmoeTheHo]

I've had very good results for the past year or so with MRV ($3/mo) and my 2-HR20s and 2-HR22s running over GigE switches and Cat6 cables throughout the house (1 router and 4 switches). Then about a month ago (not sure if it was a s/w update that did it), I started to get very choppy playback to and from one HR20 and one HR22. The video and audio will stop/start for a second and sometimes jump ahead as if a quick fast fwd was pressed. I tried restarting the router and the switches, but that rarely helps. Restarting the DVRs also gives very little satisfaction. It's now gotten to the point where those two DVRs are unwatchable from other rooms and vice versa.

I'm resisting the DECA route because of the investment in cabling and the wild path a lot of my cables take throughout the house (walls, floor-to-floor, etc.).

Thanks, in advance, for your help.

I guess the first question is why 4 switches? If you throw a laptop on to any of these switches what kind of link speed is being negotiated ?

GigE is very,very sensitive and slows itself down on a dime if it thinks one of the pairs might have an issue. Also cheaper GigE switches are just terrible sometimes as well.

Does this tend to occur when you're streaming mrv simultaneously from 1 or 2 of the dvrs?

 

[phoneman06]

Your receivers ethernet port only support 100mb so the gig switches don't really matter.

 

[dwcolvin]

Ethernet switches go bad (I've had both Dlink and Linksys fail) as do routers. The symptom is not "dead" as you might expect, but strange behavior.

Gigabit Ethernet is faster than DECA, so there's no bandwidth problem (however, I recommend DECA to keep that traffic self-contained).

 

[dwcolvin]

Your receivers ethernet port only support 100mb so the gig switches don't really matter.

While this is true, each of his 4 receivers supports 100mb, so there could be multiple MRV streams plus whatever else is on the home network that could stress a 100mb network.

 

[Scott Kocourek]

While this is true, each of his 4 receivers supports 100mb, so there could be multiple MRV streams plus whatever else is on the home network that could stress a 100mb network.

I think you may be incorrect on your assumption that there is a max of 100mb that can pass through a switch at any given time.

This is taken from a very inexpensive switch:

SMOOTH TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
The Desktop Switch receives and forwards traffic seamlessly with its non-blocking wire-speed architecture. Every port simultaneously supports up to 200Mbps of bandwidth, totaling 1Gbps of switching capacity. It minimizes bottlenecks, allowing your network to run smoothly even during the heaviest volume of traffic.

Found here: http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=479

I think this means that gigabit switch would be no better than a 10/100 switch, but I have to admit that I am not a networking professional.

 

[ericlovestivo]

Thanks so much for all the comments. Some more insight...

I'm maxing out most of the switch ports with the two access points, DVD players, 5 computers, DVRs, etc. Although, I still get the choppiness even in the early morning after a reset and almost no other network traffic.

I'm getting the choppiness even when no other DVRs are streaming across the network.

What tool or utility do you recommend I use to test the quality or effectiveness of the individual switches?

 

[houskamp]

are all the drvs on one switch? could be bottlenecks between switches..
mine (3dvrs and a reg) are all on a sigle 24 port 100m switch and I haven't seen any problems..

 

[4120 woodrow ct]

Um... so why not DECAs... you have a cable line to each of your dtv boxes. So th
e lines are already in place no extra wiring needed

 

[ericlovestivo]

The DVRs are all on different switches because of distance.

I never went the DECA route because I already had Cat6 running to all the DVRs. Can I still go with the $3/mo program if add 4 DECAs to the setup?

 

[dwcolvin]

I think you may be incorrect on your assumption that there is a max of 100mb that can pass through a switch at any given time.

This is taken from a very inexpensive switch:

Found here: http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=479

I think this means that gigabit switch would be no better than a 10/100 switch, but I have to admit that I am not a networking professional.

Yes, and no. For a 100Mb switch, each port supports 100mb Full Duplex (i.e., each way), so this is how they get to 200mb. There are 5 ports, and each port could theoretically be sending and receiving 100mb, so they are saying 1G of simultaneous traffic could pass through the switch, but no connection is faster than 100mb. For a 1G switch, multiply everything by 10.

But this "switching capacity" they refer to is really irrelevant. The important speed is the speed between linked switches (or the home router, which is also a switch). This backbone speed is the limiting factor. In the OP's case, assume he has 2 DVRs on one switch, and 2 on another. If they are both MRVing, and each MRV session wants to use 100mb (they don't), the 100mb backbone will be the limiting factor.

But throw in 300mb 802.11n, and little Buffy and Jody downloading iTunes, and Mom streaming music from a Squeezebox server, and Dad backing up his laptop and suddenly a 100mb backbone isn't so fast.

 

[veryoldschool]

The DVRs are all on different switches because of distance.

I never went the DECA route because I already had Cat6 running to all the DVRs. Can I still go with the $3/mo program if add 4 DECAs to the setup?

While the $3/month isn't the issue, to change to DECA does require a few things more than "just adding" 4 DECAs to your setup.
You need to have a SWiM system, and the splitters need to be DECA compatible, which is marked with a green label.

It might help to know what you have.

 

[caseyf5]

Hello Scott Kocourek,

The link you posted was for a 10/100 switch. The key phrase is Fast Ethernet (100 mb speed). If it said Gigabit it would be much faster. See this link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122111
Under Details it shows the following:
IEEE 802.3i 10BASE-T Ethernet
IEEE 802.3u 100BASE-TX Fast Ethernet
IEEE 802.3z 1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
Since it is a duplex setup it is theoretically capable of sending and receiving at the max speed of 10, 100 or 1000 mb each way. You are correct that it is almost impossible to get the max speed over a network as many different factors will slow down the network.

 

[ericlovestivo]

Now thinking back to another reason why I didn't go DECA originally... I definitely don't have the right splitters.

I'm just struggling with why the quality was so good for almost a year and just recently started seeing performance problems. I'll probably buy a new GigE switch and slip it in place of the three that touch the downstairs offending DVRs.

Thanks again for all your suggestions and comments.

 

[azarby]

Now thinking back to another reason why I didn't go DECA originally... I definitely don't have the right splitters.

I'm just struggling with why the quality was so good for almost a year and just recently started seeing performance problems. I'll probably buy a new GigE switch and slip it in place of the three that touch the downstairs offending DVRs.

Thanks again for all your suggestions and comments.

What new equipment did you add a Christmas time?

 

[Sithel]

Thanks so much for all the comments. Some more insight...

I'm maxing out most of the switch ports with the two access points, DVD players, 5 computers, DVRs, etc. Although, I still get the choppiness even in the early morning after a reset and almost no other network traffic.

I'm getting the choppiness even when no other DVRs are streaming across the network.

What tool or utility do you recommend I use to test the quality or effectiveness of the individual switches?

I use jperf for testing networks and network components, easy to setup and some runtime options to play with.

xjperf.googlecode.com/files/jperf-2.0.2.zip

 

[veryoldschool]

I use jperf for testing networks and network components, easy to setup and some runtime options to play with.

xjperf.googlecode.com/files/jperf-2.0.2.zip

Another link:
http://code.google.com/p/xjperf/downloads/detail?name=jperf-2.0.2.zip

 

[Phil17108]

I have an ethernet mrv with 4 hr2 somethings and 2 computers and a tv on one 8 port cheap from monoprice switch and no trouble, maybe its just a bad switch. simple stuff is just about always the answer.

 

[ericlovestivo]

Ordered one D-Link DGS-1008G 8-port switch and one DGS-1005G 5-port switch to sub into the network. Results in a few days. Thanks again.

 

[Beerstalker]

One other thing I haven't noticed anyone mention is this could also be his hard drives starting to go bad. When my master bedroom DVR's hard drive started to go bad the first symptom was choppy playback over MRV, then local playback got choppy, then the hard drive completely failed. Luckily by then I had watched pretty much everything off the DVR since I had figured out the hard drive was starting to fail.

I too have MRV over Cat6 and through gigabit switches.