Multiple HDHomeRun networking advice needed

[jlmdxtv]

I just purchased a second HDHomeRun and am looking for networking advice.

My 8-port 100MB/Wireless/Firewall router has an 1 open port, but I've read that running 4 HDHR streams at once requires a 1GB switch due to bandwidth needs.

So my options seem to be:

1) Upgrade the 8-port 100MB router to 1GB.

2) Directly connect the secondary HDHR to my Sage server on its own 100MB Ethernet card, keeping the other HDHR on the 8-port router.

3) Purchase a 4-port 1GB switch and connect that to a secondary 1GB Ethernet port on my Sage server. Put both HDHRs on that new 4-port switch. But will the HDHomeRuns generate their DHCP IP addresses correctly or might they end up conflicting with each other? (The switch I'm looking at won't generate DHCP addresses, but I've read that the HDHomeRuns will.) Any advantage to connecting this 4-port switch to the 8-port router too (and removing the original 100MB connection between the Sage server and the 8-port router)?

-or-

4) Wait for Sage and Silicon Dust to update their driver/support to handle individual subchannel streaming. Once that happens, just connect the secondary HDHR into my 8-port router.


Thanks, john

[jmv]

Don't make it complicated. You can buy an 8 port GB Switch for <$50...New
Egg has the the d-link DGS-2208 for $30 after rebate with good reviews. I current use gigabit exclusively and get about 3X the performance I used to get with 100MB.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127082

I re-read your post and it sounds like you currently have a router not a switch (8-port 100MB / Wireless / Firewall would typically be Router properties)...if this is also your router, then you will need to keep it on the network. Currently I have my 100MB Router/Wireless/firewall plugged into one of my Gb ports. You can do the same thing with your setup, and use all the Gb ports with your HD Homerun's and server, and put something that is less resource intensive on one of the 100Mb router ports (wife's PC for example!)...

[jlmdxtv]

Thanks Jmv. You're correct it's a router - I've updated the original text.

I'm leaning towards adding a 1GB switch too.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by jlmdxtv

Thanks Jmv. You're correct it's a router - I've updated the original text.

I'm leaning towards adding a 1GB switch too.

As jmv stated, just get a 1GB swtich. I ordered a dlink the other day (just upgraded my secondary pc and now need two gb ports in one room). For $20 after a $10 MIR it just doesn't make sense not to add GB to your network when trying to use multiple HDHomruns.

Just remember, your Sage server has to have a GB ethernet port (most of us do, but there are some), otherwise it won't do you any good as all you did was move the bottle neck from the router to the server.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by jlmdxtv

... 3) Purchase a 4-port 1GB switch and connect that to a secondary 1GB Ethernet port on my Sage server. Put both HDHRs on that new 4-port switch. But will the HDHomeRuns generate their DHCP IP addresses correctly or might they end up conflicting with each other? (The switch I'm looking at won't generate DHCP addresses, but I've read that the HDHomeRuns will.) Any advantage to connecting this 4-port switch to the 8-port router too (and removing the original 100MB connection between the Sage server and the 8-port router)?

This is the one I would do, matter of fact, I have both my single HDHomeRuns hooked to their own ethernet ports on the 2 servers I run, and if I added a second to either system, I'd just get a switch and add the first and second turner to the switch. The HDHomeRuns get their DHCP from the manager software. This way you never have to worry about using too much band width with the PC's. I sometime use my "good" PC to do editing on, and want all the bandwidth I can when moving 10GB plus files around.

[GKusnick]

My rule of thumb on routers is to ignore the extra ports and always use a separate switch. That way you can reboot the router as needed without interrupting other LAN traffic.

So in your specific case I would get an 8-port Gbit switch and plug everything into that. The only LAN cable plugged into your router should be the one uplinking it to the switch. DHCP requests from devices connected to the switch will be forwarded through to the router automatically.

[CarlR]

I'd recommend option 3 - it is exactly how my server is set up with 2 HDHRs, and everything seems to be working fine.

My setup was similar to option 1 when I first bought the 2nd HDHR. The 2 HDHRs were connected to a GB switch, which also was used for other devices on my network. I was getting a lot of stuttering when trying to record 3 or 4 shows simultaneously (and this was back when the HDHR was sending a lower bandwidth signal). The stuttering persisted even after forcing each recording to go to a different drive.

I solved the problem by moving the HDHRs to their own GB switch (connected to the 2nd GB NIC on my server) and defraging the recording drives to maximize the contiguous free space (they were already formatted in 64k clusters). Since I did both at the same time, I can't prove which fix actually solved the problem, but I'm pretty sure it was network side changes.

As others have said, in this configuration the HDHRs get their IPs from the HDHR manager software. So after making this change I had to configure my server to autologin to a user account so that it would start the software during an unattended startup (I don't think it will run as a service).

[jlmdxtv]

Thanks all. I went with Method 3 as universally recommended.

I connected a spanking new 1GB switch into my 100MB router, that switch is also connected to a 1GB Ethernet card (also new) in my SageTV server. The two HDHOMERUNs are connected to the new 1GB switch (they DHCP their IP addresses off of my 100MB router.)

It took reinstalling SageTV (it would be nice if SageTV didn't cache old channel lineups in the properties file) and fussing around with the HDHOMERUN manager/config to properly see all 4 tuners in SageTV, but it seems to be working now. So later tonight ("must see Thursday night TV") we'll see how it all goes with all 4 tuners recording away.

best, john

[CarlR]

Let us know how that setup works. I was not able to stop the stuttering with that configuration and ended up having to move the HDHRs off the network.

[jlmdxtv]

My testing last night was a little funky recording 4 HD shows at once. The entire recording server rebooted 4 or 5 times after 45 minutes or so into it. I'm running the latest beta drivers for the HDHR dated 9/18 or so, which could be a factor.

Here're my action items:

1) Speedfan shows nothing is overheating, but I turned up the CPU fan to it's max speed since.
2) I ran a ram test which showed no issues.
3) I updated the 1GB ethernet drivers to the latest version this morning (they are a year newer than what came with the ad-on card.)
4) I'm *going* to check for new main board (Asus / AMI) rom bios and flash it when I get home. The current one is dated 1/2006.
5) Retest. If it still reboots, then I'll revert back to the latest *release* HDHR drivers and retest.

The recording system is powered by a dual-core AMD 4200 with a brand new seagate SATA recording drive formatted at 64K blocks, a new 450Watt Termaltake power supply, 2GBs of Crucial Ram, Netgear 1GB switch and Netgear 100MB router. The system is showing < 10% utilization with 4 HD recordings going. No Comskip, no reencoding, no virus checking, no Defender.

CarlR:
I thought I saw some minor micro-stuttering on a SageClient system during SmallVille (which was being recording concurrently) but I switched from Nvidia codecs to Intervideo's and they fully disappeared - but I think that the picture was a bit less vibrant with the Intervideo codecs.

john

[sandor]

one ATSC stream = 19.39 mbps max

4 ATSC streams = 4x19.39 = 77.56 mbps

it doesnt give you much headroom in a 100 mbps router/switch.

I actually have my sage server and 2x HDHRs as well as NAS on a DLink 655 (802.11 n and 4 port gigabit enet) it works very well, and wasnt terribly expensive.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by CarlR

Let us know how that setup works. I was not able to stop the stuttering with that configuration and ended up having to move the HDHRs off the network.

are you sure this wasnt a problem with your recording hard drive versus network speed?


stuttering on playback would more than likely point to a storage device (hard drive) issue rather than a tuner issue (playback always occurs from files already written to disk). SageTV will never play "live" from a stream, it always records to disk first.

[jlmdxtv]

Hi Sandor,

The 4 tuners *are* connected to a 1GB switch which is connected to a 1GB card in my SageServer. That 1GB switch is also connected to the 100MB router for SageServer Internet access, but the 100MB router wasn't handling any video during the crashes.

If all else fails, I'm going to place that 1GB switch with it's two HDHRs on its own cloud and ethernet card, and remove the connection between that switch and the 100MB router.

john

[CarlR]

Originally Posted by sandor

are you sure this wasnt a problem with your recording hard drive versus network speed?


stuttering on playback would more than likely point to a storage device (hard drive) issue rather than a tuner issue (playback always occurs from files already written to disk). SageTV will never play "live" from a stream, it always records to disk first.

I know the problem occurred during recording, because it was repeatable on playback - it always stuttered at the same point in the show. I'm playing back through a HD extender, so it's not a transcoding issue.

I did as much as I could to rule out the drive bottleneck - I forced each tuner to write to a different disk (I have 6 500G SATA drives) and split the loading between my 2 HDD controllers (picked 2 drives from each controller). This didn't solve the problem - it seemed to have no effect whatsoever. In this configuration the stuttering showed up on ALL 4 of the shows being recorded.

It's still hard to believe that it was a bottleneck on the network side (using a Gb switch and NIC), but separating the HDHR signals from the rest of the network traffic was the only thing that solved my problem. Could be a crappy NIC or some other subtle configuration issue - I stopped trying to figure it out once I found a configuration that worked.

[jlmdxtv]

FINAL RESULTS, 2 HDHRs, 1 PVR-500:

It's all working now - no stuttering, no glitches, no reboots!

What worked:
I connected a 5-port NetGear 1GB switch to my 100MB NetGear router. The 5-port switch also has connections to my SageTV server and 2 HRHRs. No stuttering even with about 200Mbps of data moving across that switch.

What didn't work:
I was running this same configuration last week but the machine kept rebooting randomly - I replaced a 1GB Bytecc PCIeX1 ethernet controller (newest drivers) with NetGear GA311 1GB PCI lan card and everything became stable.

FWIW: I also couldn't get the HDHomeRun Manager to reliably see the tuners when they were on their own network segment off a secondary lan card, even with experimenting with freeware DHCP server, setting up the segment with a static address (e.g. 169.254.1.1) on the card, Bridging the two networks, etc.

Where I really wasted my time was looking for bios updates, driver updates, using various beta and release versions of the HDHR drivers, replacing lan cabling, scratching, etc. I all came down to a problematic ethernet card/driver. My advice -> stick to name brand.

john

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by jlmdxtv

FWIW: I also couldn't get the HDHomeRun Manager to reliably see the tuners when they were on their own network segment off a secondary lan card, even with experimenting with freeware DHCP server, setting up the segment with a static address (e.g. 169.254.1.1) on the card, Bridging the two networks, etc.

Yea, I could never get that to work properly. What I finally ended up doing was downloading TFTPD32 and setting a static address on my secondary network adapter which is dedicated to my HDHR. For the longest time I had my HDHR directly connected to the NIC but reboots would cause the HDHR to flake out until I removed power for a bit to reset it. I got tired of that and installed a switch in between which improves things quite a bit. I no longer need to be physically present at the machine to reboot it. I don't, however, have the two networks bridged. In my case there is no need for that since the second NIC is specifically dedicated to the HDHR. All other network traffic including my HD Extender is on the internet accessible side.

BTW, Intel NIC's FTW!

[r00st3r]

I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get more then 1 HDHR (2shows) to record.
I would try to watch or record a 3rd (2nd HDHR) and nothing. Then I realized it was my 10\100 switch.

I just got a Netgear GA311 and a DLink GS2205 Gigabit Switch.
Connected the GB switch to my 10/100 Fios Router.
Connected Both my HDHomerun units to the GB Switch
Connected my Sage Server (also what I use to watch TV on) to the GB switch using the new GA311 GB Adapter.

Alhtough it's better, I still can't record\watch 3 programs, let alone 4.

I have checked the resource monitor and with nothing recording, I am at about 3MB, @39mb (good recording quailty) for 1 recording, 77 for 2, 115Mb for 3. This is where the pic just stops. CpU @10%, Disk @5MB sec, Mem 59%.
I did change the properties of the network card to be 1 GB Full Duplex.

I don't get it. Any Suggestions?

[CarlR]

Originally Posted by r00st3r

I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get more then 1 HDHR (2shows) to record.
I would try to watch or record a 3rd (2nd HDHR) and nothing. Then I realized it was my 10\100 switch.

I just got a Netgear GA311 and a DLink GS2205 Gigabit Switch.
Connected the GB switch to my 10/100 Fios Router.
Connected Both my HDHomerun units to the GB Switch
Connected my Sage Server (also what I use to watch TV on) to the GB switch using the new GA311 GB Adapter.

Alhtough it's better, I still can't record\watch 3 programs, let alone 4.

I have checked the resource monitor and with nothing recording, I am at about 3MB, @39mb (good recording quailty) for 1 recording, 77 for 2, 115Mb for 3. This is where the pic just stops. CpU @10%, Disk @5MB sec, Mem 59%.
I did change the properties of the network card to be 1 GB Full Duplex.

I don't get it. Any Suggestions?

You could try connecting the new GB switch directly to the 2nd NIC, to make sure that the only traffic on the switch is from the HDHRs. I know that there should be plenty of headroom for 4 QAM signals on a GB switch, but that's what cleared up my problems.

[r00st3r]

Thanks, but

I just got a Netgear GA311 and a DLink GS2205 Gigabit Switch.
Connected the GB switch to my 10/100 Fios Router.
Connected Both my HDHomerun units to the GB Switch
Connected my Sage Server (also what I use to watch TV on) to the GB switch using the new GA311 GB Adapter.

I already have the Sage Box on the gigabit switch.

I have all 5 ports used on gigabit switch.
1.To FIOS router for internet access
2.To Sage Box
3.To NAS box (archved TV shows,Movies etc.. not recording drive)
4.To HDHR1
5.To HDHR2

All my Sage\tuners are going through the gigabit switch.

[CarlR]

Originally Posted by r00st3r

Thanks, but


I already have the Sage Box on the gigabit switch.

I have all 5 ports used on gigabit switch.
1.To FIOS router for internet access
2.To Sage Box
3.To NAS box (archved TV shows,Movies etc.. not recording drive)
4.To HDHR1
5.To HDHR2

All my Sage\tuners are going through the gigabit switch.

Sorry, I meant to disconnect the GB switch from the rest of your network (connections 1 and 3). In this configuration, the HDHRs will get an IP address assignment from the HDHR Manager software, so you won't need to set up your own DHCP server on the SageTV PC (this at least has worked for me, I have read that others have had some problems).

So now the only traffic through the new GB switch and NIC is the HDHR data. As I said, it seems you should have plenty of bandwidth for the HDHR data plus everything else, but I couldn't get it to work in that configuration.