HD300 Wireless is Extremely Slow (i.e. unusable) - Help!

[ptzink]

I hope that someone may be able to help me out with a wireless issue I am having with the HD300. My lovely wife recently gave me a HD300 and Encore Wireless b/g/n adapter for my birthday. Last night, I hooked it up via wireless to our upstairs TV. I know I successfully configured the wireless because I was able to 1) acquire a valid IP address 2) find the Sage server on the network 3) configure and see the weather for my area 4) perform a firmware update. However, when I tried to connect to the Sage server, I got blank screen for quite some time (1-2 minutes). When I actually got the UI to appear on the screen (sometimes it never showed up at all) it was extremely sluggish. And I am not talking "annoyingly slow". I am talking "unusably slow". In fact, I would click on an item in the UI and would just get another blank screen. I thought perhaps it was a firmware issue (even though I had the latest 'production' firmware) so I tried updating to the latest beta firmware (20101122-x). It was painfully slow downloading (3% after 20 minutes on a 15 mbps connection) so I canceled it. I tried rebooting the HD300 several times including unplugging it and letting it sit for a couple seconds. I tried to play YouTube videos through the Stand Alone UI. No go. I double and triple checked network settings. I tried switching from DHCP to static IP. I am getting 85-100% signal strength and am only 30 feet (or so) and one wall away from the router.
To test and make sure it wasn't the HD300 itself, I hooked the HD300 up to my basement TV and a wired connection. Once I did that, I was able to immediately connect to the sage server and the UI was up and running snappily. While I was wired, I updated the firmware to the latest beta. That too went very quickly and without a hitch. So, I marched the HD300 back upstairs and tried the wireless dongle again with the latest firmware. Same results. So I am wondering - Do I have a defective wireless dongle or something? If it weren't connecting at all, I would understand that is probably a config issue. However, I know I am connecting, it's just that it is unusably slow and seems intermittent. I understand the 'risk' of inconsistent performance via wireless, but this is well beyond that. Has anyone experienced similar issues or have any suggestions before I return the dongle?
BTW, I am connecting to a Linksys WRT320n router configured with WPA2 (AES) security. All other wireless devices in my house are functioning great and at greater distances from the router than the HD300. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Chriscic]

I'd suggest dropping the Encore into a notebook PC and seeing what kind of thoroughput you're getting from there (try playing a vid from your server or downloading abig file).

In my opinion, wireless tends to suck (even N), and it's more likely that there's a quality of connection issue vs. a bad wireless USB stick.

I'm trying to use wireless N with my Sage 200 box just 10 feet away from my router (through 2 walls), and much of the time it won't playback smoothly.

Then again, it may be something on the server side, but at least throughly trouble-shooting is a good start. Good luck!

[ptzink]

Chriscic, thanks for the reply. I will give that a shot. However, I don't know if I can overstate how slow/intermittent it is. I can't even get the UI up to browse to a video to play. Also, in stand alone mode, sometimes it takes a couple of minutes before it downloads the weather and sometimes it won't even find the Sage server. I was just hoping someone might point out some setting to check on either the HD300 or router end that I am missing. Thanks.

[gplasky]

There's not a lot of settings to change. On the router you could try no security as a test. This reduces the overhead a bit. And maybe on the router you can see if you're actually connecting at N or is it dropping down to a G connection. Other than that it's either going to work or not. Other option could be to locate another wireless access point in the house closer to the HD300. I have wireless N on a laptop and I can find areas in the house where hd does not play so well from Sage.

Gerry

[ptzink]

I was afraid that would be the feedback. I wish I could convey how bad this is and it is not that far away from the wireless router. It's not that video is choppy - the UI is choppy. I can't even get to a point where I can test video. Would the DNS setting make a difference? When I use DHCP it pulls in the routers DNS (4.2.2.1). Shouldn't it use the router (local IP) for DHCP? Just curious.

[ptzink]

Well, I am stumped. I have now tried the following:

1. Pluged the Encore wifi adapter into a PC in the house
2. Disabled wireless security
3. Reverted back to factory settings

Still, the wireless doesn't work. I plugged the adapter into a Windows 7 machine that is an entire story further away from the router. It connected fine. Checked the internet browsing. Great. Then I proceeded to play Toy Story 3 DVD rip (which is located on the sage server) for about 5 minutes without a skip. I connected to the Sage server via Placeshifter and watched part of a show. It streamed fine. And keep in mind this computer is located 2 stories above the router vs. the HD300 which is only one story above. I disabled wireless security. That had no effect. I even tried reverting back to factory settings. That did not help.
So it seems that the HD300 works - it ran fine when wired. And the Encore wifi adapter works - it streamed video to a Windows 7 PC just fine. But the combo of the HD300 and the Encore adapter are not working. Surely I am not the only one who has had this problem. I guess I will write official Sage support to see what they have to say about the issue. Very disappointing.

[rtrski]

I can't promise this will fix everything (I've got a lengthy post out now on networking issues that is likely to get moved into the general forum from the SageTV software forum where I mistakenly put it to begin with).

But I've got a similar setup to you in the sense that my server is on a different floor than my HD300, and wanted to go wireless. But I didn't trust a USB wireless dongle -- even if it is the "approved" dongle by Sage -- as having sufficient signal strength and reliability. When they say "this is the only chipset that works" or something to that effect, it sure seems like a low margin of error. So I bought a Buffalo nFinity Ethernet converter from Newegg (WLI-TX4-AG300N). It's basically one side of a wireless 'bridge' and would let any ethernet-ported piece of hardware (e.g. a TV) connect to your network thinking it's on a wired connection. Note that this is a dual-band unit so best used if you already have a dual-band wireless source (I reserve the 5 GHz band for N only for streaming, and use the 2.4 GHz band for A/B/G for laptops etc). Setup is a bit of a pain as it's not plug-n-play, gotta configure it connected to a laptop or something first, but once I did all that and reserved an address for it on the router just for safety, it's worked fine ever since. (Originally purchased this for my HD200, and was able to just connect the HD300 to it when I upgraded without reconfiguring anything.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-029-_-Product

I firmly believe my N connection to the HD300 is rock-solid, as I can generally watch OTA HD recordings without skipping of any kind. I do still have issues when watching while recording 2 OTA shows at the same time though, so overall network saturation may still be an issue for me (and/or disk I/O). But in your case, it seems like the wireless/HD300 interaction is the weak point. I don't know what sort of USB controller the HD300 uses, but I can't help thinking that extra bottleneck vs. using the ethernet port directly is an added risk I didn't want to take. And if you've got 2 floors of separation, a separately powered converter like the Buffalo has got to have both a better antenna and radio power than one that's just powered via USB.

You did test the wireless adaptor separately, so perhaps it does have enough speed when connected to a faster processor than is on the HD300, but it's just bottlenecked on the smaller system. Maybe they've got a few firmware issues to shake down on the interactions...but I didn't want to risk it regardless. I know 'throwing money' at the problem is no guarantee, so my suggestion might be kind of out there, but at least in terms of your current issues it's something that works for me.

p.s...You have a cool wife. I saw the other thread! Lucky man.

[ptzink]

I gave up on the wireless. I am returning the adapter. This weekend, I drilled a hole in the floor and ran cat5e to the router. It was a pretty simple cable run and I wish I would have just gone that route in the first place. My wife got the wireless adapter because she thought it would be easy and I would be able to enjoy my birthday gift immediately. It turns out that in the time I spent messing with the wireless trying to get it to work, I could have run the cat5e cable 3 times over. How anyone else is getting wireless to work at distances greater than 30 feet is beyond me.

[rtrski]

Well, like I told you, my solution is a $90 network bridge appliance vs. a $20 adaptor (or cable). Not wallet-optimal, but it does work. I am still fiddling with my network too, just not worried about the connection to the HD300 specifically.

[Chriscic]

That makes sense; a larger network bridge is much more likely to get strong reception than a small USB stick.

[rtrski]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

That makes sense; a larger network bridge is much more likely to get strong reception than a small USB stick.

The other thing is it takes the USB protocol out of the equation entirely. So the HD300 is plugged in with the network jack, it's not getting 'networking' over USB.

I don't claim to know the relative data rates of all the above and whether USB2 is really a bottleneck at all in that sense - I just can't help thinking the more different protocol hoops you step thru, even if there is enough bandwidth/overhead - the more chances for something to take a mis-step.

[Chriscic]

The max speed of USB 2.0 is many, many times greater than that of any wireless connection (480Mbps vs. 20-30Mbps max probably), so that shouldn't create a bottleneck in theory.