I'm wondering if someone can help me with some issues that I've been facing recently. I will try and explain...
I have a Virgin Cable Super Hub and from this I have one cable that connects to an 8 port gigabit Netgear Switch (GS608). From this switch my main PC, my NAS and a printer are connected. Also from this switch there are two other switches connected.
The first is a 10/100 Mbs Netgear which is very old but not causing a problem, connected to this there is a Sky+ HD box and a Western Digital Live box. This connects to the Playroom TV.
The second is a recently purchased 5 port gigabit Netgear Switch (GS605). Connected to this switch there is an HTPC and another Sky+ HD box. This also connects up to my main TV.
The connection between the switches is Cat6, all other cables are a mixture of CAT6 and CAT5e.
The problem is that when I stream HD content from my NAS to the HTPC I get a lot of stuttering. A simple file transfer from the NAS to my HTPC yields transfer rates of ~1MBs. This is not good. If the HTPC is connected straight to the wall and therefore connected to the 8 port switch then I get ~60MBs. However the introduction of the switch causes problems, but not all the time. There are periods when it works fine on other ports and I've had transfer speeds of ~30MBs. But this seems temperamental.
I have tried connecting the 5 port switch to the Virgin Router and that seems to work, however it seems the the Virgin Router is not good at buffering and there can be some stutter when there are other network activities going on. Although file transfers are quick, ~70MBs.
I'm pretty sure all the cabling is OK as I have replaced or bypassed much of it, except for the external CAT6. However what I cannot do is detect what my Sky boxes are doing. If they are downloading movies et al, as part of their Anytime service would that kill the bandwidth for for the HTPC? However the Sky box only has a 100Mbs network card, the light is orange and not green on the switch, and I have tried leaving the Sky box unplugged from the network with no increase in performance.
When this originally started happening I thought the 5 port switch was faulty so it was replaced like for like. However the same is still happening.
Can anyone give me some idea of what is going on here, or something else to try?
Much appreciated and thanks.
Charles
I have a Virgin Cable Super Hub and from this I have one cable that connects to an 8 port gigabit Netgear Switch (GS608). From this switch my main PC, my NAS and a printer are connected. Also from this switch there are two other switches connected.
The first is a 10/100 Mbs Netgear which is very old but not causing a problem, connected to this there is a Sky+ HD box and a Western Digital Live box. This connects to the Playroom TV.
The second is a recently purchased 5 port gigabit Netgear Switch (GS605). Connected to this switch there is an HTPC and another Sky+ HD box. This also connects up to my main TV.
The connection between the switches is Cat6, all other cables are a mixture of CAT6 and CAT5e.
The problem is that when I stream HD content from my NAS to the HTPC I get a lot of stuttering. A simple file transfer from the NAS to my HTPC yields transfer rates of ~1MBs. This is not good. If the HTPC is connected straight to the wall and therefore connected to the 8 port switch then I get ~60MBs. However the introduction of the switch causes problems, but not all the time. There are periods when it works fine on other ports and I've had transfer speeds of ~30MBs. But this seems temperamental.
I have tried connecting the 5 port switch to the Virgin Router and that seems to work, however it seems the the Virgin Router is not good at buffering and there can be some stutter when there are other network activities going on. Although file transfers are quick, ~70MBs.
I'm pretty sure all the cabling is OK as I have replaced or bypassed much of it, except for the external CAT6. However what I cannot do is detect what my Sky boxes are doing. If they are downloading movies et al, as part of their Anytime service would that kill the bandwidth for for the HTPC? However the Sky box only has a 100Mbs network card, the light is orange and not green on the switch, and I have tried leaving the Sky box unplugged from the network with no increase in performance.
When this originally started happening I thought the 5 port switch was faulty so it was replaced like for like. However the same is still happening.
Can anyone give me some idea of what is going on here, or something else to try?
Much appreciated and thanks.
Charles