The history of setting wireless IPTV over Wi-Fi

The desire to view iptv by wi-fi arose simultaneously with the purchase of a laptop. Since my provider transmits a non-encoded signal, the need for the console disappeared, and for the realization of desire, only a router capable of “showing” iptv was required. After some torment, the choice fell on ZyXEL nbg460n, which had to satisfy all the arising needs, while I, an inexperienced person in these matters, assumed that iptv itself would be distributed via wi-fi, but this was the problem.

No matter how good ZyXEL is, he stubbornly did not want to distribute the TV through the air. Re-flashing the device and picking the settings did not help, only a small stub of the picture came to the beech, which immediately died down with a mournful sob, before the player restarted, the wireless television was over. Since the zyuh was infallible by definition, it occurred to me that the transmitted stream was too greasy and could not be pumped through wi-fi.

I have always believed that if 300Mbits are written in the specifications of the router, it means that it should work for all 300, well, in the extreme case, no less than 250, but in fact this number was oh how far. It turned out that the speed that the manufacturers of wireless wi-fi equipment indicate in the characteristics is not a data transfer rate. This is only the so-called “radio speed”, while the file transfer speed should be a maximum of half of it.

In order to fully unlock the potential of the 802.11n standard, the specifications of which indicate a 300 Mb / s radio speed (150 Mb / s data transfer rate, respectively), special equipment is required, only routers and receivers that have three antennas and also support operation at a frequency of 5 GHz and MIMO technology, are able theoretically closer to the mark of 150 Mit / s. At the same time, most of the equipment that supports 802.11n works only at 2.4 GHz (like my ZyXEL), which is guaranteed to “cut back” the theoretical maximum data transfer rate of only 75 Mbps. But even in spite of all these limitations, iptv with the most excellent picture, cannot otzhirat more than 5 Mbit, i.e. It can perfectly show even on the standard 802.11g.
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The equipment turned out to be in perfect order, the further study of the question even more widely opened the eyes of the problem of ip wifiing and brought disappointment in the 460th. As it turned out, iptv via cable and over the air are two big differences, and that it is the router that really makes wireless television in my case, and ZyXEL nbg460n did not know how.

In order to find the best option, all the acquaintances who potentially had access to a pair of households were interviewed, and after a while a small collection of routers gathered in the house. After conducting a series of tests, I realized that none of the models presented was able to transmit iptv wirelessly in any quality that satisfies me, while the DLink Dir-615 turned out to be the most worthy in this regard, through which television was perfectly acceptable, provided that the laptop was within a radius of 3 meters from the router, lagging began at longer distances, spilled artifacts and the picture faded from time to time.

The time has come to go to the forums again, and about a miracle, practically the first link led me, if not to solve the problem, then in any case showed that there is life on iptv on wi-fi on Mars , and even there are people who are so easy you live for good, they watch it every day and they don’t even see in it anything special that for me, a person who has lost faith in modern technologies was a real magic.

The solution was found. It consisted in the need to convert udp multicast of iptv traffic into tcp unicast. This can be done with the help of a special utility UDP-to-HTTP, which will carry out all the necessary evolution. At the same time, the picture and sound becomes very high quality, you will not see any artifacts, lags and fading, viewing becomes extremely comfortable, and not only on a laptop, but on all devices that are morally ready for this, such as Xbox, Playstation, WD TV Live or even TV, with DLNA support. Of course, the utility should be run on a computer with iptv connected to it over a twisted pair, i.e. if you use a permanently enabled home server, then this is an option that will work with any router that understands iptv, if a constantly turned on computer is not included in your plans, then you can purchase a router that knows how to convert traffic (with udpxy support). In this case, the conversion of traffic will be carried out directly on the router.

The most famous manufacturers that produce routers with udpxy support are LinkSys, ASUS, and the obscure ZyXEL with the Keenetic series. I can't say anything about NetGear, someone seemed to unsubscribe that he managed, but there is no reliable information. Some LinkSys and ASUS models will have to be customized with custom firmware (for example, DD-WRT), and ZyXEL can do it right out of the box. I stopped at ASUS RT-N56U, which also regularly blows IPTV UDP Multicast to the HTTP Proxy port, and also can distribute content via UPnP, which contributes, for example, to wireless viewing of video files on relevant TV models.

That's all. If someone has technical questions about the configuration, it is enough to go into the search with a couple of technical articles from the article and the word udpxy.

Enjoy your wireless views!

PS Anyone who has bought ASUS RT-N56U strongly recommend a custom firmware from Padavan, which can be downloaded from here .

PPS A year later it was updated on ASUS RT-N65U, the firmware from Padavan is normal flight. I tested NetGear WNR3500L with vampik firmware - IPTV shows, although it is less stable in comparison with ASUS RT-N56U.

I found several significant indicators in the Wi-Fi settings that directly affect the stability of IPTV (I have a router in the closet, behind two walls and two mirrors):
Transmitter power (%) - REDUCE (yes, yes! More is not always better) to 50.
Fragmentation Threshold (RTS Threshold) - I recommend a maximum of 2346
The threshold of readiness for transmission is reduced to 16.
The signal interval is reduced to 20.

With these indicators, IPTV in my case shows the most stable.