Home wireless network for viewing HD video: a dream or a reality?
Recently, I was doing repairs in the apartment and decided to check whether there is a chance at the current level of development of wireless equipment to organize a high-speed high-speed wireless network in the apartment. Initially, the task seemed inexpedient (it is quite possible to use Ethernet at home, why bother with WiFi?), But having convinced myself that wireless technologies are not standing still, I decided to arrange a little test for myself. One of the main criteria for success was the ability to view HD-video rips with a volume of 10 to 30 GB on the plasma panel in conditions when there is no wired network between the file storage and the player. Who is curious whether it was possible to implement it and how, please under the cat! ;)
To begin, I will say a few words about the features of the equipment I have that need to be connected to the network. Conditionally stationary (rarely relocatable) equipment includes a television set and a stationary computer. To the mobile (often moved) - communicators and a laptop. In the future, I hope, a tablet will also be added to the mobile equipment (which I don’t have yet).
One of the main tasks is to download media content from the network and play it on a plasma or acoustic system (if it is audio content). Previously (when using a wired network) a router (an old ASUS RT-G32 operating in WiFi-G mode) stood on a computer desk, to which an Ethernet cable from the provider was pulled throughout the apartment. The computer also connected to the router with a cable, and the mobile devices (laptop and communicator) used a WiFi connection. Movies were downloaded on a stationary computer (since it had the largest hard disk). The computer was connected via a HDMI cable to a plasma to play movies. If I wanted to watch a movie not on a plasma, but in another room on a laptop, I just left the desktop computer turned on, went to another room and watched a movie from a network folder via WiFi (the WiFi-G speed that was on the laptop was enough to play in real time films not exceeding 10 GB in size - more for a laptop and not required).
1) From the hallway in the apartment stretched a long Ethernet-cable to the router. I wanted to get rid of him.
2) The router was located not in the optimal place (not in the center of the apartment, but in the far part of it, on a computer desk, which could worsen the conditions for receiving WiFi in the other end of the apartment).
3) To download and view media content, the desktop computer should always be turned on. My computer is not the quietest, so it could interfere (especially when nightly downloading heavy torrents).
4) The old ASUS RT-G32 router was able to work only in WiFi-G mode, which limited the ability to use a wireless network with modern devices operating in N mode (which, however, I did not have at that time).
')
Is it better?
When there are a million devices around that use WiFi, I thought - why shouldn't a desktop computer also use WiFi to connect to the network? True, I understood that the speed of WiFi in G mode would not be enough for a stationary computer, I decided to start with an upgrade of the router. Immediately, I’ll make a reservation that my budget was quite tightly limited, so I chose the new router from the budget “mainstream” models. The choice fell on the ZyXEL Keenetic router (http://zyxel.ru/keenetic) due to the large number of positive reviews about this device.
This router is equipped with 4 LAN ports of 100 Mbit / s and WiFi operating in N mode. The router has 2 antennas, i.e. it can provide data transmission in 2 * 2 MIMO mode (if there is appropriate support on the receiving side). The stated data transfer rate is 300 Mbit / s (about real speeds - below). I didn’t consider the version of the ZyXEL Keenetic Giga router with Gigabit Ethernet ports, because I aimed at building a purely wireless network!
Now that I had a router with “fast” WiFi, I decided to shorten the cable coming from the provider and place the router itself in the hallway directly at the cable entry point in the apartment in order to save the room from unnecessary wires.
If the stationary computer did not want to lose the opportunity to access the Internet, he urgently needed a WiFi adapter. The variety of devices of this type on the market was simply impressive, but most models were scared away by no less complaints about the speed of wireless data transfer. Climbing on the forums and reading the reports, the view fell on a rather original model - TP-LINK TL-WN822N .
The people wrote that due to the remote nature of the device (connected via USB cable) and external antennas, this adapter allows you to achieve fairly high-quality reception of signals from the wireless network.
The latest version of drivers from the TP-Link website was installed with a bang, but the auxiliary (not needed for the job) configuration and monitoring utility of the adapter in Win7 64-bit refused to work. I found another, much more pleasant inSSIDer program for analyzing wireless networks. Here are how many WiFi networks were found in my apartment (apparently, the neighbors also love WiFi):
So the wireless network is up and running. How to do even better?
The ZyXEL Keenetic router revealed a rather interesting opportunity for me;) It has a USB connector (though only one), to which you can connect an external USB drive. It does not have to be a special portable hard disk, you can connect a regular 2.5 "or 3.5" drive via a USB extension box (though keep in mind that the 3.5 "Extension Box comes with a power adapter, while the 2.5" drive has enough power from USB). By connecting the disk to the router, you can download torrents on this disk with the Transmission client embedded in the router.
Managed by Transmission through a beautiful web interface. To download a torrent, you first need to download a .torrent file from a well-known site (:)) on a regular computer or laptop, and then open this file via the Transmission web interface. Further, the torrent will be downloaded by the router itself, in absolute silence. This is very convenient - you can put a download for the night, and in the morning you can get a bunch of downloaded files on a disk attached to the router. And while your sleep will not be disturbed by annoying fan hum. The router allows you to access this drive through the usual Windows network folders.
After the 3rd step I was on edge. After all, I now had a constantly accessible file storage! NAS ?! No, still not a NAS. Un-NAS :) I'll tell you why. When I tried to open a large (30 GB) video file for playing over the network from a disk attached to a router on a stationary computer, I noticed a jam when playing. As so, I was upset, because the speed of WiFi-N should be 5.5 MB / s drag with a margin! (5.5 MB / s is an approximate bitrate for 1.5 hour video with a capacity of 30 GB). I tried to just copy the file from the network folder to the local disk of the desktop computer - the speed was around 3-3.5 MB / s. But why so slow? About the same speed I had on a laptop that had WiFi G and no MIMO. I was perplexed. It's good that I quickly guessed to exclude WiFi and connect to the router with a cable. And here the first joint was revealed - the speed practically did not become higher, staying around 4 MB / s. For 100 Mbit / s, obviously not enough. After surfing the Internet and reading the reviews, I realized that the plug-in speed is between the router and the hard drive connected to it via USB. ZyXEL Keenetic just can not (or physically can not) provide a higher speed of data exchange with the drive connected to it. This was something I did not expect, because the same drive, being connected via USB to a stationary computer, produced a data transfer rate of at least 30 MB / s, i.e. almost 10 times higher. It is both funny and sad at the same time - it turned out that the router can communicate with the Internet (via Ethernet cable) and with a stationary computer (via WiFi N) faster than with a USB disk connected to it. In my head it still fits with difficulty.
One way to speed up work with a disk connected to the router is to reformat it from NTFS (my disk was originally formatted as NTFS) into one of the Linux Ext2 or Ext3 formats that are native to Linux. The best performance was shown by Ext2 formatting) - copying over WiFi from a router to a stationary computer - 4.5 MB / s, copying from a computer to a router - 3.7 MB / s. At these speeds, you can play in real time movies the size of 15-20 GB. But still it does not reveal the potential of WiFi N, for which I expected to see the speed well, at least in the region of 10 MB / s).
For most applications, such a wireless network is in principle sufficient, but again there is the potential for further improvement. It remains to solve the last problem - playing video without using a noisy computer.
I’ll just make a reservation that my plasma does not have a built-in media player, no LAN and no USB input. But there is a pair of HDMI inputs. When a computer is connected to the plasma, it is very convenient. You can, for example, play something beautiful on a 50 "screen. It is convenient to use a wireless keyboard and mouse. The fact that you need a computer to start the game will not cause anyone to doubt. But there are more simple ones to watch movies , quiet, compact and handy devices - media players. Media players come with either a built-in hard drive or USB (like a router). Also, media players have a LAN port to connect to the network. Again, there are no wires ??? few proposals to date Wi-Fi enabled players, I’ve settled on a relatively new (2012) WD TV Live Streaming Wi-Fi device.
This is the third generation of the rather popular (albeit, it seems, not in Russia) WD TV Live media player. This model does not have a built-in disk (as in WD TV Live Hub), but it has WiFi support, a LAN port and 2 USB ports for connecting disks. The device has completely passive cooling, so watching a movie or listening to music, no third-party noise should not interfere.
When I connected this player to the TV and chose my wireless network, the player immediately downloaded a new firmware from the Internet and updated it.
Because the player is able to work in the media server mode (i.e. share files on the network as the above-mentioned router does), I immediately decided to check if it really works with the disk as slowly as the router. How great was my joy when it was discovered that the speed of data exchange with the disk in a media player is higher than that of the router. I managed to achieve 8.6 MB / c read and 5.2 MB / c write between media player and stationary computer. Unfortunately, such speeds were achieved only under the condition that one of the devices is connected to the router after all via a twisted pair. Configurations, when both exchanging devices use a wireless network, have shown very poor performance. This is due to the fact that a wireless channel per unit of time can be used only by one pair of devices (router-media player or router-computer), which significantly reduces the speed of data exchange.
WiFi N speed is enough to play heavy media files, provided that no more than one wireless transmission occurs between the source and the receiver (i.e. it should be a WiFi-WiFi-device-type device exchange, and not a Wi-Fi-device - WiFi router is another WiFi device.
I have not decided yet what configuration of the home network to “fix” and continue the experiments. Most likely, the configuration will be left in which the only wired communication channel will be the channel between the router located in the hallway and the media player located next to the TV. In this case, the media player will act as a NAS. The only thing that holds me back from the final adoption of such a decision is that for this model of media player I have not yet been able to find the firmware with support for downloading torrents. To force the Transmission router to download files not on the disk attached to the router, but to the network folder of the disk connected to the media player, I haven’t succeeded yet (if someone from Habrovich knows how to do this - please write about it in the comments).
I’m sure home wireless networks are a dream for many. A dream that, thanks to modern technology, has almost become a reality.
To begin, I will say a few words about the features of the equipment I have that need to be connected to the network. Conditionally stationary (rarely relocatable) equipment includes a television set and a stationary computer. To the mobile (often moved) - communicators and a laptop. In the future, I hope, a tablet will also be added to the mobile equipment (which I don’t have yet).
One of the main tasks is to download media content from the network and play it on a plasma or acoustic system (if it is audio content). Previously (when using a wired network) a router (an old ASUS RT-G32 operating in WiFi-G mode) stood on a computer desk, to which an Ethernet cable from the provider was pulled throughout the apartment. The computer also connected to the router with a cable, and the mobile devices (laptop and communicator) used a WiFi connection. Movies were downloaded on a stationary computer (since it had the largest hard disk). The computer was connected via a HDMI cable to a plasma to play movies. If I wanted to watch a movie not on a plasma, but in another room on a laptop, I just left the desktop computer turned on, went to another room and watched a movie from a network folder via WiFi (the WiFi-G speed that was on the laptop was enough to play in real time films not exceeding 10 GB in size - more for a laptop and not required).
What did not suit me in the old version:
1) From the hallway in the apartment stretched a long Ethernet-cable to the router. I wanted to get rid of him.
2) The router was located not in the optimal place (not in the center of the apartment, but in the far part of it, on a computer desk, which could worsen the conditions for receiving WiFi in the other end of the apartment).
3) To download and view media content, the desktop computer should always be turned on. My computer is not the quietest, so it could interfere (especially when nightly downloading heavy torrents).
4) The old ASUS RT-G32 router was able to work only in WiFi-G mode, which limited the ability to use a wireless network with modern devices operating in N mode (which, however, I did not have at that time).
')
Is it better?
Step 1. Upgrade the router.
When there are a million devices around that use WiFi, I thought - why shouldn't a desktop computer also use WiFi to connect to the network? True, I understood that the speed of WiFi in G mode would not be enough for a stationary computer, I decided to start with an upgrade of the router. Immediately, I’ll make a reservation that my budget was quite tightly limited, so I chose the new router from the budget “mainstream” models. The choice fell on the ZyXEL Keenetic router (http://zyxel.ru/keenetic) due to the large number of positive reviews about this device.
This router is equipped with 4 LAN ports of 100 Mbit / s and WiFi operating in N mode. The router has 2 antennas, i.e. it can provide data transmission in 2 * 2 MIMO mode (if there is appropriate support on the receiving side). The stated data transfer rate is 300 Mbit / s (about real speeds - below). I didn’t consider the version of the ZyXEL Keenetic Giga router with Gigabit Ethernet ports, because I aimed at building a purely wireless network!
Step 2. Transfer the router and transfer the stationary computer to a wireless connection.
Now that I had a router with “fast” WiFi, I decided to shorten the cable coming from the provider and place the router itself in the hallway directly at the cable entry point in the apartment in order to save the room from unnecessary wires.
If the stationary computer did not want to lose the opportunity to access the Internet, he urgently needed a WiFi adapter. The variety of devices of this type on the market was simply impressive, but most models were scared away by no less complaints about the speed of wireless data transfer. Climbing on the forums and reading the reports, the view fell on a rather original model - TP-LINK TL-WN822N .
The people wrote that due to the remote nature of the device (connected via USB cable) and external antennas, this adapter allows you to achieve fairly high-quality reception of signals from the wireless network.
The latest version of drivers from the TP-Link website was installed with a bang, but the auxiliary (not needed for the job) configuration and monitoring utility of the adapter in Win7 64-bit refused to work. I found another, much more pleasant inSSIDer program for analyzing wireless networks. Here are how many WiFi networks were found in my apartment (apparently, the neighbors also love WiFi):
So the wireless network is up and running. How to do even better?
Step 3. Tasty bun from ZyXEL - silent torrents.
The ZyXEL Keenetic router revealed a rather interesting opportunity for me;) It has a USB connector (though only one), to which you can connect an external USB drive. It does not have to be a special portable hard disk, you can connect a regular 2.5 "or 3.5" drive via a USB extension box (though keep in mind that the 3.5 "Extension Box comes with a power adapter, while the 2.5" drive has enough power from USB). By connecting the disk to the router, you can download torrents on this disk with the Transmission client embedded in the router.
Managed by Transmission through a beautiful web interface. To download a torrent, you first need to download a .torrent file from a well-known site (:)) on a regular computer or laptop, and then open this file via the Transmission web interface. Further, the torrent will be downloaded by the router itself, in absolute silence. This is very convenient - you can put a download for the night, and in the morning you can get a bunch of downloaded files on a disk attached to the router. And while your sleep will not be disturbed by annoying fan hum. The router allows you to access this drive through the usual Windows network folders.
Step 4. “Un-NAS”.
After the 3rd step I was on edge. After all, I now had a constantly accessible file storage! NAS ?! No, still not a NAS. Un-NAS :) I'll tell you why. When I tried to open a large (30 GB) video file for playing over the network from a disk attached to a router on a stationary computer, I noticed a jam when playing. As so, I was upset, because the speed of WiFi-N should be 5.5 MB / s drag with a margin! (5.5 MB / s is an approximate bitrate for 1.5 hour video with a capacity of 30 GB). I tried to just copy the file from the network folder to the local disk of the desktop computer - the speed was around 3-3.5 MB / s. But why so slow? About the same speed I had on a laptop that had WiFi G and no MIMO. I was perplexed. It's good that I quickly guessed to exclude WiFi and connect to the router with a cable. And here the first joint was revealed - the speed practically did not become higher, staying around 4 MB / s. For 100 Mbit / s, obviously not enough. After surfing the Internet and reading the reviews, I realized that the plug-in speed is between the router and the hard drive connected to it via USB. ZyXEL Keenetic just can not (or physically can not) provide a higher speed of data exchange with the drive connected to it. This was something I did not expect, because the same drive, being connected via USB to a stationary computer, produced a data transfer rate of at least 30 MB / s, i.e. almost 10 times higher. It is both funny and sad at the same time - it turned out that the router can communicate with the Internet (via Ethernet cable) and with a stationary computer (via WiFi N) faster than with a USB disk connected to it. In my head it still fits with difficulty.
One way to speed up work with a disk connected to the router is to reformat it from NTFS (my disk was originally formatted as NTFS) into one of the Linux Ext2 or Ext3 formats that are native to Linux. The best performance was shown by Ext2 formatting) - copying over WiFi from a router to a stationary computer - 4.5 MB / s, copying from a computer to a router - 3.7 MB / s. At these speeds, you can play in real time movies the size of 15-20 GB. But still it does not reveal the potential of WiFi N, for which I expected to see the speed well, at least in the region of 10 MB / s).
For most applications, such a wireless network is in principle sufficient, but again there is the potential for further improvement. It remains to solve the last problem - playing video without using a noisy computer.
Step 5. Silent media.
I’ll just make a reservation that my plasma does not have a built-in media player, no LAN and no USB input. But there is a pair of HDMI inputs. When a computer is connected to the plasma, it is very convenient. You can, for example, play something beautiful on a 50 "screen. It is convenient to use a wireless keyboard and mouse. The fact that you need a computer to start the game will not cause anyone to doubt. But there are more simple ones to watch movies , quiet, compact and handy devices - media players. Media players come with either a built-in hard drive or USB (like a router). Also, media players have a LAN port to connect to the network. Again, there are no wires ??? few proposals to date Wi-Fi enabled players, I’ve settled on a relatively new (2012) WD TV Live Streaming Wi-Fi device.
This is the third generation of the rather popular (albeit, it seems, not in Russia) WD TV Live media player. This model does not have a built-in disk (as in WD TV Live Hub), but it has WiFi support, a LAN port and 2 USB ports for connecting disks. The device has completely passive cooling, so watching a movie or listening to music, no third-party noise should not interfere.
When I connected this player to the TV and chose my wireless network, the player immediately downloaded a new firmware from the Internet and updated it.
Step 6. Improved NAS.
Because the player is able to work in the media server mode (i.e. share files on the network as the above-mentioned router does), I immediately decided to check if it really works with the disk as slowly as the router. How great was my joy when it was discovered that the speed of data exchange with the disk in a media player is higher than that of the router. I managed to achieve 8.6 MB / c read and 5.2 MB / c write between media player and stationary computer. Unfortunately, such speeds were achieved only under the condition that one of the devices is connected to the router after all via a twisted pair. Configurations, when both exchanging devices use a wireless network, have shown very poor performance. This is due to the fact that a wireless channel per unit of time can be used only by one pair of devices (router-media player or router-computer), which significantly reduces the speed of data exchange.
Findings.
WiFi N speed is enough to play heavy media files, provided that no more than one wireless transmission occurs between the source and the receiver (i.e. it should be a WiFi-WiFi-device-type device exchange, and not a Wi-Fi-device - WiFi router is another WiFi device.
I have not decided yet what configuration of the home network to “fix” and continue the experiments. Most likely, the configuration will be left in which the only wired communication channel will be the channel between the router located in the hallway and the media player located next to the TV. In this case, the media player will act as a NAS. The only thing that holds me back from the final adoption of such a decision is that for this model of media player I have not yet been able to find the firmware with support for downloading torrents. To force the Transmission router to download files not on the disk attached to the router, but to the network folder of the disk connected to the media player, I haven’t succeeded yet (if someone from Habrovich knows how to do this - please write about it in the comments).
I’m sure home wireless networks are a dream for many. A dream that, thanks to modern technology, has almost become a reality.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/144390/
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