[sskerry]

To make this as simple as possible, this is my network:

My Desktop (I7, 9 GB ram, fast pc) Windows 7 64bit
My File Server (Core2Duo, 2gb ram ) Windows Server 2008 R2 (Witch is built on the windows 7 foundation)
Apple TV2 running XBMC
Western Digital TV Live (WDTV)
24 Port Gigabit Switch


Ok, so I have the same MKV file on both computers, its 4.7 GB, 720P H.264.

The Movie streams perfectly to the WDTV from both computers but, it only streams perfect to the ATV2 from my desktop, when you stream from the server, it buffers every so often.

This problem confuses the hell out of me, I have newer network cabling, and I have good gigabit transfer rates to and from the server (50-100 MB/s), there is 0 latency or packet losss between any of my devices, I am at a complete loss on what could be causing the problem, any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[tatoosh]

I've similar buffering issues on mkv and ts streams.
At the weekend i'll update my iOS an XBMC nighly build.
Maybe that will fix our problems !?

[SandmanCL]

@sskerry: which version of XBMC are you running ? Provide a debug log covering the both the successful and the buffering media playing sessions and you'll have a better chance of someone helping you.

Welcome to the forums :-)

[sskerry]

Ok, lots of research, lots of testing, I think I have found a solution. Flow Control under the advanced options under the network interface, in device manager was disabled on my server, but enabled on my win7 machine. I turned it on the server, and boom flawless no buffering playback, so far, tested 2 movies that were very troublesome before. Below is a screen shot of what the option looks like enabled, originaly, it was just set to disabled.

More advanced research leads me to be to beleive the reason having that disabled was effecting playback, is that the ATV is 10/100, and the rest of my network is 10/100/1000, there for the server was overwelming the ATV with the stream of data, and it couldnt handle it properly, I may be right or wrong, but I thought I would add that in there, obviously by default the server has no idea that the atv is 10/100, so why would it slow its transmission rate?

Hope this helps some people.

[SandmanCL]

Nice find. Debugging is a lot more fun when you find the solution in the end :-)

[rbronco21]

Too bad it didn't help me... but I guess this points me in the direction of networking gear. I'm using a DD-WRT Linksys router. I'll poke around but welcome any suggestions.

[rbronco21]

Thanks sskerry, I disabled QoS on my router and that fixed my problems streaming ripped dvds. QoS was only enabled on the WAN, but it was affected the flow on my LAN enough to cause buffering whether wired or wireless. Now I'm running fine using 2 DD-WRT routers set up as a wireless bridge using g.