B/G Router and HD streaming

I got a quick question and any insight would be very helpful.

I got Universal Media Server on my computer and stream HD content through a BG router to my HD TV.

On 480p, seeking works fine. On 720p, there is some trouble seeking with some lag but playing is fine. On 1080p, I can't seek at all. If I try seeking the video stops and won't play further so I have to reset my TV. The video will play more or less fine from start to finish. There may be a slight lag in a few frames or two.

I figure the G router max at 54mbps (6Mb/s) might not be enough for HD.
If I upgrade to a N router instead, would I see an improvement or does the problem lie somewhere else?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yes you would see an improvement. Also your maths is off- 54mbps is in fact over 6MB/s but in reality transfers over 802.11g achieve no more than 2.5MB/s.
That's why it's not good enough for reliable HD streaming.

 

That's right. Remember also, that there is a fine line between theoretical speed and actual/practical speed. The theoretical is the maximum/ideal, not the commonplace. The marketing is a bit of a misnomer.

 

Yup, with a 300Mbps router, i got ~160Mbps in the best conditions possible and that is considered very good.

 

Thanks for the insight. It looks like I'll be looking at a N router for Christmas.
I do have a follow up question.
Some routers I'm looking at has USB 2 ports for print server or to plug in a hard drive for media streaming. Would USB 2 be fast enough for HD streaming? I realize that~160Mbps is less than theoretical USB 2 output but then the router CPU might be the bottle neck.

 

It is indeed a bottleneck- most routers run Linux and most drives connected to USB ports are formated in NTFS which doesn't go well together.
Still a decent router should be able to handle USB HDD at at least 6MB/s so that should be quite allright for streaming.

Another matter is the fact that unless you use OpenWRT as a firmware or use a thumb-drive, HDD connected to the router won't spin down at all so that may not be a great idea.

 

This is good to know.

I'll probably pick up a TP-Link N600 (TL-WDR3600) since it's not to terribly expensive and should work for my needs.

It looks like DDwrt isn't supported on this but OpenWRT is. How different is OpenWRT compared to DDwrt? I used DDwrt before and flashing the firmware was straightforward. OpenWRT looks a bit more complicated to install from my brief look at the site.

 

if by misnomer you mean misleading bordering on false advertising and way too acceptable in various tech markets, i agree.

can you elaborate on linux vs. ntfs? i ask cause my external connected to router running stock firmware does some wacky stuff. i remember seeing a red flag that pointed to ntfs when i initially configured it too. the drive will enter standby mode (i.e. spindown) but doesn't sleep like it's supposed to. stranger still, it's only ever been accessible on the machine i set it up from (via network sharing only). that machine is the only one that'll pull it out of standby and see it after it wakes up.

 

Linux uses NTFS-3G which is a driver used to make NTFS work under various Linux distributions. That said performance of NTFS-3G is visibly worse to Windows driver- not only on routers but also on powerful desktop PCs.
NTFS-3G is CPU intensive and on Linux-driven routers with not much power to spare it results in lower read/write performance. Especially write speeds suffer- the same router can write to EXT4 at roughly 20MB/s yet to NTFS-3G at barely 3-4MB/s. Read speeds are much more even with EXT4 still winning (~20MB/s compared to around 17MB/s for NTFS).

More powerful routers will get better results but the problem persists.

That's not exactly what you're suffering from though. In your case it seems more like a firmware issue. If your router supports OpenWRT and you feel like spending some time typing white letters on a black screen and swearing you might give it a try. In OpenWRT almost everything can be achieved although literally nothing is easy to achieve