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[orellius]

Hi,

I'll try and make  this as short as possible. But I have a lot of info, so warning, it's long!

All devices have latest updated firmware. All PC's have fresh installs of windows (less than 1 week), with all latest patches.

DIR-655 Xtreme-N router
DNS-323 NAS (2x 500 GB Western Digital 7200 rpm in RAID-1)

Desktop: wired - Windows 7 x64
Laptop: wireless - Windows XP x32 - DWA-652 Xtreme-N
Desktop2: wireless - Windows Vista x64 - PCI DWA-552 Xtreme-N connection

Ok, I just bought the NAS last week. Up until now, my wireless network has been flawless for the past year or so. Awesome range/speed, etc, on both wireless PC's.

I used to use Windows sharing to share a hard drive in my wired PC. I would then play/stream videos (700 MB AVI files) over wireless to the laptop. The problem was, the video would glitch pretty much every 30 seconds on the queue, sound would continue, but video would freeze then catch up a few seconds later.

So I started just copying the file wirelessly to the laptop first, then playing it. Which worked great but was annoying. I guess it was just the overhead of the windows systems each not playing the video perfectly, on top of being wireless. Maybe?

So I bought the NAS to try and solve that. Moved all media to NAS. It works great on wired PC. I used the NAStester 0.4. And after enabling Jumbo Packets on my wired card, got up to 32 MB/s speeds. Satisfied!

Wireless tested - ~5MB/s write/read on both laptop and desktop2

But I can't stream a movie! Same damn thing. Glitchy video, pauses, freezes, crashes VLC and Windows Media Player. Before, with windows sharing and no NAS, it was at least flawless to run the file every time, just glitchy video. Now, with the NAS, it is much worse. 50% of the time it will not play the file at all, or takes up to a minute to run it. Windows Explorer crashes (not responding) for long periods. I have to end task the explorer. I can then still browse the NAS directory, but if I play a video again it crashes. The other 50% of the time it will play, but freezes completely after about 30 seconds or so, and crashes the media player.

This is even whether or not I am 2 feet from the router/NAS. Or across the house. I must stress that before, with Windows Sharing, I could be out in the yard and access any file flawlessly, just glitchy video on movies.

I can stream movies to the wired desktop from NAS just fine.

The internet on wireless is flawless still. I re-enabled windows share to test, still as before.

Here is the other thing. As mentioned before, just plain old browsing the NAS in Windows Explorer crashes it often, not responding explorer, end task, etc. After re-enabling windows share, no issues at all with Windows Explorer, never has been any issues. If I transfer the movie first, it says "2 minutes..", gets to about 75% then crashes, or waits a few minutes with zero progress, then finishes the transfer. Before with windows share, it never did this. The transfer was good, but 3 minutes.

All problems are evident on both laptop and desktop2. And no other PC is accessing the NAS at that time of testing.

I really want to use a NAS, but this one is giving me a headache.

I want to rule out my Network cards, and my router as there were no issues before.

I want to rule out my computer, as there are 3 of them, all with different hardware and operating systems. And the movies play just fine when transferred to the laptop first.

I speak to the IT guys at work and they are like "man, I stream HD movies over a DIR-655", and also one guy said he streams AVI files over an old Wireless-G setup with zero issue.

I mean, you can stream movies over the internet for crying out loud, why is my kickass home network not doing it? Help! I need to solve this before my 30 days to return the NAS has expired 

Thanks in advance!

Settings screenshots, note I also have another PC that is my mother in-laws on Wireless-G, hence the mix G/N mode:

NAS : link speed auto
jumbo packets 7000 (I have tried with this off)
off = FTP server
off = upnp AV server (I'm just clicking movies in explorer and playing them that way)
off = iTunes server
off = dhcp server
off = LLTD (I have tried with this off)

[Tonytoronto]

   Streaming thru a wireless connection will be really tricky. It's usually not a question of speed, but quality of the signal. Over wireless, there will be some data dropped, collisions and packet re-requests, things will get really bad when there's other Wireless routers near by, wireless phones and so on. I too tried to stream wireless, low bitrate movies are fine, HD movies different story, i always see what you describe, stop and go. Having unsecured connection will help, but obviously not a good solution. Another thing i have noticed, if you are streaming from a Raid1 on the NAS, things will get bad really quick, it improves alot from a JDOB drive instead.  There's a couple things you can try, if you haven't yet, change it N only, make sure all your wireless cards are set to use 40mhz or Auto and manually try a channel no else using.  I too have heard of HD streaming, i haven't able to do it reliably either.

  doesn't help much, just sharing my experiences with it.

[orellius]

Thanks for the tips, I'm going to do some more tinkering. Streaming video I guess is only one of the issues though.

Why am I getting such crappy access to the NAS over wireless? I mean, just browsing with windows explorer, not even playing a video.

Example, every single time, I open explorer, and for example go into 6 or 7 folders deep to find a file. Then I hit back to go up a folder level and it freezes windows explorer. I click on the window a bunch of times and it is unresponsive. It hangs for like 30-60 seconds, then all of a sudden ever click I did registers. A file will open that I didnt want to becuase I hit "back" 3 times in a spaz attack and clicked my mouse a bunch of times because it was unresponsive!

I think I need to get the "wireless to NAS" fixed first. Just plain old browsing for Word documents is frustrating.

I thought NAS would make my world happy

[orellius]

Is there a QoS rule I can set to give priority to streaming? I'm kinda n00b about the QoS features.

Or WISH? I've just always left this at default because I don't know much about it.

[hoglyf]

using 802.11n wireless network i'm able to stream standard DVD movies (ISO) without a glitch.  streaming HD movies (blu-ray) wirelessly is another story - it will freeze and/or stutter every now and then due to the transfer rate fluctuation (i see it go from 9.5~11.6MBps).

even if the NAS is wired to a gigabit 802.11n router it will still give you a less-than-perfect HD movie stream.  again, standard DVD movies should have no issues.

[orellius]

That's the problem, I'm not even streaming DVD ISO's or HD. Just AVI files from 300-700 MB.

What really bugs me is I bought all this expensive N equipment for just this purpose, and as per D-Link:

With wireless prioritization technology and our award-winning intelligent QoS engine, jitter-free Internet phone calls (VoIP), high-definition video streaming and Web gaming are achievable on your wired and wireless networks.

Ideal for streaming HD video or streaming multiple applications simultaneously

lol. It probably works, I just am missing some configuration/option and need help. It's gotta be a QoS or WISH thing...

[Tonytoronto]

  Do you have the NAS setup as Raid? And are you using 1 or 1.5TB Seagate drives?

  Make sure the HDCP server is OFF, and assign a static IP on the DNS and make sure the Router gets that IP reserved for the NAS..  don't know why, but in my case made things alot smother for me. You can than play with Qos for that specific IP.. I haven't gone that far into that. Not sure how much Qos really helps. There was a Dlink TV episode on it, if may want to look it up.
 
   

[orellius]

RAID-0 (2x Western Digital 500 GB).

I have a DHCP reservation on the router as 192.168.0.8.

I'm still messing around with it, but now im pretty drunk so it will have to wait til tomorrow lol.

[orellius]

Solved it!

So the PCI N card on my wife's desktop was getting dropped connections, very poor signal, etc. Because if I push the PC back to the wall, the 3 antenna's are covered sorta. If I pull it from the wall, things got better. But still, that is lame!

So I returned it (I just bought this one last week) and bought a DWA-130 USB N adapter instead. Now with it out on top of the desk, everything is wonderful! Perfect connection, perfect bars. No drops, and I can stream video from the DNS with zero glitches!

Word up.

So I took that USB adapter and put it in the laptop. Voila! Streaming video with zero glitches...

So this whole time, like a year with this laptop and a Xtreme-N PCMCIA adapter...it was either the adapter, or the PCMCIA bus. Hooray, glad I've had this thing for almost a year so I can't return it...now I have to go spend money on another USB adapter for the laptop so I can watch movies.

Was extra confusing because I technically had two PC's with the same issue, but both had different hardware, so I figured it had to be the NAS. Turned out the new desktop/card had a signal strength issue with PCI, and the old laptop/card had ****py bus issues.

Both solved by switching to USB.

/headache