Network Transfer Speed

I

ian_j

Member
The Humax is connected to the router via Powerline adaptors and the PC is directly connected to the router, what sort of speed should we be getting?

It can fluctuate between 1 and 5 MB/s via ftp.

Are there any tweaks I can make to the Humax or PC to speed up the transfer? Is there any software I can run to analyse our setup to look for issues?

Transferring files at 5MB/s is acceptable but if we can get more speed it would be great.
 
I have set up the Hummy as a NFS share on a box running Ubuntu Server and I use rsync to copy from that NFS share. This gives a speed of ~10.5 MiB/s. I have also tested the same thing but with a Samba share - the copy speed was almost as fast.

Setting up a NFS or Samba share and then copying from that seemed to give the fastest results, at least for me and my setup.

(The Hummy to router and PC to router connections are both hard wired.)
 
I recommend you try running a temporary wired connection and see what speed you get then. If it is much faster, you then know the problem is your powerline network. If not, look at your PC.

Have you followed all the recommendations for installing your HomePlugs? Direct into the wall socket and not via extension leads, and any equipment in that area powered vie the pass-through socket (assuming it had one). HomePlugs with pass-through sockets have filters which prevent the connected equipment sapping the powerline signal.
 
I couldn't get powerline adapters to work in my house - possible as one of them is the first socket out on the ring from the meter, and the other socket is the penultimate socket on the other side of the meter.

Much simpler and cheaper solution - a wi-fi access unit. D-Link available from Expensive World for less than £17 and it works a treat.
 
Woodentop said:
Much simpler and cheaper solution - a wi-fi access unit. D-Link available from Expensive World for less than £17 and it works a treat.
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Not always, and for some their WiFi signal is more problematic than their Powerline.

We have an entire topic on the various third party WiFi USB adapters that will (and won't) work with the HD/HDR-FOX, and another on the various means to obtain Internet connectivity.
 
Perhaps I should have explained in more detail.

Generally an access unit refers to an ethernet interface - as is the case here. Said D-Link box can connect to a network by ethernet and provide a wireless connection (be that as a wireless point or as a router in its own right) or in the reverse and provide an ethernet connection to a wireless network as here.

Simply plug the unit into a PC that is not connected to the network by cable or wireless, and follow the instructions to make it connect to the wireless network. It will retain these settings. Thereafter connect the ethernet cable to the Hummy and you have a wireless ethernet connection - the Hummy does not know or care how the etherent has go to it. Works well for me on both the Hummy and a Huawei/TalkTalk YouView HDR.

The D-Link box mentioned is a single port unit and will run at up to 150Mb/s.
 
Sorry to pick up quite an old thread, but I can't find any newer ones on this subject and thought it actually applied here. I have recently put a QNAP NAS (which is Gigabit fast) on my system and also upgraded my modem/router to a TP Link Archer D7 gigabit with gigabit switches in the two rooms I have Humax kit - one also has my ASUS Desktop PC. It's great being able to transfer stuff from my Surface Pro to the NAS at 800+ Mbs, but of course the ASUS and the Humaxes are restricted to 100 Mbs. I use Cute ftp from Globalscape for copying to and from the HDR's and it performs well - up to 80-90 Mbs if network traffic is light, but is there anything by way of mods or tweaks that can increase the network speed by a significant amount ? I do have a 150N Humax Wireless LAN dongle which I used when in temporary accommodation for a while where there was no ethernet - would that improve things ? I haven't actually tried it yet - I'm a 'wired' fan !
 
Not really, no. The transfer performance (whether to/from a USB storage device, USB network dongle, or Ethernet) is governed by the processing power rather than the theoretical data transfer rate of the respective hardware interface.
 
For information: copying out to USB is dramatically faster if the recording doesn't flow through the decryption engine en route.
 
Hi BH - I have just acquired a Realtek 8812BU Wireless LAN 802.11ac USB NIC for use on my ASUS All-in-One PC which only has a 100 Mbps Ethernet adapter in it, and out of interest I tried it on the HDR-FOX T2 and as expected it was not recognised. It comes with Linux drivers and I've been reading some older posts about using different Wi-Fi dongles and got the impression that tweaks were needed to find and utilise dongles not known to the Humax. As I'm not a Linux expert by any means, is there a way this very fast dongle can be used on the Humax to improve its network speed ?
 
You would need to find a driver for it that is compiled for the MIPS processor used in the HDR-FOX, or a source code for a driver that can be compiled for the MIPS processor, and then integrate it into the Linux kernel for the HDR-FOX (the processor is not the same as in a PC, so runs code especially compiled for it and not executables for PC-compatible processors).

Even then there is no guarantee that the processor is fast enough to achieve a worthwhile speed improvement. The speed of a system is limited by its weakest link - or in this case the flow in the pipe is dictated by its narrowest diameter anywhere along the length. Making the pipe very fat in one place doesn't help if it is unavoidably very thin in another.

The theoretical data transfer speed capability of the USB2 ports is 480mbps, but we never actually see those rates. Adding a WiFi dongle to the end of a USB link is bound to carry some additional overhead. I think your best bet is to stick with wired Ethernet.
 
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The question is why would you want to go wireless if you already have a network cable in place? Unless it's for domestic harmony reasons.:D
 
Yes - I have gigabit network router and switches as well as a NAS, and my wife and I both have Surface Pro's which have gigabit network capability, so I was hoping to ramp up the transfer speed copying stuff off the HDR's, one of which incidentally is becoming quite erratic (I posted about this previously) - are there any other recorders which offer the same flexibility as the HDR in terms of remote access and copying recordings off to watch on another device ? We spend time in Greece, and like to take some entertainment with us for those rare occasions it's too inclement to visit the local ouzeries !
 
Lefteris said:
are there any other recorders which offer the same flexibility as the HDR in terms of remote access and copying recordings off to watch on another device ?
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None that anyone here knows about.:( Else we would probably all have one.:D
 
Lefteris said:
are there any other recorders which offer the same flexibility as the HDR in terms of remote access and copying recordings off to watch on another device ?
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Off-the-shelf: absolutely not... but our customised 'Foxes aren't exactly off-the-shelf. There are solutions using PC-type hardware and open-source software, or even open-source hardware implementations.
 
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