So an update on my story of a couple of weeks back examining home plugs real world performance which lead me to the conclusion that they were just short of being up to the job of streaming HD content around the home, a shame for sure as they are a highly convenient way of setting up a wired network without needing the wires, and for some people encoding your videos in a lower bitrate would solve most of the issues but i didn't want to compromise at all so a wired gigabit network gets the green light.
Before I installed the gigabit network I did a simple test to check the before and after results and to do this I used a small file which you can download here, it's a 1080p video with a lot of detail and tops out over 115mb/s.
So the first test shows the home plugs starting to stream the file then as expected the video freezes and it was all over in a second.
I removed the home plugs and unboxed the gigabit switch, connected it to the Windows Home Server, the green light lit up on the home server connection which tells you it's a gigabit connection and an orange light for the connection to the adsl modem which as expected was a 100mb/s connection, all fine so far, next the hard part, well it would have been except I know this handy man with ladders who I managed to get to install my cat5E cable from the cupboard downstairs out the wall, up the drainpipe all nicely tucked behind out of site and then over the roof, down the drain pipe at the front of the house, underground along the front of the house, then up into the living room with the Sky HD cabling, all nice and neat and out of site. (WAF Nirvana)
I plugged in the RJ45 connector and what a big relief, green light on the router, I was very concerned that I may have damaged the cable especially the underground part but all was good.
I fired up the Popcorn Hour and selected the same file and this time the result was fantastic, perfect silky smooth video streaming from the WHS at 117mb/s in places, testing full Blu-Ray backups everyone streamed perfectly.
Conclusion, wired is the way to go, there really is no substitute!!
Posted
Feb 08 2010, 10:32 PM
by
chrisoldroyd