Problems With n-Stream when streaming hi-res
Posted by: IanG on 01 December 2012
I've been listening to the studio master FLAC Grrrr by the Stones this afternoon and encountering some strange n-Stream behaviour.
whilst the music was playing, n-Stream would not connect or even find the ND5. Instead it suggested trying Streamer Setup. Then, it would not auto connect BUT if I did a manual setup and input the stream IP address it would find it.
i think the problem is related to my Ethernet switch which failed last week. I am waiting for a replacement so everything is connected by my BT Home Hub temporarily. This hi-res file is streaming at > 4 Mbps and I think this is straining the router so when I use wifi to connect n-Stream the connection is slow and timing out before n-Stream finds the streamer. Does this sound feasible ?
further, although I'm now back to streaming standard FLAC CD rips, everything is working much more quickly and the app is having no problem finding and controlling the steamer but auto-connect still doesn't work. Any thoughts ?
Posted on: 01 December 2012 by Paul@HiFi Lounge
Hi Ian,
That certainly sounds like a flaky network to me, I'm sure once you get your new switch everything will be hunky dory again as you are right, when streaming large 24 bit files and can show any weakness's that may exist over a network.
Fingers crossed you'll be back to full connectivity soon.
Posted on: 01 December 2012 by garyi
Your main issue is HomeHub.
Posted on: 02 December 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Yes it sounds like you are straining your network, if using wifi for streaming and upnp controller coordination with hires that will almost certainly be the case. Get youto switch repaired or replaced and youll bevbackyup to normal.
Its nought to do with Nstream really.
Simon
Posted on: 02 December 2012 by rjstaines
What replacement switch are you getting Ian ? (just out of interest)
It'll be useful to add a name to my list of switches that work OK with hires.
Thanks.
Posted on: 02 December 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Btw, curiosity aside any switch assuming its not faulty supporting the near universal 100Mbps port speed will work with the relatively low data bandwidths of hires audio.
Posted on: 02 December 2012 by IanG
Cheers Guys,
Simon, to clarify, I am not streaming wirelessly. My NAS and streamer were previously hardwired to the switch that went faulty. They are now hardwired to the ports on the HomeHub. This arrangement worked fine on standard CD rips but went belly up yesterday on hi res. I suspect a possible second issue with the Home Hub as wireless download rates are very slow (compared with wired). I am on fibre optic broadband with rates of approx 30 Mbps achieved on speed test. I have a call in to BT to investigate this. I may consider replacing the Home Hub with a 'proper' router if you can recommend one as this does appear to be the root of my problems.
Rjstaines, the switch I was using is a Netgear Prosafe GS108 and everything worked fine until it died last week.
Posted on: 02 December 2012 by IanG
Sorry. Simon I meant to add, I had no problem of dropout with the audio. It was n-Stream that seemed to struggle which led me to believe it was the wifi that was the problem.
Posted on: 02 December 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Hi the latest Homehub is usually a good consumer broadband router, but it sounds like you are having bandwidth issues with its inbuilt switch ports. Are you using the latest version?
Any way best get a proper switch and replace your faulty one.
The reason I believe it's network related, is because Nstream being a upnp client relies on UDP discovery. UDP are fire and forget unlike regular TCP traffic which is resent if it get dropped or lost. Therefore if for some reason your homehub hasn't enough welly left it will drop the discovery packets, and they won't be resent.. Therefore your Nstream will not see the network player and vica versa.
A regular consumer switch fires multicast UDP discovery frames on all ports and so because it's queued at frame level which is usually done by hardware/firmware, unless you are driving your switch into congestion (exceedingly unlikely) these UDP discovery frames will be squirted out - et voila your Nstream, upnp server and network player remain related...
Simon
Posted on: 02 December 2012 by Bart
I use my internet service provider's router/switch for one thing -- I plug my own switch into it, and everything else into my switch. (It's a not very expensive Netgear, via Amazon. Proper switches with 5 or 8 ports are not very expensive at all.) I don't even use the router's wifi capabilities. I do wifi via an Apple Airport Extreme which 'extends' the wifi from an Apple Time Capsule that is hard-wired into the switch. To broadly generalize, I don't think that the i.s.p.-provided hardware is reliable for much more than simple consumer stuff like email and web browsing and maybe streaming some music or video from the web.
I get 30M down / 20 (and am on a plan that promises 20 down / 10 up) up via wifi so can't complain 
Posted on: 14 December 2012 by IanG
Switch back in place and all well with the world.
