Z9X Pro crashing on MKV files.

Yeah I have gig speed internet and I cannot stream anything 4K via SMB on my LAN. 1080p or below work fine as does music but i have to keep my 4K files on my internal HDD. I transfer them from the PC over. Top speed for LAN is 15 MB/s via Wifi and 7 MB/s over ethernet for me so I have to transfer.

 

You have something very badly wrong with your LAN then...

Or very very old switches...

 

Yeah I have tried to troubleshoot here before. I have all new Cat 8 Cables on every connection and my router is gig rated and about a year old from Spectrum. My internet speed is blazing but LAN speeds suck. I also can't figure out why I can transfer files from my phone over Wi-Fi to the Zidoo or my Himedia Q10 device at like 3 MB/s but when I try to do it direct to my PC it is only like 150 KB/s at most. Sitting 3 feet away from all devices/router. So when I download videos or music to my phone but want to keep a copy on my hard drives for archival purposes, I have to transfer to the media player's hard drives first. Then go on my PC and transfer it from the devices to the PC via ethernet in Windows Explorer.

I have no clue why.

 

Just to give a little perspective, this is my LAN topography:



So 10 switches, 5 WAPs and currently 93 clients (usually more, but kids are away at university!!)

And the cabling is all Cat5 that I installed around 2006 so not exactly state of the art. The red switches are managed and the green switches passive (all Netgear ProSafe), but I don't have anything clever going on in the managed switches.

My NAS drives (20 of them) are connected to Ext Hub 2 and my Zidoos connected to Ext Hub 1 (cinema Z9X) and Den Hub 1 (test boxes) with various other boxes (Dunes, Shield) at other points. And they all stream 4K with no issues whatsoever.

Maximum cable length is probably in the region of 50M or so and patch panels used on managed hubs - literally no idea how many RJ45 sockets I have!! A lot

What I also do is keep an eye on IP addresses - I rarely rely on DHCP - only for transient devices - iPhones and the like and I have a clearly defined DHCP range (192.168.0.150 - 192.168.0.199) which I keep well away from static IP addresses.

All other devices have static IPs and there are no conflicts - and that's the first place I'd look for issues - slowdowns and crap performance are a classic symptom of a duplicated IP address. Even duplicated network (Netbios) names can cause issue.

 

I have no hubs. I have a 6ft cable going from my PC to my router, a 8FT going from my router to my HiMedia Q10 and an 10 FT going to my Zidoo (currently not connected as Wifi transfer is faster for me).

Nothing else is wired. I did initially use one of those wall socket ethernet extender things previously due to my layout I didn't want cable running all over the floor into another room and I only had 3ft cables at the time) but that was even slower. My speeds above are from cables going direct from the devices to the router.

 

Ranting. Zero knowledge. Your Internet has nothing to do with the local network speeds but might be affected by crowded WiFi environment. NAS is mainly for the local network. 2mb/s ? Are you living in 90s?

 

So something is definitely defecting. It might be some key cable, it might be the router or switch. You must go via the elimination process.

 

you should be getting the max 1gig speeds with that setup

Run a dslspeedtest from your pc ie my 300m fibre tests around 330m or so on PC
if your getting your max at pc then plug the 10ft zidoo lan cable in to PCs network port and run same test to prove cable to zidoo and router port ..ie ill get same 330 m max running the dslspeedtest from browser in my Z9X Pro

Also go in to network settings and check network properties ie my 1000 lan will quite often drop down to 100 ,something im working on )

 

Thanks. I have tried all of that. Cables have all been replaced multiple times now. Originally had Cat 6 cables, then replaced with Cat 7 then most recently got Cat 8 ones in the past 2 months and same speed every time. Router has been replaced, restarted and reconnected multiple times. Why would the Internet speeds be correct but only LAN be slow? I am just not versed enough in networking to determine the issue. I have had this issue for years now in all my hard wired devices. I have asked for help in multiple forums and no one seems to be able to figure it out.

Full internet speed when testing using Speed Tests but transfer speeds over LAN is 15 MB/s tops. And again I don't know why transferring to my PC over Wi-Fi is slow but not to my media players which are 20x faster or more. Same hard drives in PC as devices and have even swapped them all out and tested with each one so it isn't a drive speed issue.

 

got the hdds your transferring to ,plugged in to the usb2 port at back rather than the side usb3 ?

10-15m/s would be max for usb2

 

Just a reminder that cat7 and Cat8 sold to consumers are basically scams. Cat8 doesn't even really exist as a standard. Also all the flat cat7/8 cables on Amazon are not up to spec either.

Cat6a is all you'd ever need for up to 10 gigabit at home, if LAN (not WAN) speeds are still poor the router/switch/server is the problem. IsP provided all in one devices and "gaming" routers are very poor but should do gigabit these days.

I have regular cat6 utp for most of my house (and some C6a SFTP for hdbt feeds throughout and 10gbe to the office) and I get a solid gigabit everywhere. Main switch is a cheap fanless microtik unit.

 

Ok. That's the problem. No one can help you remotely or via any forum if you are saying you replaced everything and still no go. Just hire some IT technician to diagnose what is the source of the problem (there might be many and even not the network itself but the PCs or even software used there). And the only thing you have not replaced is the PC/Mac? Router config, the traffic control can also limit speeds - everything can affect speed.

 

No I am using internal HDD. I have a Z2000 but as the internals are the same the SMB issue would be on the Z9X pro as well.

 

Thanks for responding. Hiring anyone is not a possibility. I have not replaced the PC but I did hook my laptop up over the weekend replacing the PC and I got similar results. What is strange to me is that I used to get speeds up to 80 MB/s using LAN from my PC to my Q10 box years ago. All of a sudden the SMB speeds dropped to 15. I tried on the Q10 forum to troubleshoot for years but could never get it resolved. I just have kinda learned to live with it and plan my transfers overnight due to the length of time they take. I was hoping the Zidoo would be faster due to the GIG ethernet but same results but a little slower to be honest. That led me to replace all the cables even though I "know" I don't need anything more than CAT 6 but was hoping against my better judgement that it would improve. Just a waste of money it seems but I was up for trying anything that I can do myself.

I appreciate all who attempted to assist me. Thanks!

 

your getting 10 15m/s transferring to the internal drive
have you tried a usb3 hdd plugged in to a usb3 port and then transferring to that drive from your PC/Laptop just in case its an issue with the internal drive being slow ?

i reguarly do it from my PC to one of my 4Tb hdds in the usb port and movies transfer at 30 -50M/s usually ie 20 30 mins
Only time ill see 10-15 M/s is when my giga lan on PC has changed to a 100M eth port
Think one of my cat7 cables isnt plugging in correctly /or my hubs dying something im working on atm but its pretty intermittent

 

I'm copying some files to my Z2600 internal disk at the moment and it's running at about 800Mbit, which is pretty OK for a SMB transfer over 1Gig connection.

 

What connection speed does your PC report?

Go to network settings in Control Panel and right click on the Local Area Connection - should look something like this:

 

I show 1.0 Gbps same as the pic you provided.

 

When I do a LAN speed test to the Zidoo I am currently getting 14.13 MBps Writing and 18.10 MBps Reading via Ethernet on average. That is roughly the same no matter which cables or ports I use on the router.

Using a 40MB packet size for the test.

 

so that translates to 80 MBps right? Those are the kind of speeds I used to get a few years ago.

I get 115Mbps for my 1 Gig connection or 14.39 MBps now