Network problem

[flavius]

I guess at least. Moving files around takes forever. All Sage can play without a hick-up is cartoons.

I'm thinking, it could be a bad nic. I have lots of devices in my house, and taking out one by one could get pretty complex, especially since my wife runs a business from home.

Is there software that can help id the culprit? Any ideas?

[kevine]

A simple test would be to use Task Manager to monitor the network utilization. More information about your network would be helpful. 100/1000 MBs? How many devices are we really talking about? Are any of them using the network all the time?

[flavius]

Here are some details:

7 computers (4 Macs, 3 PC's)
2 routers
3 switches
3 wireless bridges
1 XBOX 360
1 Sage HD Extender
1 Network Laser Printer
1 Network Inkjet
1 HDHomeRun
1 AirTunes

It's 100/1000 wired and b/g/n wireless. We were just fine with all of this until last Wednesday when the HD shows were getting the stutters, and then it got even worse. First thing I did was scanning the two windows xp machines for viruses and such. One of those is the Sage server which runs headless, both appear to be clean.

[kevine]

Is see you are now on 6.4.2 beta. Did it start happening then? If so, I had the same problem. I switched to Overlay, no hardware acceleration, Sage video decoder, AC3 audio decoder and the problem went away. Just a thought.

You could also try going back to 6.3.10 or whatever you had before to confirm it is a problem with the new beta.

[flavius]

Sage is always good for a little problem - especially when you run betas.
But this one? It started two days before I moved from 6.3.10 to 6.4.2. And how can Sage be responsible for a one-hour-file-copy from the DVD server to one of the Macs (5gig)?

Any other ideas?

[flavius]

Here's the resolution:

1. Exchanged one of the switches which took care of some of the networking issues
2. Replaced one of the disk drives in Sage server which took care of the remaining issues

Over the years I have seen some hard drives fail, but this drive simply getting really slow - that was a first.