Mark Lanctot;171337 Wrote: > I would suggest taking a look at > http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?NetworkProblemsSecondGuide and > the wireless tweaks suggested there, particularly NetStumbler. >
Thanks Mark (and in case I don't respond individually, to everyone else who's replied with suggestions, most of which I admit I've yet to follow.) After a year of fairly trouble-free operation, it's annoying to be hitting these problems now, and I'm glad to have suggestions, even if it will take a month of Sundays to try them all! So many variables, so little patience! :-) I've read the wiki already... yes, I read about not trusting the laptop's "Excellent" claim; but when SlimServer's own report says everything's OK except for the buffer, I have to wonder just what's going on! It was this page that led me to try switching to channel 13 (and to avoid channel 6, which might be worth a try after all - my router defaulted to 11, and it looks like most of my competitors do too.) I was home all day yesterday, and saw the SB3 "die" quite a few times. Usually, it would start stuttering, then the display would go black; sometimes the music carried on for a few seconds even though the screen was blank (presumably until the buffer emptied). Sometimes it would come back on all by itself a few minutes later, and start playing the current track again. Sometimes I power-cycled it (more out of frustration than anything else - "Take *that*!"); sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't. This evening, I left the SB3 running the 5000Kbps test; after an hour, the average was 98%. Seemed promising, as this should be way above what's needed. Then I started playing some FLAC tracks - and the third track started stuttering, and then the SB3 turned off (screen went black). I turned it on again a few minutes later, and soon after, it did it again. So I left it off, and went off to get frustrated by some completely different hardware instead :-(. I *guess* that though it was getting a good average on the test, that there might have been one or more "big dropouts"; but in that hour there was nothing bad enough to persude the SB3 to turn off, and yet within 10 minutes of playing music, it happened; and again, next time I tried. I have NetStumbler, and it often shows several "competing" networks, though usually at far lower signal strength than mine. I don't run it often, because it interferes with (and often breaks) other network connections on my laptop. (And I might be being particularly thick, but how on earth do you get to see the graph view that's mentioned in the help?) The SB3 typically reports signal strength as about 50%, even when there are no other networks around; right now it's saying 50-60, and there are three other networks visible. And it's been playing for about 30 minutes with no problems. (And my laptop's reporting a fairly low speed - 36Mbps - but the SB3 is fine.) And then again, I have just installed the new 6.5.1 release. I think until now I was running the 20th Dec nightly; but maybe some small but crucial change has helped. Or maybe my neighbour has discovered that if he turns on his microwave, he can stop that wierd music coming from next door :-) - but he's probably gone to bed now... -- Brian -- Brian Ritchie ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Brian Ritchie's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2319 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31330 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
