CIFs streaming stuttering to Win7 client

[wintermute000]

I have a Win7 client that used to stream via CIFs from my old QNAP NAS not a problem.

Now that I switched to Freenas, I'm getting intermittent (every several minutes) pauses whilst it buffers (XBMC tells me its buffering). Increasing the buffer size in XBMC reduces the frequency of the pauses but increases the duration (presumably as its buffering more, haha).

Are there any samba diagnostics or tweaks I can perform?
A straight up file copy looks fine, I'm getting around 4-5MBytes/sec via wireless. Before wireless is called out as the culprit, its wireless N and like I said its been streaming from other CIFs sources fine for ages and ages. The wireless router and general radio environment has not changed!

 

[wintermute000]

Tried this, appears to have helped but not eliminate problem

socket options = SO_RCVBUF=131072 SO_SNDBUF=131072 TCP_NODELAY

When I look @ task monitor in windows, the breaks/stutter happen at the same time throughput drops to 0 briefly.

This does not happen with a straight file copy (peaks around 80-90% of 72Mps which is what my wireless connects @) so i'm stumped as to why streaming via the same protocol (CIFs) has this issue.

 

[Whattteva]

Sounds fine to me. 72 Mbps translates to around 8.5 MB/s before accounting for encryption and protocol overhead... so 4-5 MB/s sounds well within just the right amount after adjusting for those overheads.

 

[wintermute000]

The strange thing is before I tuned those attributes, it would literally go to 0 for a few seconds every few minutes (clearly visible in task monitor) but only when streaming - on a file copy, it goes straight through.

Here is what I'm using now, appears to have worked in conjunction with turning on buffering in XBMC (note I didn't have to do this previously with my QNAP).

socket options = SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=131072 SO_SNDBUF=131072 TCP_NODELAY
getwd cache = yes

 

[Whattteva]

What network card do you have on the FreeNAS box?

 

[wintermute000]

check the sig.... dual intel i210s in that mobo.
I have no problem saturating gigabit on a straight up copy (or multiple copies). Heck I dragged 7Tb across when populating it and observed no such symptoms - ~900M straight up for around 24 hours lol.
This only happened when streaming movies. Like I said, those CIFs tweaks appear to have knocked it on the head.

 

[Whattteva]

Did you check if the hiccups happen when streaming on the wire as well?

 

[wintermute000]

nope they don't.
But here's the thing, before I 'fixed' it, when I file copy on wireless, no hiccups. That was what was driving me roudn the bend, it would max out on 80% of 72mbps and sit there not a problem for gigabytes after gigabytes. But streaming would produce the drops.

Hilariously, after the CIFs tweaks, throughput over wireless now goes just a touch > 6Mbytes/sec vs ~4-5Mbytes/sec.

A further complication is that wired = win8.1 x64, wireless = win7 x64. I'm just glad its all over!!!

 

[cyberjock]

Now to tell you the truth.. some of those things you set... don't exist in Samba4. :D

LOL.

 

[wintermute000]

LOL brings me right back to learning linux and setting up my first samba share all those years ago. I didn't realise there was still this much tweaking/tuning required on occasion. I guess MS changing the stack with later win versions doesn't help.
Given what I've seen, I think it would benefit newbies if it was clearly highlighted that SMB tuning may be required (I realise due to diff hardware/memory etc. configs its impossible to arrive at one size fits all defaults), if it wasn't for linux background (and general IT background lol) I would have spent aeons tearing my hair out. (then again I probably wouldn't have build my own RAIDZ2 array lol).