stream all but 1080p from 100mbit NAS?

[SilenceOfTheFans]

Im hoping to store everything on drives in a dell SFF (100mbit) in another room and access it via a 15m cat6 cable, (quieter) would this be fast enough for everything other than 1080p?
what about FLACs to a high end stereo? (bit of an audiophile)
Cheers

[PartEleven]

100 mbit is fast enough to stream even 1080p. I do it all the time. If you have any bottleneck it'll be either the NAS unit or the decoding PC. It won't be the connection.

[lm]

what about FLACs to a high end stereo? (bit of an audiophile)

I hope you are not the "magic stones" type of audiophile. Here's some engineering facts:

CD audio is 44.1 samples per second, 2 channels, 16 bits per sample.

From that we get by multiplication the number 1411200 bits per second, or about 1.4 megabits per second for uncompressed CD audio.

This means that, ignoring overhead, uncompressed CD audio will saturate a 100Mbps network by a whopping 1.4%.

FLAC needs less bits per second than uncompressed, but then again we did not take into account any communication overhead, so at this point we need to make an educated guess that the end result is still around those same numbers.

So basically streaming FLAC data is a drop in the ocean for your network.

BD Video movies have a maximum data transfer rate of 54 Mbit/s by specification.

So this saturates your network by about 54%, ignoring communication overhead.

[jhhoffma]

As long as nothing else is accessing that system at the same time you should be fine. You'd wouldn't want to be streaming to two different systems at the same time, though.

[MoJo]

I can confirm that 1080p works fine on 100Mb. The only real advantage of going to gigabit is that starting playback and seeking are both a lot faster.

[SilenceOfTheFans]

fantastic, great info! thanks guys, exactly what i was hoping to hear

what about installing applications from a remote pc? would they install just as fast if the exe was executed through 'my network places' as they would if the exe was first copied to the local machine?
(and would this difference become more significant with large multiple-gig apps?)

[SilenceOfTheFans]

I can confirm that 1080p works fine on 100Mb. The only real advantage of going to gigabit is that starting playback and seeking are both a lot faster.

would the slow play and seek be with 1080p only? or all media files?

[mr. poopyhead]

fantastic, great info! thanks guys, exactly what i was hoping to hear

what about installing applications from a remote pc? would they install just as fast if the exe was executed through 'my network places' as they would if the exe was first copied to the local machine?
(and would this difference become more significant with large multiple-gig apps?)

from my experience installing stuff from a remote server, i'm pretty sure files are copied locally first, then executed. so to answer your question, running an .exe from a remote server will be slower than if the file is already on the local computer. again... this is just from my own observations, so don't quote me on this.

[SilenceOfTheFans]

it will always be slower than running it on a local machine :p
the question is whether it would be quicker to manually copy the exe or would the pc automatically copy the file to a temp folder on a local drive, faster than we would and deleting itself for you?
or would it just be stupid and run slow

[jhhoffma]

Yeah, but how many programs use one large .exe to install anymore? Most use a setup.exe that runs a .msi file linked to a bunch of .cab files. You'll still be limited to a 100mbit file transfer, but has anyone checked what the transfer rate from most install CD/DVDs is, especially of burned disks?

The slow play and seek would be with all files, just not as noticeable with something less than 1080p. It's a transfer rate and latency thing...

[SilenceOfTheFans]

TBH music will be on a local drive anyway really, as would 1080p, any other media played across the network will rarely need seeking and a slight delay before playing is a small price for silence

[lm]

"slow play and seek" should be no issue on things lesser than 1080p. The effect isn't necessarily noticeable at all.

[SilenceOfTheFans]

lets hope so