Newbie question about using firefly on Maxtor mss+

[anton90125]

I took the plunge! Followed all your clear steps.

The server installed with no problem.

In server setup/config I had an error 500- something about MP3 dir?
Anyway this cleared up after my 4th attempted.

My last outstanding problem is the connection between my soundbridge and my wireless router. I have to use a wireless set up when my roku is sitting with my hifi (though I have tested it with an ethernet cable stretching across my room). Because I am using FLAC, I have bandwidth issues. I am using a d-link wireless bridge to get 802.11g performance but I am experiencing rebuffering at the roku end. I am in the process of getting D-Link DI-624M Super G with speeds upto 108Mbps. I am hoping that this will sort this data bottle neck out. Is there no config setting on the firefly which can help this flow?

Thanks for you assistance in writing a superb “How do I”. And thank you for a superb piece of software.

[rpedde]

@anton90125 wrote:

Because I am using FLAC, I have bandwidth issues. I am using a d-link wireless bridge to get 802.11g performance but I am experiencing rebuffering at the roku end. I am in the process of getting D-Link DI-624M Super G with speeds upto 108Mbps. I am hoping that this will sort this data bottle neck out. Is there no config setting on the firefly which can help this flow?

Not really, not on the firefly end. Encoding it back to mp3 might help, although it would make the flacs lossy, which kind of defeats the purpose of keeping the music in flac. 🙁

I’d guess the problem is less one of speed as it is signal quality. It might be that you can find a better position for the wirelss bridge, or reposition antennas on the access point or something to get you a better signal strength where the soundbridge is. I think that’s the main problem — signal strength, not bandwidth. Although who knows… with a “super G”, you might be able to get two mediocre connections which might be enough to keep the soundbridge from rebuffering. Not sure. I’m assuming the bridge is capable of Super G?

[S80_UK]

@anton90125 wrote:

Because I am using FLAC, I have bandwidth issues. I am using a d-link wireless bridge to get 802.11g performance but I am experiencing rebuffering at the roku end. I am in the process of getting D-Link DI-624M Super G with speeds upto 108Mbps. I am hoping that this will sort this data bottle neck out. Is there no config setting on the firefly which can help this flow?

Hi,
I’m not sure that this is your problem. I run with a large number of FLAC files (trancoded to WAV on a Slug) and I am wireless to a SB1000 with the original 802.11b wi-fi card, so the link for that device is limited to 11Mbits/sec. I have no rebuffering problems. Have you checked to make sure that there are no other local wireless networks using the same channel? Strong interference could easily be responsible for the loss of data that you are seeing.

[anton90125]

I tried adjusting the arieal position, the position of the wireless bridge relative to the router and every channel 1 to 13-but to no avail. I did discovered that there was another wireless network on channel 12.
The roku rebuffered every 30 seconds (playtime). Connecting directly with a ethernet cable -no problem -no buffering. I still believe that is a bandswidth problem.I am now awaiting the super G wireless router. The wireless bridge is already super G. I still would welcome any advise.

Anton 😕

[richdunlop]

Anton,

I’ve had lots of painful experience of setting up Roku Soundbridges wirelessly and I have to say that I’m with S80_UK on this one – in my experience rebuffering is almost always caused by poor wireless performance or interference. Unless your wlan is very, very busy you should have plenty bandwidth to do what you are trying to do.

To fix my wireless issues (including rebuffering) I tried all sorts of things including bridges, MIMO routers etc. In the end I nailed the problem very cheaply by buying some cheap Buffalo routers, installing dd-wrt and boosting transmit power. No more wireless issues, Roku disconnects or rebuffering. In fact, I’m gradually coming round to thinking that wireless might actually be a viable networking technology!

Hope that helps,
rich

[schro20]

I ran into something similar to what was reported in this thread already. I got to the ipkg step which failed. Doing route -n I see that the kernel got my gateway wrong. It thinks it is 192.168.0.0 while it actually is 0.1. Interestingly the Maxtor configuration status page lists is correctly as 0.1. I also note that it got the DNS servers correct. So it is talking to the router to get this info, but somehow gets the gateway part wrong. I don’t know how to fix this. I did a reboot to no avail. The Maxtor gets a reserved address from the router which does DHCP.

Added: I did
route add default gw 192.168.0.1

which fixed my issue. So far everything is hunky dory.

I might suggest adding this as a hint to the MSS setup page since others seem to have run into it and I had a hard time finding documentation for “route” as it exists on the MSS. The above finally worked.

I would also suggest that users who edit files on the box are reminded that it’s good practice to save the original as name.bak (or some such convention).

Ready to serve!

[rpedde]

@schro20 wrote:

I might suggest adding this as a hint to the MSS setup page since others seem to have run into it and I had a hard time finding documentation for “route” as it exists on the MSS. The above finally worked.

I added something of a terse note on this. I might break troubleshooting out into a separate page or somthing, but at least the info is there now.

— Ron

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