I have 2 Vero 4k boxes, 1 with an external USB 3 hard drive which has my media on it.
What is the best way to have a fast connection from the second Vero 4k box to use the media off the first Vero 4k box?
SFTP? HTTP? HTTPS? Samba? etc etc
I have them connected via SFTP at the moment and on WiFi (as this is faster than the 100Mbit ethernet port on the device), however I have maybe 5+ seconds delay from requesting a film plays on the second Vero 4k box before it actually starts to play. On the Vero 4k box that the external hard drive is connected to this is instantaneous so this leads me to think the issue is related to the connection between the 2 boxes.
Hi Sam. Thanks for the incredibly fast reply. I struggled to get an FTP connection between the 2 Vero 4k boxes when I was setting them up, but SFTP worked so I went with that. Now I see this lag I think I will need to revisit the connection to the source on the first Vero 4k box. Am I best going to the IP address or the FQDN? Would you see that having the SFTP connection would cause this delay though and changing to an FTP one would make a noticable difference?
+1 for nfs on a local network, least hassle and enough performance imho. ip vs fqdn is just the dns you don’t need which shouldn’t make much of an impact.
how many files or directories you have in your structure? this might be more of an issue since kodi loads every single one of them and tries to determine content and stuff.
Thanks all for the replies. I will try again over the weekend to set up the NFS and FTP connections to see how they fair.
In answer to your question rantanplan1, not many really. Any 1 folder may have up to 200 files max, normally under 100.
If I am using the Vero 4k with the external hard drive connected to it the folder browsing and media playing is instantaneous. The issue is just accessing this from the other Vero 4k box so I thought it would be network connection related.
so count shouldn’t be an issue then… my lib is several 10k files… and the vero performs fabulous. but I don’t serve of another vero box of course. good luck…
Yep, the performance on the Vero 4k box with the external hard drive directly attached is brilliant. This performance issue is just accessing it from the other box. If changing the connection method to FTP or NFS doesnt resolve it I might have to see about SSH on to the Vero 4k to see about installing a bandwidth monitoring tool to see if that reveals anything. I suspect this comes down to a poor wifi connection from the second Vero 4k box.
Thought I would update you. I have tried having both boxes connected to 2.4Ghz and also 5Ghz Wifi with very similar results. Both are showing as 4 bars out of 5 for the signal.
I have noticed that the lag from the second box for starting to play the media on the first box seems to be directly related to the size of the media. Stuff that is small, say 100MB loads fine, the minute lag is hardly noticable. When the size of the media increases the lag from pressing play to actually getting it to play increases.
A 700MB film takes about 3 seconds to start playing. A 1.4GB one about 6 seconds. I have tried this on a number of titles and this seems to be the case.
I havent yet managed to get time to remap the connection between the boxes to be FTP or NFS yet; do you think that what I am seeing is just down to the fact I have these currently connected as SFTP? If I can get them connected via FTP or NFS what sort of times to start playing would you expect me to get on the second box?
Not sure about the Adjust Refresh Rate setting; if I move the external USB with the media on it to this second OSMC 4k, the media plays instantly as it does when it is plugged in to the first OSMC 4k. Does that help?
Thanks for the info; I will try installing the NFS server package on the server Vero box as you suggested, This is a new area for me so I appreciate you taking the time.
At the moment I still have both the boxes connected via 5Ghz wifi. I could connect the server box by ethernet to the router, but the client box would have to remain on wifi due to its location.
If you already spent the money for a Vero, why not add a Raspberry Pi 3 to your network, install an NFS server there and attach your USB-HDD. No USB-3 speeds though, but since you seem to rely on WIFI that shouldn’t be a problem, I suppose…
My Vero 4k+ is connected via Gbit Ethernet with an NFS share mounted in /etc/fstab and it plays 4K HDR high-bitrate without any issues.