Well, as an example, your laptop will probably have its WiFi antenna(e) inside the lid, so it/they will be vertically oriented and stand 15-20 cm high. The V4K’s internal antennae are constrained by the physical dimensions of the device. (In the same way, a 3G/4G dongle’s internal antenna will never be able to compete with an external antenna.) As mentioned, physical position and/or orientation can also make a difference.
That figure refers to the video buffer. It’s the way Kodi was programmed.
I just tested with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. It was considerably worse. About 60% of the performance as far as I can tell with the time spent buffering. I switched back to 5 GHz.
I also put the Vero 4k on the floor instead of the TV furniture so it is ~40cm closer to the access point that is on the floor underneath 3-4 meters down.
Do you have any suggestions to how I can fix the buffering issue?
There are a lot of ways to improve WiFi performance. Sometimes changing the channel can help improve things.
Sam
Hi Sam,
Thank you for your suggestion, however, I don’t see why that would be relevant as I have no issues with my laptop to copy the 120 minutes video file in 28 minutes over the same Wi-Fi network. What are the other ways?
I was thinking there could be some parameters for the Wi-Fi interface that I could change or something along the lines. Unfortunately I don’t know how and what to change the parameters to, if even applicable?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Copying is different to playback, and obviously you’re doing this on a different device.
There are changes you can make on your AP, but unfortunately this is a bit outside of the cope of the forum. WiFi performance can vary greatly depending on the environment. Sometimes even changing the channel can be enough to improve things.
I have done a lot of testing and I am sure that I have eliminated the issue to the Vero 4k’s Wi-Fi.
I put the Vero 4k to another TV that is next to the Wi-Fi router (1 meter). I saw no change in buffering speed whatsoever. When I plugged in a cable directly to the Wi-Fi router there was no issues whatsoever buffering and it can pull about 92 Mbit/s with its 100 Mbit/s interface. This is about 3x faster compared to Wi-Fi.
So I decided to test at the original location on the floor directly above the Wi-Fi router (4 meters or so away). I have an Asus AC66U which is being used as a Wi-Fi repeater elsewhere in the house. I placed it next to the TV upstairs to which it is intended to display and plugged in a cable from the Asus AC66U to the Vero 4k. As I was expecting, I could pull the same 92 Mbit/s from the AC66U Wi-Fi repeater with the Vero 4k connected to it with cable.
The AC66U normally is located 20 meters away from the Wi-Fi router where it can transfer over 300 Mbit/s. With a distance of 4 meters it should be even more than that.
So there clearly is something wrong with the Vero 4k’s Wi-Fi capabilities. It should theoretically with its single-antenna design be able to transfer 433 Mbit/s. If it could transfer just a quarter of those 433 Mbit/s it would be just fine. However, the reality is that it can transfer with just one out of a fourteenth/fifteenth of the theoretical speed while ALL my other devices transfer at far greater speeds.
How can we improve the Wi-Fi performance of the Vero 4k? Do you have a patch for its Wi-Fi driver?
The device features a 2x1.
433Mbps is impossible to achieve. 433Mbps is the connected speed, but like 802.11g, you will never get 54Mbps. This would deliver 230Mbps or so real world, which is more than enough to play back all supported content.
No – because we haven’t really had any other reports of this; so we’re not sure if there’s anything that needs fixing.
Testing with iperf would be the best way to check your WiFi connection speed properly. How have you measured these speeds?
Sam
Thank you for your quick reply!
I have tested the speeds on a Windows PC connected to the LAN port to the AC66U repeater while doing a internet speed connection test on http://beta.speedtest.net/. I also recall transferring a system backup file.
How can I test the most efficient way with iperf? What commands shall I run? I am asking because I have never used it before and want to make sure I do it correctly.
Testing file transfers to the Vero 4K will not give you a true indication of the WiFi performance.
It will be limited by the write speed of the Vero 4K’s eMMC (internal storage), plus there will be protocol overhead from these transfers.
I don’t recommend running speedtest on the Vero 4K either; as the speed tests are dependent on an external service and introduce another variable.
Sorry if I was unclear. Those tests were tested on a Windows PC connected to the AC66U with cable while it being 20 meters away from the Wi-Fi.
I never ran a speedtest or a file transfer on the Vero 4k. I have only updated the Vero 4k to the latest version and played back files through Kodi.
The ~30 Mbit/s on the Vero 4k on Wi-Fi is what I can see when I look at the server. When on cable directly to the router or through the AC66U repeater I get about 92 Mbit/s which is just fine with a 100 Mbit/s interface.
Have you separate ssid for 2.4 and 5Ghz?
Yes I do, they have separate names!
I assume you mean the IO load on the server.
iperf is the best way to really check the performance of the connection.
Check with wavemon (quality and signal) and iperf3 throughput
osmc@osmc:~$ iperf3 -c bouygues.iperf.fr -i 1 -t 10 -R
Connecting to host bouygues.iperf.fr, port 5201
Reverse mode, remote host bouygues.iperf.fr is sending
[ 4] local 192.168.1.28 port 40659 connected to 194.158.102.114 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.00-1.00 sec 8.07 MBytes 67.7 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 1.00-2.00 sec 13.6 MBytes 114 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 2.00-3.00 sec 15.7 MBytes 131 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 3.00-4.00 sec 17.7 MBytes 149 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 4.00-5.00 sec 18.1 MBytes 152 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 5.00-6.00 sec 18.6 MBytes 156 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 6.00-7.00 sec 11.9 MBytes 99.9 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 7.00-8.00 sec 13.9 MBytes 116 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 8.00-9.00 sec 16.6 MBytes 139 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 9.00-10.00 sec 16.0 MBytes 134 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 153 MBytes 128 Mbits/sec 121 sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 151 MBytes 127 Mbits/sec receiver
iperf Done.That’s an average of almost 130Mbps. That’s more than enough for 4K streaming.
However, it does notably vary quite a lot. It could be these dips which are causing buffering. This is the nature of WiFi.
Changing channel may improve things.
Sam
//192.168.1.6/Kodi /mnt/Kodi cifs x-systemd.automount,noauto,vers=3.0,sec=ntlmssp,iocharset=utf8,username=Kodi,password=nottherealpassword,uid=osmc,gid=osmc,file_mode=0770,dir_mode=0770 0 0
I use this for fstab. Is this an issue?
The Wi-Fi is on channel 36 and there is only one other Wi-Fi on channel 100. I took my phone next to the Vero 4k and checked in the app “Wifi Analyzer”. Which channel do you suggest I use?
I have tried to change the Wi-Fi channel to auto. This meant that the 5 GHz Wi-Fi changed to channel 155. I can only see one other 5 GHz network on channel 106.
The streaming speed is roughly the same on channel 155 where it stutters with bitrates of over 40 Mbit/s with video and audio.
I ran iperf3 test with the same argument as my above post and got 133 Mbit/s average. As for the fluctuations you mentioned it could be due to the fact that I achieve this from the French server “bouygues.iperf.fr” which is a couple thousand kilometers away from me.
So when the Vero 4k can download 133 Mbit/s from France over my Wi-Fi I believe that there is something wrong with the way it mounts my local server. You can see what I use in fstab in my comment above. The odd thing is that the mount works over LAN with 92 Mbit/s from its 100 Mbit/s interface. This leads me to suggest that my fstab is correctly set up? Maybe you clever people can confirm?
What do you suggest that I do? Other laptops can copy files and stream the same files without buffering issues at the same physical location as the Vero 4k.
Are any of you even using this Vero 4k over Wi-Fi and streaming 40+ Mbit/s content?
There is a potential issue with fstab mounted Samba shares when using wireless check here
Thank you for reply. I read through the thread.
I want to make sure that I understand this correctly so please correct me if I am wrong.
There is an issue with the way it streams & tranfers files wirelessly with SMB.
You acknowledge the problem and are working on a fix for it after you did a “stretch update”.
Is there anything I can do in the meantime? Can I set it up to use FTP instead, if yes, what would I write in my fstab file?