Wireless woes: File transfers to MacBook Pro keep choking
September 11, 2008 10:11 AM Subscribe
What is it about my wireless network that causes transfers via my MacBook Pro to pause at regular intervals? Is the root cause my external USB drives? My Airport Express? Augh.
My wireless / computer setup: My cable modem plugs into an Airport Extreme Base Station in my study. I have an Airport Express in my living room (about 15ft away) that extends the network (the wireless network is 802.11n-only) and has a wired connection to a Mac Mini. The reason I don't just have the Mini use wireless to the base station is that I would like to keep the n-only network (the mini is only 802.11b). The Mini has a couple of attached external drives, USB2 & FireWire. All the external drives have media like music and movies in directories that are shared.
Downloading large files (via torrents, http, https) works flawlessly to the Mini and I can stream online video to it without hassle (it outputs to my tv)
It's my MacBook that has the issues. Streaming video from the internet works fine. Downloading files off the internet and saving to my MacBook works fine as well. However: Downloading files off the internet and saving them on one of the externals connected to the Mini causes Firefox to pinwheel every 20 seconds or so for 5-10 seconds at a time. Also, watching movies on my Macbook that are on one of my external drives also causes the movies to pause every 20 seconds or so for about the same interval of time. Transferring large files to/from my mini seems to have the same issues. The pauses in network traffic are lessened when I transfer to the drive on the Mini, but seem to still be present.
Basically, I'd like to be able to watch movies on my laptop without all the skipping. I can't tell if the problem lies in my network, the Macbook, or even the attached drives. Previously I had my mini (along with the external drives) directly connected to the Airport Extreme Base Station and had no problems streaming movies or transferring files to my MacBook. Makes me think it's something to do with the Airport Express? I have made sure that: I'm not using the same channel as other people around me. I'm also running all wireless as N-only with WPA. Thanks!
My wireless / computer setup: My cable modem plugs into an Airport Extreme Base Station in my study. I have an Airport Express in my living room (about 15ft away) that extends the network (the wireless network is 802.11n-only) and has a wired connection to a Mac Mini. The reason I don't just have the Mini use wireless to the base station is that I would like to keep the n-only network (the mini is only 802.11b). The Mini has a couple of attached external drives, USB2 & FireWire. All the external drives have media like music and movies in directories that are shared.
Downloading large files (via torrents, http, https) works flawlessly to the Mini and I can stream online video to it without hassle (it outputs to my tv)
It's my MacBook that has the issues. Streaming video from the internet works fine. Downloading files off the internet and saving to my MacBook works fine as well. However: Downloading files off the internet and saving them on one of the externals connected to the Mini causes Firefox to pinwheel every 20 seconds or so for 5-10 seconds at a time. Also, watching movies on my Macbook that are on one of my external drives also causes the movies to pause every 20 seconds or so for about the same interval of time. Transferring large files to/from my mini seems to have the same issues. The pauses in network traffic are lessened when I transfer to the drive on the Mini, but seem to still be present.
Basically, I'd like to be able to watch movies on my laptop without all the skipping. I can't tell if the problem lies in my network, the Macbook, or even the attached drives. Previously I had my mini (along with the external drives) directly connected to the Airport Extreme Base Station and had no problems streaming movies or transferring files to my MacBook. Makes me think it's something to do with the Airport Express? I have made sure that: I'm not using the same channel as other people around me. I'm also running all wireless as N-only with WPA. Thanks!
How are you transferring the files to the Mini? For instance, do you have Mac OS X Server installed on the Mini and so have set up AFP network sharepoints? Or are you using personal filesharing to accomplish this?
If you're using AFP, what happens when you try FTP or SMB/CIFS? Do you get the same behavior?
[there are insanely long threads on several of the Mac IT sysadmin lists on how buggy AFP is in Leopard Server, btw, but it's too early to point to this as a cause for your problem].
I understand that you're copying files to the external attached HDs, but do you get the same behavior when copying a file to the internal HD of the mini? At the very least, doing this could help you narrow down whether it's an I/O issue between the external HDs, or whether it's a file transfer protocol issue (AFP, FTP, SMB, etc.).
posted by mrbarrett.com at 11:20 AM on September 11, 2008
If you're using AFP, what happens when you try FTP or SMB/CIFS? Do you get the same behavior?
[there are insanely long threads on several of the Mac IT sysadmin lists on how buggy AFP is in Leopard Server, btw, but it's too early to point to this as a cause for your problem].
I understand that you're copying files to the external attached HDs, but do you get the same behavior when copying a file to the internal HD of the mini? At the very least, doing this could help you narrow down whether it's an I/O issue between the external HDs, or whether it's a file transfer protocol issue (AFP, FTP, SMB, etc.).
posted by mrbarrett.com at 11:20 AM on September 11, 2008
After some more thought, I realized that you might simply be trying to play the video files directly from the Mac mini: you mount your video sharepoint, then double-click on the file you want to watch and...pinwheel...
If this is your process, the type of video file matters greatly. WMV files, for instance, simply do not play well being streamed. I've seen similar problems with .avi files. Quicktime files, however, generally work very well if encoded properly. I've taken to converting all my video files to MP4 files with decent compression using Visual Hub and often can use Quicktime to watch movies that reside on my NAS attached to my network, from my MacBook wirelessly, no pausing or pinwheeling.
Another option for you is to use a different movie viewer. If Quicktime is giving you problems, try VLC or MPlayer.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 11:36 AM on September 11, 2008
If this is your process, the type of video file matters greatly. WMV files, for instance, simply do not play well being streamed. I've seen similar problems with .avi files. Quicktime files, however, generally work very well if encoded properly. I've taken to converting all my video files to MP4 files with decent compression using Visual Hub and often can use Quicktime to watch movies that reside on my NAS attached to my network, from my MacBook wirelessly, no pausing or pinwheeling.
Another option for you is to use a different movie viewer. If Quicktime is giving you problems, try VLC or MPlayer.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 11:36 AM on September 11, 2008
Response by poster: Re: do I have the same problems with the drive actually in the Mini? Yep, I mentioned that the pinwheeling and jerky playback occur on files that are streaming from the drive in the Mini. The drives do spin down (I've got 2 pairs of external drives, each pair in RAID1 setup), but even when they spin up the problems persist.
mrbarrett: I haven't set up any sharepoints (though I've done it before). I'm just using simple folder sharing with permissions set for my Macbook account to view the files.
When my mini was directly connected to the AEBS I had no problems playing things on my Macbook. Now, with the wireless link between my AEBS and the mini connected to the Airport Express the problems have manifested.
posted by sub-culture at 12:46 PM on September 11, 2008
mrbarrett: I haven't set up any sharepoints (though I've done it before). I'm just using simple folder sharing with permissions set for my Macbook account to view the files.
When my mini was directly connected to the AEBS I had no problems playing things on my Macbook. Now, with the wireless link between my AEBS and the mini connected to the Airport Express the problems have manifested.
posted by sub-culture at 12:46 PM on September 11, 2008
Response by poster: Oh, also, regarding the video player: 90% of my files are AVIs. Quicktime barely even plays the files to my MacBook (dies after a few seconds). I've played around with some VLC settings, like adjusting some buffering timeouts. Seems like a bandage solution because the problem is very marginally fixed when i mess with the settings.
posted by sub-culture at 12:48 PM on September 11, 2008
posted by sub-culture at 12:48 PM on September 11, 2008
Although there are a number of factors that could cause this, I have a hunch that you're experiencing the same problem that I had with my Airport setup. Here are some steps you can reproduce to see if it's the same issue:
1) Grab iStat or some other tool that will let you measure the current throughput on a given interface.
2) Start pinging your gateway.
3) Use to dd to transfer a large file from your Airport disk (something like 'dd if=/Volumes/AirportDisk/ReallyBigFile of=/dev/null bs=1k').
4) Watch your bandwidth monitor. If every 15-30 seconds, throughput drops to 0kbit, and your pings show packet loss, then you've got the same problem I had.
The good news is that there's a fix. The bad news is that it's not a terribly good fix. As far as I can tell, the WDS implementation in Apple's latest n base stations is buggy. If you disable WDS, and disable the "Extend a wireless network" and "Allow this network to be extended" options, the issue seems to go away. The downside is that this limits you to the range of one base station. For me this wasn't a big deal, as 802.11n allows a single station to cover my whole house, but it could be a deal-breaker for you.
If the issue doesn't go away, then you may be looking at a hardware issue. Some of the AEBS overheat and become flaky during prolonged transfers, so you might have to call up AppleCare and talk your way to a new one.
Best of luck!
posted by -1 at 1:10 PM on September 11, 2008
1) Grab iStat or some other tool that will let you measure the current throughput on a given interface.
2) Start pinging your gateway.
3) Use to dd to transfer a large file from your Airport disk (something like 'dd if=/Volumes/AirportDisk/ReallyBigFile of=/dev/null bs=1k').
4) Watch your bandwidth monitor. If every 15-30 seconds, throughput drops to 0kbit, and your pings show packet loss, then you've got the same problem I had.
The good news is that there's a fix. The bad news is that it's not a terribly good fix. As far as I can tell, the WDS implementation in Apple's latest n base stations is buggy. If you disable WDS, and disable the "Extend a wireless network" and "Allow this network to be extended" options, the issue seems to go away. The downside is that this limits you to the range of one base station. For me this wasn't a big deal, as 802.11n allows a single station to cover my whole house, but it could be a deal-breaker for you.
If the issue doesn't go away, then you may be looking at a hardware issue. Some of the AEBS overheat and become flaky during prolonged transfers, so you might have to call up AppleCare and talk your way to a new one.
Best of luck!
posted by -1 at 1:10 PM on September 11, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
Also your odd network configuration may be the culprit, have you tried wiring in the Mini to your AEBS and seeing if the problems are still there?
posted by wongcorgi at 10:54 AM on September 11, 2008