2017-10-23, 11:52
Edit: I moved the thread from the Windows section, as this is a general question - not OS related :-)
Good morning!
New to the forum - but been a user of Kodi for many years. Luckily for me, all my issues, problems and fixes have been well documented here earlier, so i did not really need to register ;-) (Thanks, guys!)
But this time, i'm in search of some wisdom from the fellas on here who have got experience with networking, streaming and server management. This might also be a thing that can be fixed inside Kodi..
Quick backgroud:
About 2015, me and four other friends got together and buildt our first file server. The idea came when we talked together and found out that we each had a large archive of movies, series, etc.
We buildt our server on a AMD X64 platform, the Phenom 2 Black to be precise, with 16Gb's of HyperX DDR3, and all the other usual goodies. A clean, well designed case with lots of cooling.
We also threw in another gigabit card, as our main focus was encryption and connectivity. Since i had worked a lot with OpenVPN in the past, we decided to run a VPN Server on the machine to allow us access to the archive.
After (many, many) hours of flicking, tinkering and testing, we got it sorted to the point where we could stream and watch the content without any issues.
The server has never skipped a beat and works well, paired up with 6x4TB WD NAS drives, running Microsoft Server 2012 on a separate drive. We also got another server with the same amount of storage, also running Server 2012, with Acronis doing incremental backups of the archive once every week. The disks are running in RAID0 / Striped volumes, for speed and easy access again trough Windows only - should the motherboard or any other component die.
Us (the users) have all got ASUS routers running Merlin on them, so we added the VPN connection directly to our routers on different subnets, and there again adding multiple IP's to the servers network adapter. In this case, the VPN adapter. So the users have "got" the server on their respective local networks on different adresses, so that hell ain't breaking loose should the routers start pushing adresses across four different DHCP's. We learned that the hard way. On my network, the servers are 10.0.10.150/151, and on the next users network, the server is 10.0.11.150/151, and so on.
Now to our problem:
First, we ran the server at my place where we had access to a 80/80 fiberconnection. It all worked very well. Even a bit overkill, should i say the least. Then, because i had to remodel my appartment, we moved the servers to my mates house, who had a 500/50 VDSL line, but a much more suited basement where the servers could keep cool. It worked well there too, and the VPN never skipped a beat. But then, the provider downgraded the line to a 100/30 line as the plan for the 500/50 went up with around 4500 NOK a year (aprox $570 USD) - and we figured that it wouldnt have much impact on the server as a 30 up-connection should be more than enough to stream and buffer a video, even with sizes up to 3-4Gb.
And here is the issue we got; now, sometimes, it works well. Smaller files such as series, older Xvid and DivX-movies streams like a charm. But sometimes when we start up a newer video, for instance a x264/2,5Gb sized movie, it can start well, but 4-5 minutes in, it buffers like hell.
Then i thought; the connection is the issue here, as we never had this problem before.. but really is it? can it be that Kodi simply stops buffering after some time? I understand the new speed is (slower) - but not that slow to where it should be a problem. If i copy a movie directly to my desktop, i get speeds that are way over what is needed to stream a movie!
The more i think about it, it seems like Kodi downloads aprox 5-10% of the movie, and then stops. To be clear; this is standalone Kodi apps running on Nvidia Shield TV boxes. Never been tinkered with. Then i read a bunch of threads about editing a .XML file to add more buffering/time of buffering to fix the problem. But then i read another thread, where a guy who had been working with Kodi for many many years, claming that this was useless, as it did not fix anything. In fact; it could make it worse.
So before i go in to start testing, writing and re-configuring stuff; is it possible to fix the issue with buffering and/or speeds within the Kodi app itself? or is there another addon, a tweak or a magical solution that increases buffering speed/time?
Thanks in advance! :-)
Good morning!
New to the forum - but been a user of Kodi for many years. Luckily for me, all my issues, problems and fixes have been well documented here earlier, so i did not really need to register ;-) (Thanks, guys!)
But this time, i'm in search of some wisdom from the fellas on here who have got experience with networking, streaming and server management. This might also be a thing that can be fixed inside Kodi..
Quick backgroud:
About 2015, me and four other friends got together and buildt our first file server. The idea came when we talked together and found out that we each had a large archive of movies, series, etc.
We buildt our server on a AMD X64 platform, the Phenom 2 Black to be precise, with 16Gb's of HyperX DDR3, and all the other usual goodies. A clean, well designed case with lots of cooling.
We also threw in another gigabit card, as our main focus was encryption and connectivity. Since i had worked a lot with OpenVPN in the past, we decided to run a VPN Server on the machine to allow us access to the archive.
After (many, many) hours of flicking, tinkering and testing, we got it sorted to the point where we could stream and watch the content without any issues.
The server has never skipped a beat and works well, paired up with 6x4TB WD NAS drives, running Microsoft Server 2012 on a separate drive. We also got another server with the same amount of storage, also running Server 2012, with Acronis doing incremental backups of the archive once every week. The disks are running in RAID0 / Striped volumes, for speed and easy access again trough Windows only - should the motherboard or any other component die.
Us (the users) have all got ASUS routers running Merlin on them, so we added the VPN connection directly to our routers on different subnets, and there again adding multiple IP's to the servers network adapter. In this case, the VPN adapter. So the users have "got" the server on their respective local networks on different adresses, so that hell ain't breaking loose should the routers start pushing adresses across four different DHCP's. We learned that the hard way. On my network, the servers are 10.0.10.150/151, and on the next users network, the server is 10.0.11.150/151, and so on.
Now to our problem:
First, we ran the server at my place where we had access to a 80/80 fiberconnection. It all worked very well. Even a bit overkill, should i say the least. Then, because i had to remodel my appartment, we moved the servers to my mates house, who had a 500/50 VDSL line, but a much more suited basement where the servers could keep cool. It worked well there too, and the VPN never skipped a beat. But then, the provider downgraded the line to a 100/30 line as the plan for the 500/50 went up with around 4500 NOK a year (aprox $570 USD) - and we figured that it wouldnt have much impact on the server as a 30 up-connection should be more than enough to stream and buffer a video, even with sizes up to 3-4Gb.
And here is the issue we got; now, sometimes, it works well. Smaller files such as series, older Xvid and DivX-movies streams like a charm. But sometimes when we start up a newer video, for instance a x264/2,5Gb sized movie, it can start well, but 4-5 minutes in, it buffers like hell.
Then i thought; the connection is the issue here, as we never had this problem before.. but really is it? can it be that Kodi simply stops buffering after some time? I understand the new speed is (slower) - but not that slow to where it should be a problem. If i copy a movie directly to my desktop, i get speeds that are way over what is needed to stream a movie!
The more i think about it, it seems like Kodi downloads aprox 5-10% of the movie, and then stops. To be clear; this is standalone Kodi apps running on Nvidia Shield TV boxes. Never been tinkered with. Then i read a bunch of threads about editing a .XML file to add more buffering/time of buffering to fix the problem. But then i read another thread, where a guy who had been working with Kodi for many many years, claming that this was useless, as it did not fix anything. In fact; it could make it worse.
So before i go in to start testing, writing and re-configuring stuff; is it possible to fix the issue with buffering and/or speeds within the Kodi app itself? or is there another addon, a tweak or a magical solution that increases buffering speed/time?
Thanks in advance! :-)
