2010-10-02, 00:22
Zer0x123 Wrote:1. Let's say i want these things playing 1080P content, that's heavier than 720P obviously. Now times that by the three units i'm planning out in the future, can my network handle all that at once with any skipping? Would i need to upgrade to a gigabit router or anything? I'm just trying to plan for the most intense situations this system would face.
You don't need to get an expensive gigabit router. Just get a decent gigabit switch and hang it off the router with one cable and run everything through the switch. Its what I do.
Quote:2. A much more simple question I'm a tad embaressed about. Can all three nettops access the same video file at the same time without a problem? Is this one of those situation where if a file is being accessed by one unit and another tries to access it will the NAS or nettop throw an error message out?
As long as you use a solution that can maximize network bandwidth on reads (which is why I scream Unraid in threads like these) then its very easy to have three or more clients. I have tried 5 clients with my Unraid box (on my affronted gigabit network) with success.
Quote:Those two questions should take care of my network concerns. And for my Nettop receivers i think i'm okay with the Asrocks. So finally my NAS needs to be addressed. I have no idea what unRaid is, yet i continually hear high praise for it. If anybody could expand on this i would be thankful.
Unraid is a Linux based NAS OS that runs off a pen drive and lets you fill a computer with harddrives for information for devices on your network (like an ION box). Unraid pro supports up to 20 drives. I personally have a ten drive Unraid box and a 16 drive Unraid box for my information that I have built this year.
The advantage of Unraid over regular raid (to me) is the fact that you can mix and match different brands and sizes of your hardrives in your array, it allows your hard drives to power down when you are not using them (makes them last longer, saves power), and it has read speeds that saturate a consumer gigabit network. Unraid does all this, and gives you parity protection so that if one of your hard drives die you can replace it without losing the data. Unraid's parity uses one drive (so every other drive can hold data which is superior to WHS), but each drive can be pulled out and read on a computer (unlike normal RAID where everything is lost if too many drives die).
The downsides of Unraid is that a computer has to be dedicated to the task (as in its just a NAS nothing else), and that its write speeds are kinda low but that doesn't matter because streaming to multiple clients is all about read speeds. Oh, and that it costs money but its worth it to me.
http://www.lime-technology.com/
