NAS Server - reading cache

[barbule]

Hello,

I much love silverjuke from some years. Using it with a NAS over an gigabit LAN, i find the way it read files not optimal : as i can see it loads parts of the file with around 500 kbps. That way, the load of the LAN network is much heavyer than it could be if the entire file would be loaded in the memory. An option in that way would be very appreciated.

Note that i simply use the microsoft network with linux server (samba).

[SilverEagle]

Hi barbule,

> the load of the LAN network is much heavyer than it could be

What do you mean by "heavier"? If a file is loaded in small parts or in big parts, either way the effective dataload is the same, and usually even the packets seen on the line are identical - apart from the point in time you see them obviously. And usually a device or application is considered less of a drain on networkresources ("lighter") if it spreads its requests over more time instead of clustering them all together.

The choice for frame size is not up to an application, but even then if you would for instance change to jumbo frames the amount of network traffic would not significantly differ, packet overhead being below 1% for each (advantages of jumbo frames lie elsewhere).

Besides all this: gigabit raw throughput is 125 Mbyte/sec, reallife big file read performance of a good NAS is about 50Mbyte/sec. And over here even at a 100Mbit LAN (12.5Mbyte theoretical cap) the Silverjuke reads at 500 Kbit/sec are only just blinking the 10% led at the switch.

Could it be you are experiencing some other problem what only on the outside appears to be a high networkload?

Regards,
SilverEagle

[barbule]

I must precise my meaning : I use Silverjuke with files on a NAS, but I work in the same time, so i'm reading/writing files often on the NAS, including some very big files (over 100 mb). Due to the fact that Silverjuke read continuesly small parts of file, the result is not optimal for me. I even observe, times to times, system hung. If it was possible, through an option to chose the way Silverjuke act with files (parts, size of parts, all file), i would realy appreciate.

[SilverEagle]

barbule wrote:
> I must precise my meaning : I use Silverjuke with
> files on a NAS, but I work in the same time, so
> i'm reading/writing files often on the NAS,
> including some very big files (over 100 mb).

OK, that explains your problem.

First of all: it has nothing to do with Silverjukes request being 'heavy' or not, it is just windows not giving I/O to the program whatever it's request is. Secondly: if you are calling 100mb 'very big' I presume you are on a budget consumer NAS, often with abysmal throughput. In this case I can imagine you preferring a readahead big enough to buffer the entire file - better starting a songs a second later then having hickups in the middle...

@Team:
This is the second time this comes up on the forum, see also . Is the reading in a separate thread from the decoding and playing? If so implementing (optional) bigger buffers could help these users, and probably others as I can imagine these cheap NAS-es getting more and more popular. But if not a separate thread it probably won't solve a thing as the C-lib will just block reading anyway. Or maybe implement optionally reading files completely before starting to play, with a userselectable buffersize limit? (All this just my 2 cts, probably way down on the prioritylist. Or not even on it ).

SilverEagle