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I'm always fighting to get every last bit-per-second out of my home network, and I've always been disappointed with the results. For a little history:

Up until a few months ago, I had a 100BaseTX network. I only had 1 machine with a gigabit NIC though, so it never really mattered. We watch movies and TV over the network from a linux file server, and for a long time have been having problems related to overall network bandwidth.

It's not that a max. of 10 megabytes per second would really be a problem when it comes to playing video files. Even with only half that, it would be (theoretically) possible to play some pretty high-quality video.

The problem is in how the video files are shared, and how they're accessed by the programs playing them. I share via NFS (which, as far as I know – with the right options – is a pretty lightweight protocol, and is quite quick), but it doesn't seem to be very good at random-access within a file (nor does any other protocol I've tested). Worse, neither VLC nor QuickTime seems to be too good at buffering. VLC will let you specify how many milliseconds you want it to buffer. Only problem is when you want to fast-forward, rewind or pause. Then you get to deal with however much data is (or isn't) in the buffer. QuickTime just seems to suck serious ass when it comes to buffering (but QuickTime (sadly) has always sucked hard (which really hurts – why, Apple? why can you get so much right, and then fail so miserably with QuickTime, and CHARGE $30 FOR IT, on top of everything else?)).

So a theoretical 10 megs per second (and real-life 5-6 megs/second) doesn't really cut it.

Upgrading to gigabit got me up to a whopping 10-12 megs/second. I'd say "w00t", but I really don't think it'd come out very enthusiastically. I know the ethernet frame size can be a bottleneck – especially at 1500 bytes – but, I never knew it would make this big of a difference.

Our switches don't support Jumbo Frames, which is a pity. BUT, I finally got my lazy ass around to plugging the Mac Mini into the Linux file server directly (no switch involved), and got me some Jumbo-frame goodness.

42MB/s is sooooo great...

Believe it or not, iTunes knows what to do with a sound card capable of 192KHz sound output, and you can hear a difference, and it sounds better, and I'm totally amazed. This is so cool...

So, we've had a PowerBook G4 500MHz (yes, the original G4 PowerBook) that, after the screen backlight died, we were using as our TV (and sadly, it was the fastest computer in the house, minus the Linux file server). Unfortunately, that poor thing just wasn't cutting it anymore for playing back the video files I download (especially over the network). The term "dropped frames", in this case, is really an understatement. Try "totally frozen video playback and choppy audio", depending on the file format.

So, we got a Dual-core Intel Mac Mini.

I have played video files over the network on that thing while running a Software Update install, and burning a DVD at the same time. With not a single dropped frame.

:-)

Wow.

So, this year, it would seem that everyone is hopping on the April Fools' bandwagon – in a big way. A couple of my favorites are slashdot, which is currently PINK and featuring an amazing array of stories (some true, some not – good luck with differentiating), and the fake public service announcements done by the cast of The Office.

For the n^th time...

I guess let's try it again. I think this is version 5.0 of monkeyvoodoo. Here's hoping it lasts long enough for me to get some content up...

Oh, and if a link or something doesn't work... that's 'cause it's broken. And I know. :-P

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