Is 10G a good option

[geopfarth]

My system is built to support a Plex media center. I have noticed that when I have 2 streams internally, errors pop up saying my connection speed does not support the native bit rate. All of the internal network interfaces are 1Gbps and I have a "prosumer" Netgear web managed switch, and a Netgear Nighthawk X6 AC 3200 for a router. The server hardware does not seem like it is being taxed very hard (specifics are in my signature), and I am wondering if it is time to upgrade the switch and/or router combination I am running. I have a Cisco switch with a pair of 10GBps Optical SFP+ connectors and could add a 10G card to the server, but it's a 48 port switch and I have about 6 ports that would be utilized. I thought about buying one of the Netgear GS110EMX switches to get 10G over Ethernet (I wired my house with CAT6).

I was hoping someone on the forums might be able to give me some pointers or advice on network cards, the 10G resource looks like it is about a year old and there might be newer or better information.

THanks in advance.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Considering that a regular BD movie typically peaks at 50Mbit/s and UHD-BD at 100Mbit/s, I suspect the problem lies elsewhere. Have you checked the lower layers (cabling, switch hasn't suddenly decided to autonegotiate to 100Mbps?)

 

[geopfarth]

Considering that a regular BD movie typically peaks at 50Mbit/s and UHD-BD at 100Mbit/s, I suspect the problem lies elsewhere. Have you checked the lower layers (cabling, switch hasn't suddenly decided to autonegotiate to 100Mbps?)

Thanks for helping me out! I checked all of the settings on the switch and router and everything is reporting back at 1Gbps. The switch isn't terribly sophisticated in management options, but it seems to be working correctly. The Router has the ability to prioritize packets to specific endpoints and I have the PLEX, and both the TVs set at the highest priority. Most of the cabling is pre-fab CAT6, but the stuff I had to tip personally still tested out as 10G capable on a Fluke tester I borrowed, so that should not be a problem.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Check the FreeNAS reporting page (or your switch, if it has the option) to see what the actual network throughput is on the port(s) that FreeNAS is connected to. I'm still quite skeptical that you're actually hitting a network bottleneck since the only kind of video that would need that kind of bandwidth to not fall over would be something uncompressed or using lossless compression - 1Gbps is a hell of a lot when you're talking in the context of H.264 or H.265 codecs.

But, on the other hand, my signature holds true - there's no kill like overkill, and if your cabling is capable of 10Gbps and you want it ... go for it. I'd just hate to see you put in the work and still have a problem doing two streams at once.

 

[Jailer]

I have no issues streaming to a laptop, a tv and my desktop simultaniously over 1Gb. There is definitley a problem somewhere else.

 

[ryanakata]

Your networking definitely is not the issue here. I'd monitor your CPU usage during transcoding to see how hard it is being taxed. With dual Xeons in your signature you should be doing plenty fine on most transcoding unless you have multiple running at the same time, or transcoding to slow storage, especially if plex is installed on the flash drives.

I highly suggest you grab a $50 SSD and move your jails over to them to help. Moving my plex install to a SSD helped enough to more than justify the cost. I can help you with migrating the install if you decide to go that route. Can you confirm where plex is currently installed?

 

[Jailer]

I highly suggest you grab a $50 SSD and move your jails over to them to help.

I also have zero issues with my jails installed on my main pool that is currently 70% full. I see little value in moving jails to an SSD, especially if there in no redundancy.

 

[ryanakata]

I also have zero issues with my jails installed on my main pool that is currently 70% full. I see little value in moving jails to an SSD, especially if there in no redundancy.

I agree, but if his jails are installed on his 16GB flash drives like another user on here did, then that may very well be his problem on transcodes.

 

[kdragon75]

Lest TEST a few things. Look into network performance testing with iperf or jperf. Start by testing from FreeNAS to a wired PC, the try wireless in the same are as the Plex client or preferably on the plex client if possible.