I have an LG gadget for accessing Netflix which has been acting strange for some time. In the middle of the movie, it stops while trying to catch up. Works great on a PC on the same LAN. Being a software engineer, I assumed a memory leak in the firmware. But it worked okay on wireless. The problem seemed to be the wired connection. My curiosity got the better of me, so I hooked up the PC to the Ethernet cable going to the power line adapter: 2.5 Mbps download. The cable from adapter to LG gadget was Cat5. Replaced it with a CAT6e cable; problem solved. Also explains miserable data rates at the PC in garage; another CAT5 cable.
UPDATE: One of the power line adapters is running slow, the more distant one not at all. Some more debugging required.
My experience with streaming software leaves me, as a software engineer, very underimpressed. I have used a couple of different ones (Dish Network Anywhere, for example). If they get network congestion, they just stop. The rarely recover - they just hang. Forever.
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to get better designers and coders into that area. Network congestion happens a lot.