SMB slow speed

I have a raspberry Pi 2 with LibreElec installed. Been using this setup for years but have noticed an issue in the last 6 months or so. When I try to play a relatively high bit rate video over smb I get buffering. Files are located on a Windows machine. This didn't used to happen.

For a test, I tried playing the video using the Plex add-on in Kodi and the file played back perfectly. I thought maybe Plex was transcoding the file but I checked and it said it's playing at original quality.

Why would Plex not buffer but my SMB connection does?

I have wired connection btw.

How would I make a Linux mount? Would I need to install a Linux distro on my pi.

I'm looking at the CIFS sample now. It looks like it will take some time for me to figure it out.

As a side note, I tried setting up a FTP server on my PC and was able to playback my file perfectly on my Pi.

If I can't figure this out the FTP share is a fine alternative for me.

So I finally got around to trying a system(linux) mount and my file plays back perfectly that way. Any suggestions on why Kodi's internal SMB client is slower for me?