SMB Shares Stutter after Router Change

1st Official Post

    Hello everyone,

    I have a very bizarre issue happening.

    I changed my router from TP-Link Archer C2 to Netgear R7000P AC2300.

    My Box is a Mini m8s - Amlogic S905 chipset connected with a wired connection (100Mbit).

    I have my shares on my Windows 10 server using SMB (client is using the server's name and not IP). Server is also connected with cable (1Gbit)

    Everything was working fine until I changed my router 2 days ago. Now the local network streams from the server take time before starting and stutter when they start. They constantly stop for buffering.

    I measured the speed with iperf3 and it measuer as 80-90Mbit which is fine.

    I also have a Serviio DLNA. I tried playing the same files using Serviio DLNA instead of SMB and they work flawlessly.

    I tried re-adding the shared folders but this didn't work.

    I contacted NetGear to see what they suggest, but they were not helpful.

    I connected the server and media box to the old router only and it worked without an issue immediately.

    So I am at a loss here. I am not sure what may be causing this. Any suggestions will be helpful.

    Is it something in the router's configuration that may be causing this or is it the SMB protocol that is acting out because of the new router?

    The only thing I can think of that I have not yet tried is creating a completely new SMB share on the computer and adding it to Kodi.

    I somehow managed to resolve the stutter. I am not really sure how. I enabled all the SMB features in the Windows 10 additional Features last night. The "Client" was not enabled previously. How it worked with one router and didn't work with the other one is beyond me.

    Today, when I turned on the server and box and tried it - it was working fine. Even better than before.

    • Official Post

    Possibly it's a SMB version 'confusion' and subsequent Windows confusion. Plenty of things have changed, externally and internally, since Windows changed their SMB support a couple of times.

    Some people have changed to Hanewin's NFS server if you want to stick to Windows. UPnP wouldn't be my choice of file protocol.

    UPnP is not an option, since using the DLNA I can not create my library the way it is setup with SMB now.

    Considering that NFS requires 3rd party software to be setup, is it in any way better than the SMB option? Apart from not being reliant on Windows' decisions to change a complete protocol in a simple update and break everything.

    • Official Post

    Any change in file protocols would break your Kodi library, that's true. Kodi is still quite rigid in that area. Although when you first do a full export of your libraries, importing them will go so much faster than scraping your files as if it were the first time.

    Personally I'ved used NFS via Ubuntu Linux (10.04 thru 16.04) as a server solution for 7-8 years now, and "it just works".

    It is possible to have a Ubuntu Server set up including the NFS stuff in under 15 minutes. That is, once you know how.

    Using an old PC as "target practice" is ideal for such things.

    I do not plan on switching to a dedicated Media server any time soon. I am using my Windows desktop which is pretty quiet and completely fine for my intended purposes. I was considering a pre-built HTPC (Dell, Acer, Intel) at one point, but they are rather expensive for something you use for just watching movies.

    My question was mainly if there was a benefit to switching my Windows server from SMB to NFS Kodi shares.

    I had to re-do my whole library yesterday anyway. :) While troubleshooting my initial issue, I messed up one of the folder locations in the Multi-source item "Movies" I had added and the movies from 1 of the 3 folders stopped appearing, with Kodi refusing to re-add them for some reason. So I just ran the scan for all 3 folders from scratch.

    Now that you mention it, I will consider a way to make regular backups of the library and settings, just in case.
    Any Add-on suggestions for achieving this?

    Ideally it would be an add-on that will simply sync the initial backup to any changes of the current library (remove the removed items and add the new items instead of backing up the whole library every time). I don't know if this is even possible, but it will be a great feature for regular scheduled backups, since the full backup takes a significant amount of time.

    • Official Post
    Quote from w00x

    My question was mainly if there was a benefit to switching my Windows server from SMB to NFS Kodi shares.

    Once you get past the SMB version and user quirkiness, there is no big difference. They are different means to the same end. You just choose what works for you best.

    Quote from w00x

    Now that you mention it, I will consider a way to make regular backups of the library and settings, just in case.

    The LibreELEC Settings Add-on has a Backup/Restore tool onboard, which will do fine for settings of Kodi setup. If you do your video/music libraries via MySQL, then other tools are also required.

    Oh, no. Not at all. I have only one Kodi client. I did not even know that using the same database for multiple devices is an option. I thought that if you have multiple devices using the same server and shared folders, they will create identical libraries.

    I do my library the old fashioned way so backing it up will be easy. I hope. :)