Help with sharing files over network!!

Nickmax1 · August 21, 2019 at 10:12 AM

I have a RPIP3B+ in my living room connected via USD to an external HD. This hosts all of my movies.

I have another RPI 3B+ in my bedroom upstairs connected to the network wirelessly.

I have played movies in my bedroom for the last few years flawlessly, even large (4gb+) movies with no issue.

Lately however i cant get anything to stream other than really low bitrate smaller videos (TV shows for example) - anything vaguely sizeable and it needs to buffer constantly and is unwatchable.

I connect to my RP downstairs via SMB (cannot for the life of me get any other way to connect to work, (NFS for example)) and i have, as of last night reset my Libreelec and started again to see if that helps....it does not.

I have tried amending the video cache as well by making an advancedsettings.xml but that makes not a jot of difference.

any ideas?

PS - both my pis are on the latest stable version of LE.

**blueribb** · August 21, 2019 at 1:58 PM

Just for a test, try moving the bedroom RPi much closer to the living room if possible. If there is no buffering, that would indicate the problem is with your wireless network. Are you using the RPi's internal Wi-Fi or are you using a USB Wi-Fi dongle ?

Maybe something is interfering with your wireless network.

Try rebooting your router too.

**S80_UK** · August 21, 2019 at 2:26 PM

Quote from blueribb

Just for a test, try moving the bedroom RPi much closer to the living room if possible.

Strictly speaking, you need to try shortening the distances to the router, since the communication between the devices will always have the router in the middle (unless you set up an ad-hoc network without a router). Moving the Pi in the bedroom won't help if the router is also in the bedroom, for example. Shortening the distances, check for possible interference from other routers (neighbours' networks), rebooting the router, etc. can all help. Many routers have quite poor software which can degrade the router performance over time, and a reboot can help in such cases. If you have an Android device, there are WiFi analyzer apps available to help find less congested spaces in teh WiFi spectrum.

Nickmax1 · August 22, 2019 at 9:36 AM

I understand being far away from the router will come at a performance cost, but i have had this particular setup for about 3 years now!

i switched to a different channel which has helped a bit - the larger files still struggle (which they never did before) so will keep playing around with it.

Before this version of LE i used to be able to toggle an info panel in the top left of the screen which told me how much data was being buffered. cant seem to get that anymore which may be of interest?