Hello I am currently trying to figure out if this product will work as I want it to. Here is my current setup:

HDTV OTA antenna -> HDhomerun (OTA to ethernet) -> Apple Airport Extreme wireless -> Apple Airport Express Wireless -> Media Center TV

The problem is not the connection strength as it reads “Excellent at 54mbps” however I think that is misleading and I am getting reduced bandwith or bursty signal. The HDTV video will not function as a result.

Will this product work in it’s place? The site says you guarantee 20 Mbps over 4000 sq/feet ? Does that include walls and interferance?

Thanks

-Charles

Hi Charles,

The video streaming rate for the HD OTV broadcasts can vary from < 8Mbps to > 20Mbps. And also wireless performance will vary depending on the environment you are in. If you have 2.4Ghz cordless phone or any other sources of interference, you may not get full 20Mbps throughput.

That said, I personally tried video network using 2825-US and 2111 in 3000 sqft home and reliably streamed 20Mbps video content. The equipments involved were Core Duo iMac as a server, 2825-US, 2111, MacBook as the STB, and HDTV. I used VLC on iMac and MacBook. The connection to HDTV was DVI to HDMI cable.

Hope that helps.

Kind Regards,

Ruckus Support

Sorry I am unfamilliar with your product numbers. which ones are which ? Do I need to buy 2 products? Why?

Also I am not in a house but a large apartment building. When I pull up MacStumbler or iStumbler I can clearly see 15 different wireless LANs at times. They probably are providing some interferance as well. Will this impact your device as it probably has mine?

Thanks

-Charles

Ok I found it on the pictures:

The Media Flex NG transmitter /Router is the 2825 The MediaFlex Adapter receiver is the 2111

Why would I need the receiver??? Does the 2825 not work just as well with any 802.11g receiver?

-Charles

Here is a link to my tuner as well. I want to be able to hook up the MediaFlex to this directly. It requires a DHCP router but that is basically the only requirement. I think it would be a very slick solution to watch HDTV from any computer or Media Center in the house.

http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun

It requires a very solid wireless connection however. This has been the problem thus far. What are your thoughts ? Recommendations? Why?

-Charles

Hi,

You are getting TV signal wirelessly displayed on your HDTV but it is not consistent is that correct?

Yes the wireless signal seems to be the problem. Even though it is reading a signal strenght of excellent at 54Mbps I think that it is bursty and this causes drop outs for HDTV.

Ok I have my new 2825 Router and preliminary tests are not that great. Only 30 feet away and around a slight bend not a hard corner with the 2825 about 3 feet off the ground,

Transmit Details Good Packets: 64 (0.0/sec) Number of Retries: 171 (0.0/sec) Physical Layer Data Rate: 36.0 Mbps Throughput Estimate: 11.2 Mbps Packet Error Rate: 48 (0.0/sec) Estimated SNR: 10 dB

Receive Details Good Packets: 435 (4.0/sec) Discards by CRC Error: 86 (0.0/sec)

The throughput varies from 32- 11 Mbps which really cannot go below 25 if HDTV is being used. I also found that the unit works much better if no other devices are hard connected to the router LAN ports and it is not the primary router to the outside internet.

These results are when connected as follows:

DLink Cable Modem – 2825 ))))) Computer

I will try another configuration and post back

Hi,

Ae you seeing pixalation and tiling when transmitting HDTV over wireless network? I am guessing you don’t have 2111, please confirm.

Thanks.

Ok So I hooked it up differently and got much better results as I thought, The trick was not to have this as my main NAT and use it only for Transmitting the HDTV/WIFI. It now points to DHCP of 10.0.1 from the Airport Extreme. While The airport handles all internet traffic the 2825 only handles HD Broadcasts from the HDhomerun.

The throuput signal is about 30 Mbps instead of 15. See Output below:

Transmit Details Good Packets: 2171950 (1865.0/sec) Number of Retries: 230726 (245.0/sec) Physical Layer Data Rate: 48.0 Mbps Throughput Estimate: 30.3 Mbps Packet Error Rate: 7 (0.0/sec) Estimated SNR: 33 dB

Receive Details Good Packets: 5086 (5.0/sec) Discards by CRC Error: 90 (0.0/sec)

For some reason it kills the throughput when it has to handle the WAN. But if it hangs off an existing LAN port it does almost twice the performance handling the 20Mbps HDTV requires.

Setup is still not ideal as follows:

Dlink Cable -> AirPort Extreme -> 2825 ))))) Computer HDhomerun -> 2825

No I don’t have a 2111, not sure why I would really want or need one?

Well it worked for a bit but now it is freezing every so often depending on the content HD or not. I can’t even watch a movie from my NAS server which is directly plugged into the 2825 router.

Using Netstumbler I can see that this unit is almost just as bursty as my new Airport Extreme. Even though the Admin panel reports :

Physical Layer Data Rate: 48.0 Mbps Throughput of 32Mbps

This should be plenty if it was solid. Netstumbler indicates otherwise. Anyone have any tweaks or ideas on settings that might improve my connection?

Again 30 feet away with a slight bend (45 degrees maybe)

-Charles

Hey I just noticed that the far Right LED “Thumbs up” is OFF???

Transmit Details Good Packets: 2791 (2.0/sec) Number of Retries: 226 (0.0/sec) Physical Layer Data Rate: 54.0 Mbps Throughput Estimate: 35.7 Mbps Packet Error Rate: 1 (0.0/sec) Estimated SNR: >49 dB

What exactly does this mean???

-Charles

Hi Charles,

The Off LED indicates WLAN is not enabled. Go to http://support.ruckuswireless.com/documents/6 to get more information regarding the 2825 product. Btw, have you seen any problems when watching HDTV over the air?

HTH

“WLAN is not enabled” ??? What does this mean? I have read through the manual a few times. There is no mention of enabling a WLAN. I thought this was the WLAN “Wireless Local Area Network”. Here is my connection:

DLINK Cable Modem -> Airport Extreme -> Ruckus 2825 WAN port

At the same time :

Antenna -> HDhomerun -> Ruckus 2825 LAN port

The HDTV is studdery with the wireless even with a throughput of 32Mbps. As a said before it is likely due to the burstyness of the reception from what Netstumbler tells me. With a hard wired connection the reception is perfect. Streaming Movies from a computer on one of the LAN ports over the Wireless connection is also Studdery and not watchable. As it will cause a whole system to freeze up.

Still doen’t understand the WLAN signal quality LED and why mine is not lit up. Please explain as I think it could mean something… At least I hope.

-Charles

Hi cdickinson66,

I see from your posts above that you mentioned couple of issues: 1)performance and 2)LED.

As for the LED, the Air Quality LED will be lit if you have wireless client connected to Video WLAN of the 2825. You must be connecting your computer to the Data WLAN. Please refer to 2825 User Manual for details on Video/Data WLAN. You can configure Video WLAN when you log in with Super user credential. You can find the login information in the User Manual.

For the performance issue, did you disable to wireless function on Airport Extreme? It is highly probable that AE is interfering with 2825. What is the distance between AE and 2825? And please check which channel AE is using and make sure you pick different channel on 2825? I wold separate them by about 5 channels.

And also for Video streaming, I would suggest that you use Video WLAN and put the video server to WAN port of the 2825. The Ruckus MediaFlex product is optimized for IPTV service and typical configuration is to have the source of the video coming in to WAN port and stream through Video WLAN to VF2111.

I would also check the streaming rate of your HD content. They could be encoded with higher bit rate than any 802.11g wireless products can maintain.

Kind Regards,

Ruckus Support

Ok I have configured it as you said with the Media Center attaching to the VLAN once enabled using the superuser login. The results are pretty much the same as the DATA WLAN here are the stats for the past 24 hours :

Transmit Details Good Packets: 26150472 (1860.0/sec) Number of Retries: 4474628 (168.0/sec) Physical Layer Data Rate: 48.0 Mbps Throughput Estimate: 31.6 Mbps Packet Error Rate: 4 (2.0/sec) Estimated SNR: 32 dB

Receive Details Good Packets: 26471 (0.0/sec) Discards by CRC Error: 794 (0.0/sec)

**The Signal Quality LED is now solid green

1. Seems ok but I still have a studder once in a while durning a HDTV broadcast. 2. When watching a Video_TS folder (DVD video) from the server (connected via WAN port) it will freeze up every so often. This completely locks up the Media Center while the resend requests finally get resolved.

So I think one of the main problems with this device is that it is only improving my reception and not my transmission. I have concluded this by the fact that Continous streaming Video (IPTV or HDTV etc) works better then watching server based video (VIDEO_TS folders). When a DVD is ripped onto a Storage device it is not just one big file but mutiple *.VOB files. I believe that when the viewer hits the end iof one file and requests to fetch the next file the 2825 does not improve in the reception of the Media Center’s transmitted messages thus causing a freeze.

THe bandwidth required for the 2 video formats is roughly :

HDTV = 20Mbps Video_TS = 10Mbps

So it cannot be the required bandwidth.

Maybe with the addition of the VF2111 this problem of “on-the-fly” requests could be resolved. I would be willing to try however I would want to return both units if this did not solve the problem. I would point out that the product description for the 2825 guarantes the 20Mbps required for HDTV over a 3000-4000 sqft home. This is not true for this product alone but maybe it is true for the combination of the 2 products together.

-Charles

PS. Hopefully my testing is valuable to you guys as I think this could be a really great technology for using with all forms of Media and not just IPTV. Remember that over-the-air HDTV is everywhere now and the 2825 bundled with Silicondust’s HDhomerun is a great solution! Even better then IPTV and it is free.

Wait a second… I was reading about the 2111 adapter, now I have a really important question?

Why Can’t I use just 2 of the 2111s instead of my 2825? I do not use any of the LAN ports of the 2825 as Video LAN is only over the WAN port.

?? Will this work as well as 2825 – 2111?

-Charles

I ordered the 2111, we will see if my hunch was correct. Focusing the beam in one direction will only help in that direction. So requests made in the other direction will cause video to freeze while the whole system tries to recover.

As for studdering in the Rx direction then a focused reception will improve that as well a little maybe, also it will reduce the interference factor in catching the signal.

I will report back ASAP.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help. I think this product could be an answer for a lot of things relating to media centers on any platform.

-Charles

OK I installed the 2111 with the Auto Provisioning routine. It didn’t really help the throughput data rate so far. Still mine is at 35Mbps which isn’t enough for 2 HD streams but should be plenty for one.

The Movie watching was significantlly better! As I suspected the return path was much better with a focused “Receiver” and never once skipped durning the playback of a movie. Also Navigating the menus in the movie database was much faster too.

Overall I would say thus far the product is a go as far as usabilty with a Media Center and streaming HDTV and Video_TS folders (DVD movies) via wireless. I do think I need a little more then one night to see if the performance can be increased or it stops working for whatever reason.

I will keep you updated…

Media Server & HDhomerun -> Router -> WAN of 2825 (VLAN) ........... 2111 -> Windows XP Media Center

Thanks

-Charles

Hi Charles,

Thank you for sharing your test results. I am glad that your set up is working to your satisfaction.

Kind Regards,

Ruckus Support