cowger

Update: I found that WINS was enabled on my Windows server, pointing at my NAS box (192.168.1.111). I have no idea why this was there or if it's needed. In any case, I deleted that WINS server address from the TCP/IP configuration on the Windows server and that seems to have stopped that error message. Time will tell if other things now stop working as a result of this... hopefully not...

If I may, I'd like to resurrect this thread as one of the problems listed above has yet to be resolved. I have the following configuration: 192.168.1.110 - "MLSERVER", a Windows 10 server running some automation software from Cinemar (now Allonis) 192.168.1.111 - "MLDATA", running UnRaid 6.10.3. 192.168.1.112 - Dune HD video player All connected through a Cisco switch I'm having occasional access issues where my UnRaid machine ("MLDATA") disappears for short periods of time from both MLSERVER and the Dune box. I continue to receive these error messages on 8-minute intervals and am not sure if this is the root cause or not: Sep 15 07:45:34 MLData nmbd[2637]: [2022/09/15 07:45:34.432049, 0] ../../source3/nmbd/nmbd_incomingrequests.c:173(process_name_refresh_request) Sep 15 07:45:34 MLData nmbd[2637]: Error - should be sent to WINS server Sep 15 07:45:34 MLData nmbd[2637]: [2022/09/15 07:45:34.440577, 0] ../../source3/nmbd/nmbd_incomingrequests.c:170(process_name_refresh_request) Sep 15 07:45:34 MLData nmbd[2637]: process_name_refresh_request: unicast name registration request received for name MLSERVER<20> from IP 192.168.1.110 on subnet UNICAST_SUBNET. MLDATA is set as the Local Master Browser. From that, I would think that receiving a "process_name_refresh_request" from the Windows machine would be expected, but obviously that is not the case. I clearly don't understand WINS and why it's necessary. From googling it, it seems to be a now outdated protocol relating to name resolution. Is it necessary? One of the functions of this NAS box is to serve movies up to my Dune box via SMB... is WINS a necessary part of that protocol? Attaching a couple of log files in case that helps. Thank you! mldata-diagnostics-20220911-1040.zip syslog

Great, this is exactly what I was looking to understand. Thank you!! It seems like this is really a necessary feature to enable. I wonder why they label this "not recommended":

Got it, thank you very much, Frank, for getting me through this!!

Okay, so with my new understanding of bitrate, I searched through my various movies and found one with a bitrate of 43Mbps (which seems to be one of the highest in my library). Along with trying to play that file, I also was curious about the "Fast SMB access" setting within Dune: I have always kept that disabled, as enabling it comes with a strong warning about "you shouldn't do this if you don't know what you're doing" (which I clearly don't!). Curious, though, I tried enabling it... with good results: The cluster of network traffic above 14:42 is with "Fast SMB access" enabled. The right cluster is with it disabled. And video playback is correspondingly great with it enabled and unwatchable with it disabled. So, I will now enable this, needless to say. Does anyone know what "Fast SMB access" might mean? As mentioned previously, their documentation is pretty poor.

Got it, thank you. I just checked the "total bitrate" for this problem movie ("Rio", if it matters), and it's 36.8 Mbps. What's the effective "max" useable bitrate that can reliably go across a 100Mbps interface?

It is currently connected at 100Mb/s (I confirmed that it's not 1Gb via the Cisco switches lights). As I mentioned earlier, Dune has a "enable experimental 1Gbit Ethernet support" but that doesn't seem to work: This Dune box is ~10 years old and perhaps their LAN port just can't handle 1Gb. (Their documentation says nothing more than that the RJ45 connector on the rear panel is their LAN port.) I'm a little confused, however... isn't 100Mb/s fast enough to keep up with streaming a 1080p movie? I do agree that it's getting buffered within the switch... could that buffering algorithm be part of the problem?

Update: I don't believe that the WINS name registration request is the source of the problem (though it certainly IS a problem). It is happening on 8-minute intervals, and the stuttering / performance dropouts are more like every 30-45 seconds.

That device is a Windows server, something I purchased a decade ago as part of an overall movie server solution from a company called Cinemar. It also runs much of my home automation stuff, security cameras, etc. It is Windows 7, which I realize is ancient, but I haven't upgraded anything for fear of breaking things. Honestly, the whole "WINS server" thing to me is very confusing. I'm not a software expert by any means, so if something is broken because of that, I would not be surprised at all. I will look into the logs and the stuttering events and see if there's a correlation.

First, how do I get to the INTERFACE statistics screen above? I can't find that. Next, I don't know how to tell about the network port speed on Dune. Today I turned on "experimental 1Gbps" mode on Dune, but that doesn't seem to have had any effect. VLC: I downloaded VLC on a server attached to the same Cisco switch and played the same movie. Video was not smooth; I'm assuming that the server was having to do some soft transcoding. Here's the storage traffic during that time: For comparison, here's the storage traffic during a copy of a different movie from UnRaid to Dune's local HDD. Note similar dropouts in performance: Here's the network traffic during a subsequent play of the same movie right after the VLC play. Note the significant dropouts: And here's the associated storage traffic. I'm assuming that the NAS box was sourcing the movie from cache, since it just played on VLC 5 minutes before: And here's storage traffic playing a different movie (to get past the caching issue). Same (or worse) stuttering problem:

Here's the diagnostic file. Events: 1) ~8:45am (today) to ~9:30am - Copy file from UnRaid NAS to Dune HD local HDD 2) ~9:32 to ~9:38 - play movie from VLC on local server 3) ~9:40 to ~9:45 - play movie on Dune HD via network (note: appears to be cached - no storage activity) 4) ~9:47 to ~9:52 - play a different movie on Dune HD via network mldata-diagnostics-20220103-0953.zip

Thank you, Frank. 1. Rebooted everything: Dune, Cisco network switch, and the UnRaid NAS box. No apparent change. 2. Will attach to next post. 3. Not that I can see. All traffic appears to be just Reads. 4. Yes, straight stream of the *.M2TS file to the Dune HD player.

Thanks for the help. Disk4 does have some issues, but I don't believe it is related to this issue. 1. Cleared, then played this movie. All reads with this particular movie coming from disk5 and only that drive. Zero on all other drives. 2. Network copy of that movie is about 73-74 MB/s. 3. No WiFi in the path for either playing or copying.

I'm having a consistent problem streaming ripped BluRay videos from my UnRaid setup, and I'm not really sure where to start. This has been an issue for some time now but seems to be getting worse since installing the latest UnRaid OS. It has mostly been simple audio dropouts in the past but now the video is stuttering which has made watching movies unacceptably bad. My setup is an Intel i3-2100 dual core box with 8 drives connected via a Cisco switch to a Dune HD player. UnRaid OS is 6.9.2. When I copy a movie to the Dune's local HDD and play it from there, it performs flawlessly. Via the network, however, the stutter happens about every 20-40 seconds (fairly random), corresponding with the dropouts in performance shown on the bottom two graphs: Obviously the Network and Storage graphs are highly correlated, and I'm assuming that the Storage is causing the poor performance, but I' not sure. For storage, I have a mix of WD and Seagate drives, including two of the Seagate ST8000DM004 8TB drives. I recently discovered that these are SMR, and I have one as the parity drive (I now realize this is not good), but from what I've read on SMR, it shouldn't be a problem for playback. (I have a new 8TB CMR drive ordered to replace the parity drive, but I have a feeling that this won't solve my video playback issue.) Thank you for any help or ideas on how I can diagnose this issue.

I just tried connecting as a guest, and that seems to have worked! Kodi is scanning through my NAS box now for movies... definitely progress. Thank you!!