The program allows you tremendous options in configuration as well as providing you with smart data on your drives (Need SP1 installed).

This is what my drives looked like when it was done optimizing the first time.  I excluded several drives/partitions such as the 100 meg partition on the primary drive, as well as the a 2T drive I use for backup, as it seemed to be pointless to run defrag on a backup drive (My Opinion).

Problems

The main issue I had was related to the Raid Mirrors both on my data drive and my OS drive (icydock with 2x 250 gig laptop drives).  It seems that PerfectDisk does not read drives that are mirrored correctly and sets up “SMARTPlacement” as the default optimization configuration for those drives.  On the RAID 5, it reads the drives as RAID uses “Consolidate Free Space” as the default method.  The issue is that SMARTPlacement does not seem to work correctly on a mirror so you have to manually change the method for those drives to “Defrag Only” or “Consolidate Free Space” to avoid the hang ups and other problems.  The other thing that choked me up a bit is the that by default the program tries to optimize the page file and the hibernation files.  Again, a complete waste of time which takes forever to perform with little to no value.  Fortunately you can excluded any folders or files you want from the process.  In the end, with a little bit of customizing, you are up and running with end results being very good.

Conclusion

In the beginning I was skeptical that it would benefit me when using RAID.  To my surprise, after my first optimization of my RAID array, I got a 10% gain in performance using ATTO as my benchmark.  Despite the fact that I had to do a bit of tweaking, this application surprised me and turned out to be very stable and very efficient.  It never used above 18% of CPU performance during optimization and it did not interfere with reading or writing to the arrays.  When I was using my server during optimization, it gave no perceivable difference in performance.  I have been running it for 3 weeks now on a schedule, and it has done a great job maintaining my RAID arrays.  So far the software has lived up to my expectations and I certainly am happy that it will keep my arrays performing at their optimum.

Click here to view the video

I am currently running a version of the job shown in the video with one additional modification, the captured XML data stream is transferred to my website via FTP and graphed using Google Docs.  That is what is so cool about SQL Server… it is very flexible!!!  Basically you are only limited by your imagination, hopefully this will spark some creativity in you.

jvk

Press Release:

San Francisco, Calif. – May 16, 2011 – Elgato today released a dual network tuner that allows users to watch HDTV wirelessly on either a Mac or PC. HDHomeRun connects to a TV antenna or digital cable and wirelessly streams live television in full HD to any Mac or PC in the house.

Powered by technology from SiliconDust, Elgato’s HDHomeRun is a network dual tuner for HDTV. The tuner works seamlessly on multiple computers. One person can watch and record TV on a Mac, and at the same time a second person can watch and record a different channel on a PC. HDHomeRun connects to your existing TV antenna or cable TV outlet, and to your router via Ethernet. This allows the device to remain concealed in a discreet location away from your computers. Once connected to your Wi-Fi network, users can watch live TV wirelessly on a portable computer or iPad, anywhere inside the house.

“This new platform satisfies two requests that many of our customers have made: viewing of HDTV content on multiple household computers and inconspicuous placement of the device itself,” said Adam Steinberg, Elgato’s VP of Marketing. “HDHomeRun is designed to give our customers maximum flexibility. Whether it’s Mac or PC, capturing a TV signal from either an antennae or cable or being able to view and record different content on
multiple computers, HDHomeRun can accomplish it all.”

HDHomeRun comes with EyeTV 3, the award-winning TV software for Mac. Watch, pause, and rewind live TV on your Mac. Search the Program Guide, record TV shows, and export recordings to iTunes automatically for playback on an iPhone or iPad. HDHomeRun is compatible for use on a PC; it works great with Windows 7 Media Center.

Elgato’s HDHomeRun solution paired with the EyeTV app enables streaming of live and recorded TV to an iPhone, iPod, and iPad via 3G. However, this is only available when using a Mac and is not available for PC.

HDHomeRun is currently available from the Elgato Store, Amazon, B&H Photo and the Apple Store at a price of $179.95.

What’s in the Box

HDHomeRun Network Dual Tuner for HDTV
EyeTV 3 software for Mac (CD-ROM)
Driver for Microsoft Windows 7 Media Center (CD-ROM)
Ethernet cable
Power Supply
PDF Product Manual (CD-ROM)
Quick Start Guide

System Requirements

Macintosh: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later
PC: Windows 7, 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/AMD CPU
1 GB RAM
Home network with 100Base-T Ethernet (802.11n 5GHz for wireless)
For more information about Elgato’s HDHomeRun, please contact PR representative Brian Metcalf (brianmetcalf@maxborgesagency.com).

About Elgato:

Elgato  produces award-winning TV software together with a complete range of TV tuners and capture devices to watch, record, and edit TV and HDTV on Macs and PCs. Elgato is the home of EyeTV, the world’s leading television solution for Mac computers. Elgato also produces a variety of world-class H.264 video conversion and streaming products. Elgato
is privately held with offices in Munich, Germany and San Francisco, California.

No doubt you have seen it and read reviews about it.  Instead of boring you with the usual review my goal is to setup the Boxee Box and test it with Windows Home Server.  Pretty Simple.  What you will see here is a whole lot of un-professional photos of the actual screens and not a whole lot of stock photo screens.  Let’s get busy.

Quick and Dirty History of Boxee Box

First there was software.  You can make your own Boxee Box with free software and a free iOS app for a remote.

Next came the Box.  At first it was going to be based on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 chip but it had issues with HD playback.

Boxee Box hit the shelves November 10th, 2010 with the Intel Atom chipset.  Two weeks later it got it’s first update. And another, and so on.  A huge update landed January 19th.  It’s the reason for the delay of this article.

An iPad app is also due out for it soon.  It will allow you to stream content to the iPad which sounds pretty cool.

Here is what you get.

• Double-sided remote control
• HDMI out (HDCP, cable included)
• Ethernet Port
• 802.11n Wireless
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
• Optical Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
• Composite Audio Connectors
• AC Power Connector

How about some blurry un-boxing pics?

If you just glanced by the contents it does come with an HDMI cable which I thought was awesome.  I didn’t have to go digging around for one.

I chose Windows Home Server for a reason.  Protect my stuff, play back my stuff.  I have tons of photos, music, movies, and videos stored on my WHS.  I’m also a media center user so I have recorded TV on the server as well.  I am more interested in playing my stuff rather than Internet content.  This article will be heavily slanted in that direction.

I know you have probably seen it before but the Boxee Box will play almost anything you can throw at it.  Here is a quick rundown of the formats supported.

Video Formats

Boxee supports Adobe Flash 10.1, FLV/On2 VP6 (FLV/FV4/M4V), H.264 AVC (TS/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS/MP4),

VC-1 (TS/AVI/MKV/WMV), MPEG-1 (DAT/MPG/MPEG), MPEG-2 (MPG/MPEG/VOB/TS/TP/ISO/IFO),

MPEG-4 (MP4/AVI/MOV), DivX 3/4/5/6 (AVI/MKV), Xvid (AVI/MKV), and WMV9 (WMV/ASF/DVR-MS).

Audio Formats

Boxee supports MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AIF/AIFF, AC3/AAC, OGG, FLAC, DTS, and Dolby Digital/Dolby True HD

Image Formats

Boxee supports JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF.

Another shot of the back panel.

My initial test environment was a crappy 19”, 720p TV.  It sits by my desk and allows me to test stuff while being close to a computer and an Ethernet connection.  It’s a horrible TV actually.  Lesson 1.  The Boxee Box cannot make a bad TV look better.  While I was putting it through it’s paces the January 19th update landed.  It changed everything about the Boxee Box in my opinion.  Lesson 2.  Well, there is no lesson 2.  I just wished I would have had the update before I started.

Setup

Getting the Boxee Box up and running is a breeze.

Boxee booted up and detected an upgrade.  Downloaded it, rebooted, installed it, Rebooted again.

It all happened fairly quick.  It will guide you through screen alignment and setup of your user account.  Yes, you have to create an account to use it.  They claim it’s because of it’s “social” abilities.  Unfortunately, you have to validate your new account via e-mail so if your at your TV doing this you have to fetch a computer.  While your at the Boxee site you can setup your social networks if you want to.

I setup Twitter and it allows me to watch video that anyone tweets about.  I guess that’s cool.  Facebook is much the same but more content rich.  Again, setup seemed easy and intuitive.  The mini keyboard on the back of the remote was super handy during the process.

Prior to it’s first update.

After the update.  Not quite as nice looking if you ask me.

Startup Time

Startup time was 1 Minute 7 Seconds until you can use the remote.  A few seconds more for it to load thumbs on the home screen.

When do I get to watch my stuff?

The interface is very easy to understand so the first thing I did was add media locations on my network.  The Boxee Box will see everything on your network that is capable of sending it video, photos, or music.

Click, add, done.  Boxee Box will then index these locations and fetch all the items.  This will take some time to do initially.  The WHS user will be able to find your media shares very easily.  In the menus of Boxee you simply go to files and it will list all the shares you previously added.  When navigating these shares you can do it by a list or by thumbnail.  If you have done anything with streaming movies to Media Center you will have cover-art on the Boxee just as you do on Media Center.  I use MyMovies to manage my DVD collection and the Boxee used the cover art perfectly.

Before we start playback of media let’s go back to that January update again.  Prior to this update I was having a lot of buffering issues.  I was using an Ethernet connection and not the wireless.  Playback of Blu-Ray content was practically useless.  It buffered, played, buffered played.  I was sad for the little Boxee Box.  I was going to give it some bad marks.  Let me tell you, this last update changed everything. What an improvement on Blu-Ray rips!  I am streaming perfectly from the WHS and even have a file copy operation going on with the server along with an RDP active.  Resume time is fast and start up buffering is hardly noticeable now.

The Media I consume

I stream a lot of ripped DVD’s and watch media captured by a Canon HG-10 HD camera and various Canon point and shoots.  That means a lot of MTS HD files from the HD camera and AVI’s shot with the smaller ones.  I also record content with Media Center and convert it to MP4 automatically in order to make it mobile.  There are many reviews of what this box can handle and they are not hard to find.  I tried to stay away from other reviews and concentrate on what I could throw at it and what it would handle.  Here is what I found.

Media Center

.wtv plays fine.  Forget about fast forwarding though.  It’s not a smooth process and would often pause the playback where you couldn’t continue watching.  Also, if your media is not named in a fashion where you can tell the particular episode number of the file you want to watch it could also be frustrating to sort through.  I have heard that the Boxee will somehow scrape TV shows for meta information but I wasn’t able to figure that one out.

One of my .wtv files that plays just fine on an extender and a Media Center HTPC stopped playback at the 22 minute mark everytime I tested it.

.dvr-ms Recorded natively to dvr-ms played.  Conversion from .wtv to .dvr-ms stuttered and was not watchable.  Occasionally these high bitrate .dvr-ms file would buffer.  It seemed it would buffer more the longer you got into the movie.  The buffer period was about 2 to 3 seconds with another second of waiting for it to play.  Test file was Ice Age movie recorded in HD off of Fox.  I would call this unwatchable.  *Note* I tried to look at the bitrate in the meta tags of this file and it was reporting a VERY large bitrate.  So large that I don’t think it’s correct.  It plays fine on the XBox360 as a Media Center Extender so that leads me to believe the meta is incorrect.  These files also seemed to agitate the Boxee.  It wouldn’t play anything else with confidence after struggling with the dvr-ms.  It had to be rebooted.

.mp4 files converted from dvr-ms played fine.  These files were easy for Boxee at around 1300kbps bitrate.

Ripped DVD’s to video_ts folders looked fine.  If you ripped with menus you will get them on the Boxee.

Blu-Ray Rip, Harry Potter 6 at 23,717kbps bitrate played great and of course looked fantastic.  Boxee does not disappoint here.

Another Blu-Ray rip that was a combined 39,128kbs bitrate struggled to stream from Windows Home Server.  This could be due to network or activity on the server but I tried it several times during several different portions of the day.  Still struggled.  When the rip was copied to the external drive it had no issues.

.avi files played but would frequently experience audio cutouts

.wmv files converted AVI files from canon camera.  Starts ok, but goes into slow motion with audio cutting in and out 9800 bitrate.  Could just be my conversion causing it.

Movies tab in Boxee plays nicely with my DVDdirectory.  Cover art looks good.

.MTS played fine bitrate was 15528

.m2ts played fine bitrate was 15628

.mov from an iPhone 4 played great

.3gp from a Droid Incredible did not play.  Audio did, but not video.

The higher bitrate Blu-Ray that struggled.

Notes on playback testing:

Why would I have a .wtv file converted to dvr-ms?  I use MCE Buddy and it converts files to dvr-ms first in order to then convert them to MP4.

Notice I didn’t test a lot of different audio setups.

Attaching a hard drive

It’s pretty simple to do it.  Power it off, plug it in, reboot.  Browse files.  You can see in the photos that I tested some of my media files via the hard instead of streaming.

Any changes in file testing?  AVI still sluggish, .3gp still no video.  DVD’s were fine.  Higher bitrate Blu-Ray rip played perfectly.

The remote

Much has been said about the Boxee Box remote.  It is very nice.  Limited but nice.  I always seemed to pick it up the wrong way meaning, I had it upside down.  You learn it fast though since there are so few buttons!  The best part of the remote is what’s on the underside of it.  It’s a chiclet style keyboard that helps a ton during setup and will also be used for apps and web content with the Boxee.  If you have a ton of content it also makes it easy for searching.  The remote is a joy to use due to it’s simplicity.

Video Podcasts

One thing I really liked about the Boxee was playing video podcasts.  I don’t need to spend a lot of time on it.  It plays them.

Boxee Box is Social

When you add your Facebook, Twitter account, etc. you are open to a whole new set of content.  I thought that was one cool aspect of the Boxee.  Twitter posts that referenced videos were in my friends feed and I could view them right on the Boxee.

Apps

If you are into online media Boxee Box has a few apps to feed your habit.  At the time of review the Netflix app was still non-existent but still promised.  Hulu as well.  I tried out the RSS feeds app and was able to add a feed and view web posts and listen to podcasts.  If the post had a media file attached like a podcast post will it automatically starts playing instead of loading the post in a browser.  It would have been really cool had there been a Play-On and an Amazon VOD app.

The Home Server Show Feed

The Wrap-Up

One thing I can say about this review is it was time consuming due to my bad habit of starting to test the Boxee Box and ending up watching the content as entertainment rather than scrutinizing the Boxee’s ability.  I spent a lot of time going through old movies and getting caught up in the media instead of moving on to the next thing on my list.  I guess that is a good thing for the Boxee but it did eat up a lot of time!

I didn’t break down the door here with tons of testing although this review took weeks!  I tested my content and I assume a lot of WHS and Media Center users will have similar.  If you have a file type you would like tested use the contact box on this blog and I’ll see what I can do.

Is this a Media Center or HTPC replacement?  No, I don’t think so.  Is it better than the other streamers that are on the market?   I’ve read a lot about them and due to it’s balance of online and personal content I think it is but I haven’t tested the others so don’t take my word for it.   I also think it could be a good compliment system to a HTPC if you like it’s features.  Why not?

So really, can it replace your HTPC?  That all depends on your consumption.  If you like your live TV then forget about it.  This Boxee is not for you.  Playback of recorded TV although somewhat fussy at times does work.  Apps and online content are great with more to come from Boxee.  If you are social and into online content more than TV this is an awesome solution.  It has a good balance of playing your own content as well as online content.  I am also assuming from their last update that more updates will come and the Boxee Box will continue to improve.  It should be an easy call for you based on the bold items in this paragraph.  If it doesn’t fit you now there is a good chance it might in the future so keep an eye on it.

Boxee Box Home page

$199.00 at Amazon.com

A forums topic has been setup for discussion of this review or if you have comments and questions.  Go here.

This is another post in the WHS-101 Series.

Connect Windows Media Center with WHS

When you launch Windows Media Center you’ve probably seen the following message pop up letting you know that you can connect Media Center to WHS. When you click OK, it doesn’t install anything, it’s just a reminder.

You’ll need to Open the Start Menu in Windows 7, All Programs, and select Windows Media Center Connector.

This will launch the Connector Setup wizard to walk you through the setup process.

Enter in your WHS password.

That’s it! Then a restart is required to complete the process.

Using Media Center with WHS

After you come back from the restart, open Windows Media Center and you’ll find Home Server as an option in the main menu. You have two choices, either TV Archive or Console view.

First we’ll take a look at the TV Archive feature. This will show the activity of your Live TV recordings. You’ll get a list of shows that have been recorded and successfully archived or if the archive failed. You can sort by status, title, or clear the history.

It also allows you to compress the recorded TV to work on your various portable devices like Zune, Windows Mobile, and the original resolution.

Unless you’ve changed the settings, TV that you’ve recorded should be in the Recorded TV library folder, which pulls the shows from your server.

Select Recorded TV to check out the shows you’ve recorded.

Console View

Console View is essentially a light read-only overview of your server. From here you can see server storage space, drives, shared folders, health, media counts, and backups. You can’t directly control anything on your server from here, but if you’re watching a movie or TV and want an quick look at some server information, it’s easy and intuitive to use.

If you’re using Windows Home Server Version 1 with Power Pack 3, this should get you started with connecting Windows Media Center with your WHS. This is a basic feature with WHS and there are more complex setups you can do with other Add-Ins that we’ll be taking a look at it the future.

What about you guys? Do you use the Windows Media Center Connector with WHS? Leave a comment and let us know!

This is another post in the WHS – 101 Series. If you have questions or want to discuss it further head to the Home Server Show Forums.

I know you are familiar with the HD HomeRun network tuner.  AverMedia showed us their dual tuner network device complete with iPad and iPhone app tonight at ShowStoppers CES 2011.  It was a demo without the live TV feed but we got the basic feel for it.  The iPad app had the ability to change channels with a swipe to the left or right or you could bring up the EPG and menu settings.

I have a couple of videos showing the tuner in action.

The quality is not that great so I apologize for that.  This product is supposed to hit the market in May 2011 and it’s unknown at what price point.

You can run Vail on VMware Server, VMware Player, and VirtualBox for free, or VMware Workstation which requires a license. Here we take a look at installing it on VMware Player, and if you want to run it in a different product, check out the links at the end of this article.

First let’s take a look at what you’ll need to get started.

• WHS Vail Beta ISO
• VMware Player
• 64-bit Windows computer capable of hardware virtualization
• 4 GB of RAM so your Host and Client run smoothly. You could probably get away with a machine with 2GB of RAM as Vail requires 1GB minimum, but you’ll notice lack of decent performance because the VM uses the Host machine’s RAM.

If you’re not sure if your computer is capable of Hardware Virtualization, you can run either SecurAble or the MS hardware-Assisted Virtualization Detection Tool. Both are free and don’t require installation and work equally well.

Install VMware Player

If you don’t already have it, download and install VMware Player following the install wizard defaults. VMware Player is free but you’ll be required to register with them first.

Setup VMware Player for Vail

You need to configure some settings in VMware Player before installing Vail from the ISO image. Create a new virtual machine, and when the wizard starts select I will install the operating system later.

For the Guest OS select Windows Server 2008 x64 or Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 and click Next.

Give your virtual machine a name like WHS Vail and go to the next step of the wizard. Then for Specify Disk Capacity set it to 160 GB which is the minimum.

The entire 160 GB won’t be taken up right away, but when installing Vail it needs to see a 160GB drive otherwise you’ll see the following error message.

When you get to the Ready to Create Virtual Machine window make sure everything looks correct. If not you can go back and change it. We need to make some further settings on the VMs hardware.

What is probably the most important part is setting the Network Connection to Bridged. This will make the VM appear as an actual physical machine on your network and actually connect other VMs or physical machines. Which is definitely the coolest part because you can can install the Connector software on those machines and use the new Dashboard and Launchpad features.

Another thing you’ll want to change is the amount of memory you dedicate to the server VM. The minimum is 1 GB but you can bump it up to whatever you think your system can handle. Remember that the VM will use the Host machines physical memory, so keep that in mind when determining how much to allocate. For our test we bumped it up to 2 GB.

For the CD/DVD drive Connection setting, select Use ISO image file and browse to the location of your VailInstallDVD.iso file you downloaded from Microsoft Connect. You could burn the ISO and use the physical drive if you want, but just selecting the ISO saves some steps.

After you’ve made all the appropriate hardware settings you’ll get an overview of the new machine, if everything looks right click Finish.

Now that everything is ready to roll start up the VM.

If you get a software updates screen just click Remind Me Later…we’ll install the VMware tools later.

Your new Vail VM will start and you can run through the Installation Process. If you’ve never installed Vail before check out this screenshot tour of the installation process. This article was written before the Vail RC or Refresh, but their are only minor differences for the install process that are self explanatory.

While Vail is installing, VMware Player will prompt you to install the VMware Tools, select Remind Me Later.

When Vail installs your VM will restart several times during the process which is normal, and you’ll need to enter some basic information like your country, Time/Date, User Name and Password…etc. The amount of time it takes to complete will vary, but in our experience it’s been around 45 minutes.

After the install has completed you will get a message telling you your new Virtual Vail Server is ready to use!

You can start looking around at the new features in the server at this point, but you’ll need to restart it again so you can log in properly. After the reboot you will get the Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to log on message. To do that in VMware, from the toolbar select the Virtual Machine dropdown menu and Send Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Now you can log into the Vail VM with the credentials you entered during the install.

After logging in you can check out the Dashboard, Add Users, RDP into it..etc. It will act just like it would if you were running it on an actual box on your network.

Install VMware Tools

The final thing we need to do is install VMware Tools to make the experience more fluid. From the VMware Toolbar click Virtual Machine>>Install VMware Tools.

AutoPlay will come up on the server, just click Run setup.exe.

Just run through the installer using the Typical setup type.

After that’s done another reboot will be required to complete the install of VMware Tools.

You’re Done! Now you can start using Vail just as if it were a physical machine running on your network. You can RDP into it, connect physical and other Virtual Machines, and start having fun seeing what the new version of WHS has to offer.

Since the Vail Beta is free and VMware Player is free, there is really no reason not to start getting familiar with the new version if your a WHS enthusiast. If you are looking to install Vail virtually on other VMware Products or Oracle’s VirtualBox, head over to How-To Geek and check out these full tutorials:

• Install Vail on VMware Server
• Install Vail on VMware Workstation
• Install Vail on VirtualBox

Our very own Jim Collison is on Ian’s podcast this week.  Check out The Media Center Show here.

This week on The Media Center Show I am talking to Windows Home Server and Windows Media Center enthusiast Jim Collison about Windows Home Server Vail, Windows Home Server addins and using WHS and Windows Media Center together.

Network basics/recommendations

There is an abundance of information on networking on the internet, as well as on this site so I will not go into “how” but rather some recommendations based on my own experiences and opinions.

Wireless Networking – Photos, Standard Definition movies, Music, and general file access. Will not stream uncompressed HD content (20 Mbit/sec or higher). Usually cannot handle multiple simultaneous streams of any content. I would recommend using 5 Gighz devices for movie streaming.

Power line Networking – Photos, Standard Definition movies, Music, and general file access. Will typically not stream uncompressed HD content (20 Mbit/sec or higher). Usually cannot handle too many simultaneous streams. Dependant on house wiring and the condition of the wiring. Most installations I have tried for movie streaming have been problematic.

Hardwire Cat 5/5e (10/100) – Ideal for HD, SD, photos playback. Works well for uncompressed HD but usually only on one stream at a time. Not recommended for large file copies such as uncompressed HD due to bandwidth performance.

Hardwire Cat 5e/6 (1 gigabit) – Any content. Can handle 2-3 HD streams simultaneously (depending of bit rate and your equipment) in addition to some SD content. Ideal for handling blu ray playback especially if streaming to multiple locations. Ideal for direct copying to your WHS.

Windows Media Center (Standard Definition Content)

Let’s say that you have one or two computers, a Windows Home Server, and want to stream standard DVD’s to Windows Media Center PC. WMC natively will support many different formats and does an excellent job reading the native folder structure found on DVD’s perfectly (Video_TS\*.VOB). Effectively all you have to do is get your content using your favorite cloning software to a WHS Share folder and make sure that the folder is set up in the library of your Windows Media Center and you are good to go. Using the “list view” in WMC, you should now be able to see all the movies you added in as well as being able to play your content without any additional hardware or software. This method should provide full menu and chapter support as well as all the available sound tracks and subtitles assuming they are contained.

Hardware: Any PC windows suitable for running windows 7

Software: No additional software required.

Recommended Formats: DVD Folder structure (VOB Files, native format)

Windows Media Center (HD content)

Things get a little more interesting when trying to play HD content as it is not directly supported by Windows Media Center. One of the best ways I have found to playback all HD content is to use TMT 3 (Total Media Theatre 3). It supports virtually every kind of HD video including the AVCHD format from your HD camcorder. The only container type it will not support at this time is MKV so you would require a third party add-in or codec pack to make this work. My luck and experiences with third party codecs have not been great so I highly recommend “not” using them. It is better to stick to mainstream software for overall better compatibility. TMT 3 is a very solid product and integrates well into Windows Media Center. Once you have copied your content to a share folder in WHS (such as \server\HD Content) and added it to WMC, you should be able to playback your HD content of your choice (except of course MKV) much the same way you did with standard DVD’s. Displaying your movie titles in Media Center will be seamless and will co-exist with standard DVD, home movies, and other content which makes it easier to view when everything is located in on one screen.

Hardware: Any Windows PC suitable for running windows 7, HDTV/Monitor, and Hardware accelerated video card such as the Intel integrated HD, nVidia, or ATI card. For lossless audio, only the Asus HDAV, the 57xx ATI cards, and the Intel H55 chipsets are supported.

Software: Total Media Theatre 3 recommended.

Recommended Formats: BD Folder structure (native format).

Popcorn hour (A-110, A-200)/HDX-1000/WD Live

Using network media players brings in a new dimension of both flexibility as well as complications. Specifically, these devices can stream most every format you can think of but they do not do them all equally well. For example, you can play MKV files but some devices may hang during navigation depending on the original format. This is mainly when the original is HD as some are encoded using VC-1 and some in H.264. VC-1 encoded files tend to hang on certain devices such as the Popcorn A-200 and have more issues in playback then do H.264 encoded files. They also do a great job playing .MT2S and .TS files but you lose chapter support on many of the devices. In addition, your content will have to be a single file format as the folder approach only works in some of the units but most do not work well using the native folder structure of DVD and BD, making it more challenging to have coexistence with WMC. Because of this, it becomes very difficult using network players sharing the same content with WMC. Windows Media Center is very comfortable working with DVD/BD folder structures, most network players prefer single file formats such as ISO and MKV. ISO support can be added to WMC however it is at times problematic as it requires third party add-ins.

Hardware: Network Player such as Popcorn Hour, HDX-1000, etc.

Software: No additional software required.

Recommended Formats: ISO, MKV, TS, MT2S, WMV

iPhone/iTouch/iPad

Let’s throw in more variables and say that you want to stream your content to your iTouch/iPhone/iPad or other mobile device. These devices do a great job in video playback once you get the content to them. Of course you can use various software to covert to the .MP4 format and copy them to the device but as space is limited, the real power comes from being able to stream either SD or HD content to your devices over the air either on 3G or Wi-Fi. There are a number of ways to do this but two of the more popular ways I have tried are ORB and Air Video. ORB requires that you create an account and connect to their server to stream the video.  In essence, you stream from your PC to their server and back to any mobile device. It works reasonably well and it allows you to connect with almost any device including a laptop. It crudely works with folder support (video_ts) but cannot handle any HD content. “StreamToMe” and “Air Video” are both iPhone/iPad applications that work extremely well in streaming directly from a local PC that is connected to your server to your portable device. The PC/MAC is used for real-time transcoding and basically pulls content from your server (or other location) and streams it across your broadband connection. If it is a MP4 format it will stream natively without the need to convert the format or if it is for example, an MKV, it will transcode the format real time as it streams it to you. I have tested the transcoding on both a SD DVD as well as a BD (40gig) uncompressed MKV file and it all worked perfectly. The quality is based on your bandwidth but when I was connected to Wi-Fi, the quality of the HD playback on my iPad was amazing. The down side is it does not support the folder structure of DVD (video_ts) or the Blu-Ray folder structure so you have to put your files in an MKV or WM* format in order to use them.  This forces you in most cases to have two copies of your content if you want to stream them to your portable device.  Both Air Video and StreamToMe are very similar in features, however I found Air Video to be more robust and more configurable.

Hardware: Any Windows 7 Compatible PC. A dual core system is recommended due to the real time transcoding.

Software: Air Video App and Server or StreamToMe app and server.

Recommended Formats:  MKV, WMV, AVI

Summary

It must be obvious by now that things are not ideal. It is very challenging to just pick one format and have it work effectively on everything. As I stated earlier there are some choices to make and that the video streaming world is not entirely perfect. Many times it may even require two versions of your content to do it effectively and cover all your devices. There are ways in which you can for example use MKV and play across all these devices, however as you get to HD content things get pretty ugly with the use of codecs as well as inconsistency in movie navigation.  I am not saying it cannot be done, only that you should expect compatibility problems if you have to resort to using third party codecs.  This is by no means a comprehensive list options you have and I have only touched the surface of the variables. I have tried to stick to the use of only mainstream software and native support. The moral here is that you should plan what devices you are going to use not because of their compatibility with different file formats, but rather their compatibility to each other. Some thought up front might save much in the way of work as well as aggravation. For example, it may not make sense to add a network player if you already have one or two HTPC’s as the price of something like a Acer Revo which is not much more than many network players and will save a much aggravation especially if all your content is folder structure. Although everyone is different, for me I end up with a dual approach. I use DVD/HD folder structure for use with only HTPC which replaced my network players, and create MKV formats in a different folder for streaming to my iPhone/iPad. This is certainly a separate step and not ideal, however it works very well and the results are outstanding. As a side note, if your movie content is in folder structure format, it is very quick to make an MKV from it and can be done directly from the folder. In closing do your homework, avoid mixing too many devices, and think out your strategy as sometimes saving a little money on hardware upfront can result in much aggravation.

I hope ya’ll enjoyed reading An Introduction to Home Networking. That gave an overview of some of the basic features of networking and how it relates to many home users. If you’ll join me for another minute (or twenty) to go a little deeper and explore some of the more advanced aspects of networking. While I will use more examples from my own home network, the concepts and wording should extend to other home environments as well. Beware that this is much more in depth and rather long, so feel free to skip sections as needed. I will, at times, try to simplify terminology (both intentionally and not) and apologize if I’m not 100% accurate when doing so.

So we left off last time just talking about the basic aspects of IP addresses, so let’s go a little deeper. Each network device needs to have a unique address (or else major problems will exist).

MAC Address

Each device on the network is programmed from the factory with a (mostly) unique MAC address, or Media Access Control address. This address is a group of 6 pairs of hexidecimal digits, for example 00-15-58-7D-AC-C1. This means there are 18 billion, billion (1.8447 x10^19) possible combinations. This address is what your switch uses to route information to/from each device. While the network device has its MAC address set with a unique value, this can actually be changed, called spoofing. There aren’t many good reasons to change it, but I thought it was worth noting.

The MAC address is temporarily tied to your IP address when you are on the network. If you open a command prompt and type in “arp –a” it will show you a list of the locally cached IP addresses and their corresponding MAC addresses. When one devices communicates with another on the network, it does much more than say “Hey, xbox, read this”. It looks at it’s internally cached list of devices and if the destination device is there, it will embed that device’s IP address and MAC address in the packet, along with the sender’s addresses. If the source device doesn’t have information about the destination address beyond the name, it will query the DNS server for information about that name. The DNS server will respond with an IP address, and then the sending device can send out the packet of information to the destination address.

IP addresses – take 2

Here’s a screenshot from my router configuration screen.

The first item to note is the DHCP Server Settings. I have the DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server turned on, and have told it to assign addresses from .100 to .199 (each of the 4 octets of the address is 1 byte (2^8), and can go from .001 to .255). It pulls the first 3 values from the Router’s IP address (which in this case is 192.168.0.1). This means that all assigned address will be 192.168.0.*. This is known as a class “C” network and you can have 255 devices on this network. DHCP servers have a setting that is called the “Lease Time”. As it sounds, this is the length of time that the DHCP server will reserve the address for a given device. My example above is 3 hours. Let’s look at an example of how this works. The .101 address above was assigned at 8:16pm on April 2nd. (Interesting. Apparently my router’s clock was off. I have since reset it ) What this means is that on or before 11:16pm, the router will try to renew the assignment. If Computer 4 isn’t present at this time, then that .101 address will go back into the pool to be available to assign to the next device which requests an address.

Many home routers have a feature called “DHCP Reservations”. Just like the name implies, the DHCP server can reserve certain addresses and assign them to specific devices. It does this by use of the MAC address. When a device requests an IP address from the DHCP server, the server will check to see if the requester’s MAC address is in the reserved list. If it is, the device will be assigned the reserved address. If it isn’t, the device will be assigned the next sequential number that is available.

In the example above, I have 2 devices that have their IP addresses reserved: my HP 4100 LaserJet printer, and my HP ex470 Windows Home Server. This way, whenever a computer needs to connect to either of those devices, the IP address is always the same. Many people ask about assigning a static IP for a device, especially a Home Server. While you can still do this, I personally think it is much easier to use the idea of Reservations to simulate a static IP. If you want a true static IP, then you have to log into the server, go to the network properties, and assign the IP address, DNS server, subnet mask, etc. If you use the reservation, there is no configuration needed on the device, because from its perspective, it is getting assigned a regular address via DHCP. It’s just coincidence that the same address is always assigned. Fun huh.

One last thing to note here is that your router gets assigned an IP address from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) pretty much the same way. They have a range of addresses to assign to the connected devices. You can go days/weeks/months even with the same External IP address. Or, if there is an network outage or something like that, then things are likely to get shaken up and you’ll get a new address (Assuming you don’t have a static IP like most business-class connections).

Subnet Mask & Default Gateway

If you run the “ipconfig” command, you will see what is listed as the subnet mask. This will almost always be 255.255.255.0. The function of the subnet mask is to quickly determine what addresses are in your local network. What the 255.255.255.0 subnet mask says is that all addresses with different numbers in the first 3 octets from the device are in different subnet. All address with the same values in the first 3 are in the same subnet. For example, with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, devices with IP addresses 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2 are in the same subnet, while 192.168.1.1 is on a different subnet. Remember before that the computer had to get the IP address? Well now that it has the IP address, the device will now have to figure out how to connect to that server. So using the other example before, Bing.com is going to have an IP address that is outside pretty much every personal subnet. So the device will now have to figure out how to connect to that server. For addresses outside the device’s subnet, the next step is to contact what is known as the default gateway. This setting is given to the device by the DHCP server or statically assigned. Again, for home uses, the router is going to be the Default Gateway. This means that most home routers serve as the DHCP server, the DNS server, and the Default Gateway. (And again, the ISP is going to serve those same functions for the router on the next step up the chain.) The subnet mask can be set to other values, but for most home networks, this is how it is.

DNS

Before we go any further, let’s look at the DNS. DNS stands for Domain Name System. Basically, it is a predefined structure for naming devices on a network. Each device on the network has a self-given name that is easily changeable, such as “MediaCenterComputer”. When a device joins the network and gets an IP address via DHCP, the DHCP server gives it information about the DNS server(s) that should be used. For most home networks, the router functions as both your DHCP server and the local DNS server.

One thing to point out is that there often are multiple DNS servers set. This serves mostly as a fail-over. However, if you have multiple DHCP servers in your network, then you are going to need to make sure that certain settings are made. Let’s look at a semi-common scenario. Say you have your main router, at 192.168.0.1 assigning addresses in the 192.168.0.1** range. Now if you wanted to put in a second router (maybe the main router isn’t wireless and you want to add a wireless router), then you have to do a couple of things. First, you have to give an IP address to router #2. This can be done by statically assigning one, or by plugging router #1 into the WAN port of router #2. This will allow router 2 to get a DHCP-assigned IP address from router #1. This should also automatically set 192.168.0.1 as a DNS server for router2. When you turn on a wireless device and go to get an IP address, it will get it from router #2 in the 192.168.1.* range. So what happens when the wireless device tries to use the network? Let’s use the example of a laptop trying to connect to Bing.com. The web browser sends a request to Bing.com to receive the web page contents. The first check is the laptop looks in its internal cache (this includes the hosts file) to see if it knows what IP address Bing.com has. If it doesn’t, it will then go to the DNS server that it is configured to. In this case, it is 192.168.1.1. If router #2 doesn’t know Bing’s address, it will then move up the chain one step, which is 192.168.0.1. If router #1 doesn’t know what Bing’s address is, it will move another step, which is most often the ISP’s DNS server. One thing that you will note is that the router that connects to the outside network will oftentimes have multiple DNS server addresses. In addition to being able to move up the chain, the network settings allow multiple DNS servers to be specified. The reason for this is that if the device can’t connect to the first specified DNS server, then it will check the second. Also, if the first DNS server can’t resolve the name (resolve means to associate a device name to an IP address), it will check the 2nd.

ipv6 vs ipv4

There is quite a bit of conversation going about this fairly new protocol. While I don’t completely understand every facet of ipv6 (I never claimed to be the source of all knowledge), I will point out the aspects that make a difference to most people. The first and most obvious difference is the addressing space. With ipv4 IP addresses (which is what I have been referencing this whole time, and will continue to do so unless otherwise stated), there are 255*255*255*255 available numbers. If you remember, there are 1.8 E 19 possible MAC addresses, but only 255^4 or 4.2 billion available IP addresses. While that may seem like a lot, just think about how connected devices are becoming in today’s day in age. In short, we are running out of addresses. ipv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) now allows for 3.4 E 38 addresses, which is more than enough for the foreseeable future. The address is arranged in the *:*:*:*:*:*:*:* format, as opposed to *.*.*.* Each of those groups now support 65,536 values, again usually represented in hexadecimal format. The other couple benefits are that the packets are arranged differently (I’ll explain more about packets in a bit, although that will again be limited to ipv4), and the IP addresses are (mostly) unique.

In terms of adoption, Microsoft added ipv6 to Windows XP in Service Pack 1, and it is present and enabled by default in Windows Vista & Windows 7. In 2008 the IANA (the group that oversees DNS) turned on ipv6 on some of its main DNS servers. Comcast announced in January 2010 that they are running public trials of ipv6. The last step for being able to connect to ipv6 internet sites is that your router needs to support it. Unfortunately there aren’t really any home routers that support native ipv6. There are ways to get around it (6to4) which basically allows for ipv6 over ipv4, but this is a temporary solution until ipv6 is further along in adoption and native ipv6 is possible. Apples Airport Extreme, the Linksys WRT610N, and the D-Link DIR-615, for example, all have 6to4 support built in.

Anyone that has used Windows 7 and Homegroups has actually used ipv6. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find as much information as I’d like with details about what aspects of ipv6. All I know is that Homegroup requires the use enabling of ipv6. I hope to update once more details become available.

Packets & Layering

The next item that we will look at is layering and packets. When any communication happens across the network, this data is broken into pieces, known as packets. The amount of information being transmitted dictates how many packets are used to send the full message. One interesting thing to note is that when you are sending multiple packets, those packets don’t form a single-file-line down from one the source to destination. As each packet is transmitted, the router decides the best route that said packet should take. A 3 packet message could take 3 different routes from source to destination. Or they could all go together; it is highly dependent on what is going on. The reason for this is that if there is a broken link or there are slowdowns in one segment of the route, the router will send the next packet using a different route so that each one travels as fast as possible.

Getting back to the packet explanation. Think of each packet as a series of nesting dolls, with each of the dolls called a layer. There is a specific model called the OSI 7-layer Model which is a formal way to describe digital data communication. The TCP/IP model, which is what we will be talking about here, can be thought of as a similar, but less formal way of describing communication that is specifically network traffic. We’ll briefly look at the differences with the OSI model that once we go over the TCP/IP model.

There are four layers in the TCP/IP model. The innermost layer is the Application Layer. There is nothing here except the actual data, such as the HTTP from a web page. The next layer that surrounds this is the Transport Layer. For our example, this is the TCP information. It gives the port information, both source and destination. It also contains the checksum and size of the Application Layer. The checksum value is used to ensure that there is no corruption in the data. Next is the Internet Layer. This contains the IP address, both source and destination. The last layer is the Link Layer. This holds the MAC address, both source and destination.

So to compare this to the OSI model, the TCP/IP Application layer is roughly the same as layers 7, 6, and 5 of the OSI combined. The Transport Layer is basically Layer 4, the Internet Layer is basically the 3rd Layer, and the Link Layer is a combination of layers 1 & 2.

So what do these layers have to do with devices? Well if you think about each stage of the layers, there is different information there. When the data leaves the application (say, Google Chrome) it gets wrapped up as the application layer, then wrapped up into the transport layer with the port information. This is then wrapped up into the Internet  layer with the IP addresses and finally the Link Layer with the MAC Addresses. When this packet leaves your computer, it is a complete packet. The first stop is almost always a switch. A switch is called a Layer 2 device, because it opens up the packet to inspect the contents of the 2nd layer. So it is looking at the MAC address to determine where to send the packet. A router operates on the 3rd layer. It looks at the IP address to determine where to send the information. It has to unwrap 2 layers to get this information. Sometimes this information is changed, an aspect we’ll look into in the section on NAT.

Jumbo Frames

So how big can each of these packets be? The normal Ethernet spec says that they can be a maximum of 1500 Bytes. This is the size of the data and the layers around it (not including the Link Layer). So why would you want a bigger packet size? Well if we increase the amount of actual information on the Application Layer and the amount of data in the other layers remain the same, we’ll have a higher ratio of data to wrapper. So on a TCP/IP connection, we’re looking at around 40 bytes/packet. That’s about 3% of a 1500 byte packet. If we increase that to an 9000 byte packet, that’s 0.4% of the packet. The other aspect that is a positive is the work involved in each packet. There is processing that takes place on the device as well as the switch/router and every stage in the process for each packet. Even though it only takes milliseconds, if we increase the packet size by a factor of 6, the amount of work on those devices doesn’t increase, thus allow more data to pass with the same amount of processing.

The term Jumbo Frame is used when talking about any packet size greater than 1500 bytes. 100mbit Ethernet (or slower) cannot transfer packets greater than 1500 bytes. Some (not all) gigabit switches can, however. They can support packets up to 9000 bytes (or higher). This means that in some scenarios, you can improve the performance of your network by turning on jumbo frames in your network card’s settings.

But what are the downsides? The first is that a large packet is more likely to encounter corruption during transmission. It also means that there is more data to resend if there is an error. However, with most networks being very robust, this is a mostly vestigial problem. The biggest problem is that in order to transmit the larger packets, all devices in the path need to support jumbo frames. This works OK if you are just going from PC 1 to your WHS, both of which support Jumbo Frames over a switch that supports Jumbo Frames. However, if you are transmitting data to an xbox or to the internet, neither of those support jumbo frames and so either the packets will be lost, or the router will have to manually split each packet up, an operation that will slow things down enough that it would be faster to transmit at the 1500 byte limit. There are ways to manage jumbo frames in a mixed environment, but those usually deal with VLAN’s and the home user is not likely to have the hardware required for such things, nor want to mess with the complications introduced therein. While a good idea, I think we have a little bit longer before we can go down that route. That’s why I personally recommend most home users no enable jumbo frames. If you do, make sure you do your research.

DMZ

Many routers have a feature that is called the DMZ, or DeMilitarized Zone. The idea behind this is that you can put a device in the DMZ, and it basically will be in front of the firewall, and not behind it. This means that the device is openly exposed to the internet. Most home users wouldn’t want this with a regular PC, or even a server (except in rare cases such as pfsense or similar). The one exception to this for home uses could be a VOIP phone. Removing the packet filtering of the router’s firewall could potentially improve the calls. I don’t have VOIP, so I’d advise doing more research before trying this option, but it might be worth looking into for some.

Duplex

While this really isn’t an issue any more, network connections used to have to be manually configured with the proper duplex setting. In the connection properties, you can configure it to be either half duplex, or full duplex. Half duplex meant that information was only travelling over the wire in one direction at a time. This meant that for a 100mbps connection set at half-duplex, only 100mbps of data could travel. In full-duplex mode, this is increased to 200mbps, 100mbps in each direction simultaneously. Most of the time devices were set to autoconfigure and so this setting was never seen by most users. Since hubs are no longer in use, pretty much all connections are set to full duplex. In fact, some network drivers don’t even give an option for full duplex with gigabit:

MDI/MDIX

Most people have probably heard of certain network cables called crossover cables. These type of cables were originally required for doing direct connections between computers. The reason for this is that in order for communication to happen across the ethernet cable, the send pins on one end have to be connected to the receive pins on the other end and vice-versa. The network switches would assume that most devices plugged into them are end-point devices like computers. Thus they would internally switch the transmit and receive pins, so when the data was routed to the destination device, the send and receive pins would line up right. However, if you are connecting a device to another device by way of 2 switches instead of 1, then you’re going to double-switch the pins and things won’t line up right. When going from a hub/switch to another switch, you often had to use the “uplink” port instead of the regular, which is an uncrossed connection.

Once again, our lives have been made easier, because, recently, almost all switches/routers have ports that are “auto MDI/MDIX”. This means they will automatically detect whether the pins need to be straight as in MDI (Medium Depending Interface) or need to crossed in MDIX (MDI crossover). In fact, with gigabit, not only are the network switches auto MDI/MDIX, most NICs (Network interface cards) are as well. This means that you no longer have to hunt for a crossover cable when running directly between computers (such as I believe the HP ex49* series requires for reimaging the server).

QoS

The network communication on most home networks is filled with a myriad of different data types. You might be downloading e-mails through Outlook in the den, streaming TV from your Media Center to the xbox in the living room, Twittering via your Zune HD, watching Hulu in the bedroom, and talking on a VOIP phone in the kitchen. Each of those activities have different requirements. The Media is more sensitive to latency because it will get choppy. Your e-mail isn’t as time sensitive, but you need to make sure all of the data gets there eventually. The ideal goal is to prioritize all of the different traffic so that each activity works as it needs to.

Enter Quality of Service, aka QoS. Some routers have a checkbox for turning this feature on. No longer will all packets be treated equally, but those that need special attention will get it. The idea is that  when a packet gets sent out of the device into the network, it will be assigned a QoS priority.

As with all things network, there a couple different protocols used to control QoS. In the 802.1p spec, there are effectively 8 different priority levels: 0 = “Best Effort”; 1 = “Background”; 2 = “Spare”; 3 = ”Excellent Effort”; 4 = “Controlled Load”; 5 = “Video”; 6 = “Voice”; and 7 = “Network Control”. These are in rough order from lowest priority to highest.

The other protocol that is used is called WMM, or Wireless Multimedia Extensions or Wi-Fi Multimedia. This is based on the 802.11e spec. This protocol is simpler in that there are 4 different categories: Voice, Video, Best Effort, and Background as defined in the 802.1q spec. For the most part, most wired networks can handle the bandwidth required for home use and it is the wireless that struggles. Wireless also struggles much more with the latency that isn’t a problem for most wired connections.

The last item to take into account is what Windows uses. Windows Vista and Win 7 use what is called qWave or Quality Windows Audio/Video Experience. This is a protocol that is exposed to applications for use. It has to be specifically called by the application; windows won’t detect and assign priority levels. Media Center, for example, is written to be qWave aware and can adjust the streams to Extenders using the qWave protocol.

Windows Rally

Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced a platform called Windows Rally. This is a conglomerate of a few different technologies that are exposed to developers by way of an API. Devices that have the Windows Vista Logo are required to implement these tools when applicable. In addition to qWave seen above, there are 4 other main parts of this: LLTD, Windows Connect Now, DPWS, and PnP-x.

Windows Connect now is Microsoft’s interpretation of the WiFi Simple Configuration protocol, a way to share network keys and such via a USB key, for example. DPWS or  Devices Profile for Web Services allows a simpler way for applications to communicate with services hosted across the network or on the internet. One specific application of this is uPnP, something we’ll discuss in depth later. The other aspect within DPWS is called Function Discovery. Basically with Function Discovery and PnP-X, it lets an application interact with another application or device with respect to what the device can do, not where it is or how it is connected. This would let an application interact with a printer the same if it is connected via USB, a network printer, or a printer connected via USB to another computer and shared across the network. Basically, Windows will handle the details so that the application doesn’t have to.

LLTD, Link Layer Topology Discovery, is a way that Windows sees other devices on the network. It scans the network and “discovers” devices that are connected. In addition to seeing just the fact of their existence, it also detects information about the devices, such as the IP address, model #, etc. If you have ever looked at the Network Map that Windows Vista and Windows 7 produce, this is the mechanism by which those devices are discovered and the map is made.

NAT/PAT

Most home internet connections provided by the ISP only allow for a single external IP address (partially due to the shortage of ipv4 addresses). In order to have more than 1 device be able to connect to the internet, routers implements a feature called NAT, or Network Address Translation. The simplest way to explain how this works for home users is that if you remember that each packet contains both origin and destination IP addresses as well as port numbers. For example, when Computer1 is requesting a webpage from Google, the packet that leaves Computer1 says the from->to relationship is 192.168.0.5:80 –> 74.125.159.103:80. However, 192.168.*.* is an internal IP address, so Google would not be able to talk to that directly. Instead, the router makes a slight change to this packet before sending it out to the internet. It changes the source IP address to be the ISP-assigned IP address, 24.95.250.181, in my case. That way, when Google has received the request, it will send the webpage back to that 24.95.250.181 address. But once that packet comes back, how does the router know which computer to send the request to? Basically it has a list of the request that were sent out, so when it sees the response, it will route the request to that computer. So how does the route keep track? Some of them implement PAT, Port Address Translation. Basically instead of the router changing the packet to 24.95.250.181:80 –> 74.125.159.103:80, it changes the port to a specific number that is temporary assigned to that computer, 15345, for example. When Google sends the request back on port 15345, the router will remember that that is a port that was assigned to Computer1 and will change the packet back to  74.125.159.103:80 –> 192.168.0.5:80. Let’s illustrate this with a diagram:

Port Forwarding

In the NAT description above, I said that the router will only pass incoming packets to computers that were waiting on them. What if you had a web server that you wanted people to be able to access from the internet? In order for those packets to be forwarded to your server, the router would have to be told to do so. Most routers allow for what is called port forwarding. This will allow all incoming packets on a specific port to be passed on to a device inside the network. Using the same IP addresses from above, the router would change the destination address in the packet from 24.95.250.181:80 to 192.168.0.5:80 and pass that on to Computer1.

Each port can be individually assigned an internal IP address to be sent to, or some routers let you configure a range of ports that all go to a common place. One thing to keep in mind is that if you are to enable this setting, you will need to make sure that the device to which you will be forwarding packets has a consistent IP address. This means using the IP reservation or manually assigning a static IP.

PoE

PoE stands for Power Over Ethernet. If you remember, cat5/6 cables have 4 pairs of 24-gauge wires. The 802.3af and 802.3at specs allow for 2 pairs to be used for transmitting 48 volts of DC power. When you have a network port on a PoE-aware switch and you plug a device into the other end of the network, the switch will see if if the devices supports PoE, and if it does, it will provide the power. If it doesn’t, it won’t (this prevents frying equipment). Cat 5e cables allow for between 10 to 350 mA of current, which allows for a maximum load of approximately 13W. You can also use an injector, an in-line device that provides power on an otherwise unpowered network cable.

So why would you want this? There are a couple of scenarios. If you have an entertainment center with 2+ devices that have network connections (xbox 360, TiVo, PS3, Roku, etc), you’d pretty much have to put in a switch. This also would mean powering said switch with a wall-wart transformer that takes up valuable space on an outlet strip and running the power cable. With PoE, you can power the switch entirely from the network cable that is connected in your wiring closet (or wherever your central point is for networking). The other application, that is used in many businesses, is for Wireless Access Points. If you want to have a couple of access points in your house, you can put them wherever you want that can be reached by a network cable, including inside walls. You don’t have to worry about running power to the access point, which makes the positioning much simpler. The other application I want to mention is VOIP phones. Copper-line phones can actually run off of the 48V that is provided over the telephone line, and similarly, some VOIP phones can run off of the 48V provided by PoE. Injectors can be found for $30 or so online, and an 8-port gigabit switch with 1-port PoE is $100 online. Prices go up from there.

Powerline-MoCA

While all of this talk has been about regular cat5/6 ethernet connections or 802.11 wireless, there are also other ways for devices to communicate with each other. There are 2 in particular that I want to mention. They are Powerline and MOCA.

Powerline  communication is the general name given to devices that can use existing 110V or 220V power cables to run data along with power. There are many different protocols in this arena and are largely incompatible with each other. One of the more popular implementations is called HomePlug. Originally released in 2001 this allowed for speeds up to 14mbps. The recent HomePlug AV spec allows for speeds up to 189mbps which is fast enough for many applications, although it is not as fast as gigabit ethernet. The way most power systems work is simply as a bridge, meaning you plug one powerline adapter into both your router and a power outlet and then have a 2nd adapter in another room plugged into a power outlet and another device (such as a switch). If it is impractical to run network cables within your walls (for example, in a rental) and you can’t run a cat5 cable down the hallway, Powerline is a decent alternative. It provides much more stability than wireless, and generally higher speeds. HomePlug specifically also allows for AES encryption which should make it fairly secure.

MoCA is a data transmission technology that allows for information to be passed across Coaxial cable. The current 1.1 standard can support up to 175mbps. MoCA is different from both Ethernet and HomePlug in that it can be used as a bridge, but there are also devices that have MoCA adapters built right in. For instance, with Verizon FIOS, the DVR’s can pull content off other DVR’s or the internet through the coax input because the cable modem also functions as a MoCA adapter. There are many other devices in the market that are likely to incorporate MoCA technology in the very near future. One item to note is that the signal is degraded any time that it passes through a splitter or a booster, and there will be a corresponding drop in speed.

WoL

Wake on LAN is a very neat little feature that isn’t always straightforward to implement. (I’ll leave the practical application of it for another post if there is interest). Basically, when you put your computer to sleep, the Network port is still partially active. You can send a magic packet from another computer that will trigger the network card to wake the PC up. This magic packet is a very specific piece of data that is destined to the MAC address of the network card in question.

WoL is used in the Home Server environment for backing up computers. If you remember, when you install the connector or configure the backups, it will ask you if you want the computer to wake up for backups. If you answer yes, then, when the time comes for the computer to be backed up, the WHS will send the magic packet to any computer that is in sleep mode so that it can be backed up.

Wake on LAN works for both hardwired computers and also wirelessly connected ones. Part of the WMM spec mentioned above allows for Wake on LAN over a wireless connection. From the research I’ve done, this is disabled by default in Windows 7.

SPI

SPI stands for Stateful Packet Inspection. This is the heart of the firewall in most consumer routers. The quick description is that the router looks at all incoming packets and discards those that aren’t legit. As was mentioned above, the first check is to look at the NAT tables. If an incoming packet is expected, it is passed along without delay. It is called “stateful” because the device can work more efficiently by tracking packets in groups, instead of individually. When a 200 KB webpage is being downloaded, it will take quite a few packets to transmit all that data. As such, the first packet that is inbound establishes a handshake, which costs cpu time (measured in milliseconds). Subsequent packets in that train go through directly, without incurring this cost. After a period of time, the session that was created will time out and new requests will have to create a new session.

UDP/TCP

Most network traffic in the home is of the TCP nature, or Transmission Control Protol. The other type is UDP, or User Datagram Protocol. Let me explain the difference in a basic, overly simplistic manner: TCP packets make sure that they arrive at the destination intact while UDP packets do not. TCP connection must establish handshakes before a connection can be made. If a TCP packet is lost, the packet will be automatically resent by the network card without the knowledge of the receiving or sending application. Also, if 2 packets take different routes from the same Point A to Point B, the device will wait for the first packet to get there before reading the first.

UDP is different. The sending device doesn’t care if the packet got there or not. It won’t resend it, unless specifically requested to by the recipient. It also doesn’t care about the order that the packets arrive. This is a more lightweight protocol that has some specific uses. For example, when you are streaming audio or video, if the packet doesn’t arrive when it’s supposed to, it is too late. There is no time to wait for the packet to be resent. Thus, it doesn’t make sense to use a protocol that forces packets to be resent as this is a waste of time/bandwidth. Also, packets can be sent from 1 device to many, without having to make individual connections with each receiving device. For example, in workplaces that use Ghost to image PC’s, hundreds of machines can be imaged at the same time because the server will broadcast the image to all the devices. It is left up to the application to do error-checking and to send requests for data. As such, in a ghost session, after the image has been broadcasted to the 100 machines, any individual machine that was missing a packet would send a request for it to be resent.

In the discussion of  ports above, there are 65,536 theoretical ports available for use. This is per protocol, meaning that there are 65k TCP ports and 65k UDP ports. Two applications can talk using the same port if one is using TCP and the other UDP. In the port forwarding section, it is important to specify if the port is for use over TCP or UDP.

UPnP

While I won’t got into too much depth here, there are some basic things that need to be understood about UPnP. Universal Plug and Play is a standard that was developed to allow devices to learn more about each other and the abilities that they have. For example, rather than the user having to manually tell a music server which devices exist on the network that can play back audio, the music server can just look for itself. A device’s UPnP information is displayed as metadata in the form of XML.

There are some basic aspects to UPnP that allow it to work. First off, the devices need to discover each other. When a device joins the network, it broadcasts a message (using UDP port 1900) to anyone on the network that is listening giving a brief explanation of what it is. After this, existing devices that might be interested in those functionalities poll the new device for more specific information. This is where the XML data is presented. It also tells what commands the device will accept and how it can be controlled.

You can use a device such as UPnP Inspector to see what UPnP devices are on your network and what they support. This can be helpful when dealing with media streaming  as you can look to see what formats a server or a client supports.

The 2 most important uses of UPnP (in my opinion) in the home are for routers and DLNA. I’ve already talked about DLNA in a previous post, so I won’t rehash it any more than to say that I think it is a great technology and I can’t wait for RVU to get here. For routers that are UPnP capable, the port forwarding can be set using UPnP. Windows Home Server has this functionality built-in. That said, rogue applications can also create port forwarding rules in theory, so manually forwarding the ports might be a better idea.

VLAN

VLAN is short of Virtual LAN, or Virtual Local Area Network. The general idea is that if you ever wanted to have 2 independent networks but didn’t want to physically separate them, you can implement a VLAN setup. For example, some networks switches support the functionality that you can assign any of the ports to any given VLAN. You could have ports 1-4 in one VLAN and 5-8 on a second. Some managed switches support doing this even more virtually in that you can assign a specific computer to a VLAN by assigning the MAC address regardless of what port on the switch it is plugged into. Most businesses use VLANs in one form or fashion. A couple of scenarios where it might be useful is if you are running 2 wireless LAN’s, you could have 1 of them open with no encryption and the 2nd encrypted. Company laptops would know to connect to the latter, but employee’s with iPod touches or Zune HD’s could use the former for basic web traffic. That way you ensure that the devices in the open network can’t access the company network. For home users, there are few applications where this is useful. The one that I can think of is that if you are hosting a LAN party with some friends, you could set up a VLAN for the new computers and isolate them from your person machines. This way you can still provide internet access to your guests but don’t have to worry about your h4ck3r buddy pulling up your banking information off your wife’s computer (WAF–).

VPN

The last topic I want to talk about is VPN, or Virtual Private Networks. The basic idea is that while you are physically away from one network, you can “trick” the applications into thinking that they are still on that network by creating a secure tunnel between that network and your current one. That’s the basic idea.

In practice, there are a bajillion (highly technical term) different ways to accomplish this, all encompassed in the name “VPN”. There must exist a device, either hardware or software, one each of the 2 networks that are being bridged. These devices talk to each other and establish a tunnel. This tunnel allows devices/applications on one network to transparently communicate with devices/applications on the other network without realizing the separation. One way to do this is by buying a $90 Linksys BEFSX41 router that can serve as a VPN host to 2 devices.

The most common scenario is for a business network to have a VPN appliance in their network. They then install software on the laptops of employees that will allow the laptops to connect to said VPN appliance when at home or on the road. This will create a secure connection that allows for transferring files/e-mail in the safest possible manner.

I have personally seen 2 main types of VPN connections. The first is an L2TP/IPsec connection. Microsoft has built the L2TP/IPsec client into Windows. The specific implementation that I used passed all traffic through the tunnel and out the other side. The upside is that the computer works 100% as if it was on the other network. Let’s look at an example where your computer is on network 2 and there is a tunnel to network 1. The downside is that there will be a slowdown in data transmitted from the internet because the data will have to go to network 1, then through the tunnel to network 2. The tunnel is often bottlenecked by the upload speed of network 1. The other downside is that if network1 has a web filter or a tight firewall, you might be unable to access web content you would if not on the tunnel.

The 2nd type that I’ve seen is an SSl based VPN. The implementation I used allows data that is destined to network 1 to get there without delay, but data that isn’t, such as web data, goes straight to the internet and ignores the tunnel. This has the benefit of making web data much faster, and also allows you take take advantage of content in both networks simultaneously (such as streaming content from your media center while checking your corporate e-mail. The downside is that not all data is routed securely. For example, when I was using method 1, whenever I would jump on an unsecure wireless connection at a friends house or McDonalds, I would instantly connect the VPN because I know all traffic would be encrypted and no one would be able to read any packets they intercepted. This wouldn’t work using method 2.

Conclusion

I applaud anyone who had read this far. I hope that this will server as a resource for any questions, or at least a place to get a basic understanding of the complexities of networking. I don’t admit to being an expert in most of the nitty-gritty details, but I hope that the bit of wisdom I can share helps you to better learn for yourself.

Special thanks to no-control for help in proof-reading.

More information on ipv6:

Cisco.com

Networkworld.com

Also check out Wikipedia. it is an invaluable resource.