Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
I'm not exactly sure. I wasn't home when the power went out and I have had problems with the NAS not powering down or rebooting after telling it to manually from the web interface. It never seemed like a big deal then, because I always ran the device 24/7 and rarely rebooted it. I spent about 2 weeks using utilities both linux and windows based trying to recover and restore the missing partition info on drive #2, and scanning all the other 3 drives for surface and data errors (they all appeared fine). The array should have been able to function without this drive, but apparently one of the other drives had corrupted data also (I was never able to indentify which one). I finally gave up on week 3, reformatted and started reloading all my data. If you check the readynas forums, I'm not the only one that has had a problem like this. This is why I decided to run a single TB drive on win2k Server to serve files, and keep hard copys and a readynas copy of all my videos. The raid sounds great, but when it's not as redundant as you think - it sucks to find out the hard way. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's no good. How did a power outage corrupt the data? Didn't the NAS shut down? I don't have backups of a lot of my data like TV shows and Photos - the RAID IS my backup. I know that's poor network design, but unless I can afford twice the NAS I need it's all I've got. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:57 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Also, something to consider is that the readynas, although touted as a redundant data device is not without occasional catastrophic problems. I had a power outage that outlasted the UPS and data got corrupted beyond repair although none of the hard drives were flawed. My second 500GB drive had no partition data after the power outage and I was unable to recover it using various utilities on XPPE, Hirens Boot CD, etc. Luckily I had hard backups of about 80% of the movies and shows. I was 2 weeks from the end of my warranty and they upgraded me to the NV+ since the NV is no longer manufactured. It was assumed that the firmware was corrupted but when I received the NV+ and installed the drives, the same problem recurred and was not an issue with the nas, but a data loss on my drives. Neatgear will do data recovery in cases like this but is fee based and probably not cheap. lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: Right now I'm using the TwonkyMediaServer to serve content from my HTPC to my D-link DSM-520 and it works beautifully, as long as the whole browser election thing isn't disrupting the entire network. Would I be able to install that on the ReadyNAS? Or would I need an actual full windows install? The 520 is listed as supported on the Infrant Wiki but I found the D-link media server software to be horrible and the Twonky one much better. The ReadyNAS NV+ with no drives is about $900 on Newegg as a sale price. They are $1,050 on Netgear's site. Figure you need another $1200 for 4 1 TB drives. Pretty pricey for just a plain box, could build a full windows home server for that much. I have been using IP addresses to map all my shares for a while now as well and it works fine, except for random network-wide drop outs which I am pretty sure are related to browser elections. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice as much now ??? It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I can't be much help there. I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives running fine. lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a list of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. So if I tell my machine to connect to media the
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice as much now ??? It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I can't be much help there. I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives running fine. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a list of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. So if I tell my machine to connect to media the domain server says oh that's actually 192.169.0.4 or whatever. If there isn't a domain controller (ie the network is just peers) one machine will maintain the browser list of all the mappings. If something happens, the computer will force an election and the new machine will be the browser. Sounds great in theory but my experience it has been absolutely horrible. Over the last few years I have had off and on problems, ranging from simple annoyances like not being able to see any machines listed under My Network Places to massive network slowdowns and inability to transfer even 20MB files due to browser elections dropping connections. I have tried many solutions with the current being to change the registry in all my machines save one to never maintain the browser list and disabling the browser service as well. The one machine which is my media server has that same registry key set to always and has the service running. But recently I've found another issue - my wife's MacBook has started to participate in this whole mess. A couple of days ago I was going through the event viewer trying to figure out why the network had gone to hell and saw an entry saying that the MacBook had denied access to an IP and forced an election. Getting the MacBook to stop doing that is beyond my limited OSX knowledge. So, now I'm looking for solutions. I need to rebuild my HTPC / media server and wanted to see if I could find a solution in that. I really want to (try) and cut down on the power used so I was thinking of replacing the whole thing with a NAS box and a small set top like an Apple TV or D-Link box. I was doing some research and noticed that all these NAS solutions support different filesharing protocols, like CIFS, SMB, AFP, NFS, etc. What's the different between these and the normal protocols that are used when you share a drive within Windows? Do they result in more efficient use of the network bandwidth? Why are the ReadyNAS boxes so darn expensive (almost $1000 on Newegg for diskless NV+)? What are other good options? I need something that will support at least 3 TB of storage (ie 4x 1TB SATA drives) in RAID 5 and preferably something can I can daisy chain another to to hit my goal of 6 TB (ie 4x8 1TB SATA in RAID 5). Aside from setting up a domain controller, can anyone think of other ways to help with my problem of the master browser issue and overall poor network performance? Would running a Windows Home Server box help at all? Or would a *nix server be better? I have some experience with *nix (specifically Ubuntu)? - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
Right now I'm using the TwonkyMediaServer to serve content from my HTPC to my D-link DSM-520 and it works beautifully, as long as the whole browser election thing isn't disrupting the entire network. Would I be able to install that on the ReadyNAS? Or would I need an actual full windows install? The 520 is listed as supported on the Infrant Wiki but I found the D-link media server software to be horrible and the Twonky one much better. The ReadyNAS NV+ with no drives is about $900 on Newegg as a sale price. They are $1,050 on Netgear's site. Figure you need another $1200 for 4 1 TB drives. Pretty pricey for just a plain box, could build a full windows home server for that much. I have been using IP addresses to map all my shares for a while now as well and it works fine, except for random network-wide drop outs which I am pretty sure are related to browser elections. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Robert Martin Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice as much now ??? It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I can't be much help there. I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives running fine. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a list of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. So if I tell my machine to connect to media the domain server says oh that's actually 192.169.0.4 or whatever. If there isn't a domain controller (ie the network is just peers) one machine will maintain the browser list of all the mappings. If something happens, the computer will force an election and the new machine will be the browser. Sounds great in theory but my experience it has been absolutely horrible. Over the last few years I have had off and on problems, ranging from simple annoyances like not being able to see any machines listed under My Network Places to massive network slowdowns and inability to transfer even 20MB files due to browser elections dropping connections. I have tried many solutions with the current being to change the registry in all my machines save one to never maintain the browser list and disabling the browser service as well. The one machine which is my media server has that same registry key set to always and has the service running. But recently I've found another issue - my wife's MacBook has started to participate in this whole mess. A couple of days ago I was going through the event viewer trying to figure out why the network had gone to hell and saw an entry saying that the MacBook had denied access to an IP and forced an election. Getting the MacBook to stop doing that is beyond my limited OSX knowledge. So, now I'm looking for solutions. I need to rebuild my HTPC / media server and wanted to see if I could find a solution in that. I really want to (try) and cut down on the power used so I was thinking of replacing the whole thing with a NAS box and a small set top like an Apple TV or D-Link box. I was doing some research and noticed that all these NAS solutions support different filesharing protocols, like CIFS, SMB, AFP, NFS, etc. What's the different between these and the normal protocols that are used when you share a drive within Windows? Do they result in more efficient use of the network bandwidth? Why are the ReadyNAS boxes so darn expensive (almost $1000 on Newegg for diskless NV+)? What are other good options? I need something that will support at least 3 TB of storage (ie 4x 1TB SATA drives) in RAID 5 and preferably something can I can daisy chain another to to hit my goal of 6 TB (ie 4x8 1TB SATA in RAID 5). Aside from setting up a domain controller, can anyone think of other ways to help with my problem of the master browser issue and overall poor network performance? Would running a Windows Home
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
You used to be able to install Twonky to the ReadyNAS line of products although I never used it. It comes with a version of the linux wizd media server preinstalled and this works well with my linkplayer2. In fact I was using wizd before I bought the readynas and was surprised to see the same screen the first time I pulled it up. I'd check the readynas forum first and make sure it runs well for most users. I'm actually just using the readynas nv+ to archive my movies and shows now, but purchased a 1TB WD HDD to put in my pentium-m server and will be using that to serve media files 24/7. The readynas will only get powered on occasionally to restore files hold everything. I only have 1.3 TB of space on my readynas nv+, so most of my favorite movies and shows will easily fit a 1 TB HDD. The electricity cost of running 1 large drive in a pentium-m server, will be much less than leaving a 4 drive NAS box running 24/7. Plus it's the new WD drive that alters it's spin speed varying from 5400-7200 as demand increases. It's supposed to use a lot less power. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Right now I'm using the TwonkyMediaServer to serve content from my HTPC to my D-link DSM-520 and it works beautifully, as long as the whole browser election thing isn't disrupting the entire network. Would I be able to install that on the ReadyNAS? Or would I need an actual full windows install? The 520 is listed as supported on the Infrant Wiki but I found the D-link media server software to be horrible and the Twonky one much better. The ReadyNAS NV+ with no drives is about $900 on Newegg as a sale price. They are $1,050 on Netgear's site. Figure you need another $1200 for 4 1 TB drives. Pretty pricey for just a plain box, could build a full windows home server for that much. I have been using IP addresses to map all my shares for a while now as well and it works fine, except for random network-wide drop outs which I am pretty sure are related to browser elections. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice as much now ??? It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I can't be much help there. I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives running fine. lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a list of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. So if I tell my machine to connect to media the domain server says oh that's actually 192.169.0.4 or whatever. If there isn't a domain controller (ie the network is just peers) one machine will maintain the browser list of all the mappings. If something happens, the computer will force an election and the new machine will be the browser. Sounds great in theory but my experience it has been absolutely horrible. Over the last few years I have had off and on problems, ranging from simple annoyances like not being able to see any machines listed under My Network Places to massive network slowdowns and inability to transfer even 20MB files due to browser elections dropping connections. I have tried many solutions with the current being to change the registry in all my machines save one to never maintain the browser list and disabling the browser service as well. The one machine which is my media server has that same registry key set to always and has the service running. But recently I've found another issue - my wife's MacBook has started to participate in this whole mess. A couple of days ago I was going through the event viewer trying to figure out why the network had gone to hell and saw an entry saying that the MacBook had denied access to an IP and forced an election. Getting the MacBook to stop doing that is beyond my limited OSX knowledge. So, now I'm looking for solutions. I need to rebuild my
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
That's the drive I was looking to use. My current HTPC is an overclocked Athlon with 6 250GB SATA drives and another 80GB boot drive so it's sucking power like crazy. Which is one of the reasons I'm looking to replace it. I wonder how those power saving drives work in a RAID array and what sort of effect negative effect it has? - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Robert Martin Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You used to be able to install Twonky to the ReadyNAS line of products although I never used it. It comes with a version of the linux wizd media server preinstalled and this works well with my linkplayer2. In fact I was using wizd before I bought the readynas and was surprised to see the same screen the first time I pulled it up. I'd check the readynas forum first and make sure it runs well for most users. I'm actually just using the readynas nv+ to archive my movies and shows now, but purchased a 1TB WD HDD to put in my pentium-m server and will be using that to serve media files 24/7. The readynas will only get powered on occasionally to restore files hold everything. I only have 1.3 TB of space on my readynas nv+, so most of my favorite movies and shows will easily fit a 1 TB HDD. The electricity cost of running 1 large drive in a pentium-m server, will be much less than leaving a 4 drive NAS box running 24/7. Plus it's the new WD drive that alters it's spin speed varying from 5400-7200 as demand increases. It's supposed to use a lot less power. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Right now I'm using the TwonkyMediaServer to serve content from my HTPC to my D-link DSM-520 and it works beautifully, as long as the whole browser election thing isn't disrupting the entire network. Would I be able to install that on the ReadyNAS? Or would I need an actual full windows install? The 520 is listed as supported on the Infrant Wiki but I found the D-link media server software to be horrible and the Twonky one much better. The ReadyNAS NV+ with no drives is about $900 on Newegg as a sale price. They are $1,050 on Netgear's site. Figure you need another $1200 for 4 1 TB drives. Pretty pricey for just a plain box, could build a full windows home server for that much. I have been using IP addresses to map all my shares for a while now as well and it works fine, except for random network-wide drop outs which I am pretty sure are related to browser elections. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice as much now ??? It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I can't be much help there. I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives running fine. lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a list of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. So if I tell my machine to connect to media the domain server says oh that's actually 192.169.0.4 or whatever. If there isn't a domain controller (ie the network is just peers) one machine will maintain the browser list of all the mappings. If something happens, the computer will force an election and the new machine will be the browser. Sounds great in theory but my experience it has been absolutely horrible. Over the last few years I have had off and on problems, ranging from simple annoyances like not being able to see any machines listed under My Network Places to massive network slowdowns and inability to transfer even 20MB files due to browser elections dropping connections. I have tried many solutions with the current being to change the registry in all my machines save one to never maintain the browser list and disabling the browser service as well. The one
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
Also, something to consider is that the readynas, although touted as a redundant data device is not without occasional catastrophic problems. I had a power outage that outlasted the UPS and data got corrupted beyond repair although none of the hard drives were flawed. My second 500GB drive had no partition data after the power outage and I was unable to recover it using various utilities on XPPE, Hirens Boot CD, etc. Luckily I had hard backups of about 80% of the movies and shows. I was 2 weeks from the end of my warranty and they upgraded me to the NV+ since the NV is no longer manufactured. It was assumed that the firmware was corrupted but when I received the NV+ and installed the drives, the same problem recurred and was not an issue with the nas, but a data loss on my drives. Neatgear will do data recovery in cases like this but is fee based and probably not cheap. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Right now I'm using the TwonkyMediaServer to serve content from my HTPC to my D-link DSM-520 and it works beautifully, as long as the whole browser election thing isn't disrupting the entire network. Would I be able to install that on the ReadyNAS? Or would I need an actual full windows install? The 520 is listed as supported on the Infrant Wiki but I found the D-link media server software to be horrible and the Twonky one much better. The ReadyNAS NV+ with no drives is about $900 on Newegg as a sale price. They are $1,050 on Netgear's site. Figure you need another $1200 for 4 1 TB drives. Pretty pricey for just a plain box, could build a full windows home server for that much. I have been using IP addresses to map all my shares for a while now as well and it works fine, except for random network-wide drop outs which I am pretty sure are related to browser elections. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice as much now ??? It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I can't be much help there. I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives running fine. lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a list of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. So if I tell my machine to connect to media the domain server says oh that's actually 192.169.0.4 or whatever. If there isn't a domain controller (ie the network is just peers) one machine will maintain the browser list of all the mappings. If something happens, the computer will force an election and the new machine will be the browser. Sounds great in theory but my experience it has been absolutely horrible. Over the last few years I have had off and on problems, ranging from simple annoyances like not being able to see any machines listed under My Network Places to massive network slowdowns and inability to transfer even 20MB files due to browser elections dropping connections. I have tried many solutions with the current being to change the registry in all my machines save one to never maintain the browser list and disabling the browser service as well. The one machine which is my media server has that same registry key set to always and has the service running. But recently I've found another issue - my wife's MacBook has started to participate in this whole mess. A couple of days ago I was going through the event viewer trying to figure out why the network had gone to hell and saw an entry saying that the MacBook had denied access to an IP and forced an election. Getting the MacBook to stop doing that is beyond my limited OSX knowledge. So, now I'm looking for solutions. I need to rebuild my HTPC / media server and wanted to see if I could find a solution in that. I really want to (try) and cut down on the power used so I was thinking of replacing the whole thing with a NAS
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
That's no good. How did a power outage corrupt the data? Didn't the NAS shut down? I don't have backups of a lot of my data like TV shows and Photos - the RAID IS my backup. I know that's poor network design, but unless I can afford twice the NAS I need it's all I've got. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:57 PM, Robert Martin Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also, something to consider is that the readynas, although touted as a redundant data device is not without occasional catastrophic problems. I had a power outage that outlasted the UPS and data got corrupted beyond repair although none of the hard drives were flawed. My second 500GB drive had no partition data after the power outage and I was unable to recover it using various utilities on XPPE, Hirens Boot CD, etc. Luckily I had hard backups of about 80% of the movies and shows. I was 2 weeks from the end of my warranty and they upgraded me to the NV+ since the NV is no longer manufactured. It was assumed that the firmware was corrupted but when I received the NV+ and installed the drives, the same problem recurred and was not an issue with the nas, but a data loss on my drives. Neatgear will do data recovery in cases like this but is fee based and probably not cheap. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Right now I'm using the TwonkyMediaServer to serve content from my HTPC to my D-link DSM-520 and it works beautifully, as long as the whole browser election thing isn't disrupting the entire network. Would I be able to install that on the ReadyNAS? Or would I need an actual full windows install? The 520 is listed as supported on the Infrant Wiki but I found the D-link media server software to be horrible and the Twonky one much better. The ReadyNAS NV+ with no drives is about $900 on Newegg as a sale price. They are $1,050 on Netgear's site. Figure you need another $1200 for 4 1 TB drives. Pretty pricey for just a plain box, could build a full windows home server for that much. I have been using IP addresses to map all my shares for a while now as well and it works fine, except for random network-wide drop outs which I am pretty sure are related to browser elections. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice as much now ??? It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I can't be much help there. I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives running fine. lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a list of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. So if I tell my machine to connect to media the domain server says oh that's actually 192.169.0.4 or whatever. If there isn't a domain controller (ie the network is just peers) one machine will maintain the browser list of all the mappings. If something happens, the computer will force an election and the new machine will be the browser. Sounds great in theory but my experience it has been absolutely horrible. Over the last few years I have had off and on problems, ranging from simple annoyances like not being able to see any machines listed under My Network Places to massive network slowdowns and inability to transfer even 20MB files due to browser elections dropping connections. I have tried many solutions with the current being to change the registry in all my machines save one to never maintain the browser list and disabling the browser service as well. The one machine which is my media server has that same registry key set to always and has the service running. But recently I've found another issue - my wife's MacBook has started to participate in this whole mess. A couple of days ago I was
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
Your Mac is doing it because you have Windows file sharing turned on. If you're not sharing anything on the Mac to Windows clients then you shouldn't need to have it turned on. One thing that you could do to get around the browser issues would be to not rely on NetBIOS for name resolution. You could do this one of two ways: 1) Give all of your machines static IP's, and make entries for each of them in each machine's hosts file. 2) Set up a local DNS server, and have your DHCP server send over the IP and hostname info to the DNS server when they register a lease. This is easy to do with Windows DNS/DHCP, slightly harder with Linux, and probably impossible if you have your home router handling DHCP. You'd have this problem even if you had a Windows Home Server or *nix box running. For whatever reason NetBIOS over TCP/IP is not working right in your environment. You'd have the same sort of problems connecting to a Microsoft or Samba SMB share. Using something besides NetBIOS for name resolution should net you some performance benefits. Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a snip
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
I appreciate the advice. Here's what gets me - I'm fairly knowledgeable about this sort of stuff and I'm not doing anything extraordinary. I have 3 windows machines and a MacBook on a home LAN with my Airport Extreme handling the DHCP duties. And this problem was happening with both the Netgear and D-link devices I was using before, as well as back when I only had 2 Windows machines on the system, so I am fairly sure it isn't any of the networking gear. Am I missing something critical about configuration for Windows file sharing? All I want to be able to do is transfer files and share media back and forth. If I get rid of NetBIOS, I would go into the Network config and remove File and Print Sharing? I know back in the day you had multiple network protocols you could bind to various adapters, so you could do NetBUI or NetBIOS over TCP/IP. Here's what I have now: Client for Microsoft Networks File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks QoS Packet Scheduler TCP/IP I have no idea what these three are, I think they installed with my Wi-fi card (they only exist on my one machine): Jumpstart Wireless Intermediate Driver Wireless Intermediate Driver Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder Wait a minute, now that I think about it, I remember back in the day having the IPX/SPX/NetBIOS protocol - should I have that running or no? - Brian Weeden On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 11:50 AM, Ben Ruset [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your Mac is doing it because you have Windows file sharing turned on. If you're not sharing anything on the Mac to Windows clients then you shouldn't need to have it turned on. One thing that you could do to get around the browser issues would be to not rely on NetBIOS for name resolution. You could do this one of two ways: 1) Give all of your machines static IP's, and make entries for each of them in each machine's hosts file. 2) Set up a local DNS server, and have your DHCP server send over the IP and hostname info to the DNS server when they register a lease. This is easy to do with Windows DNS/DHCP, slightly harder with Linux, and probably impossible if you have your home router handling DHCP. You'd have this problem even if you had a Windows Home Server or *nix box running. For whatever reason NetBIOS over TCP/IP is not working right in your environment. You'd have the same sort of problems connecting to a Microsoft or Samba SMB share. Using something besides NetBIOS for name resolution should net you some performance benefits. Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a snip
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
Setup a DNS server disable WINS/Netbios completely? http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/aa70b386-dafa-4cd4-b950-dda84e5fa1f61033.mspx Turn off Netbios broadcasts: http://www.petri.co.il/hide_a_server_from_the_microsoft_computer_browser_service.htm Disable browser: http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/45641/browser-registry-entries-changed-in-windows-xp-sp2.html Brian Weeden wrote: snip Aside from setting up a domain controller, can anyone think of other ways to help with my problem of the master browser issue and overall poor network performance? Would running a Windows Home Server box help at all? Or would a *nix server be better? I have some experience with *nix (specifically Ubuntu)? - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
Re: [H] Master browser issues and possible NAS solution?
I think this is just the usual Windows TCP/IP networking BS. I have these kind of complaints ever since I switched from Win95 Netbui to WinNT TCP/IP. All the times I have tried to get things working better, the only thing I discovered is that mapping drives generally work better then browsing the network. I thought Vista was suppose to replace the whole TCP/IP stack and fix a lot of these problems. At 11:54 AM 2/24/2008, you wrote: I appreciate the advice. Here's what gets me - I'm fairly knowledgeable about this sort of stuff and I'm not doing anything extraordinary. I have 3 windows machines and a MacBook on a home LAN with my Airport Extreme handling the DHCP duties. And this problem was happening with both the Netgear and D-link devices I was using before, as well as back when I only had 2 Windows machines on the system, so I am fairly sure it isn't any of the networking gear. Am I missing something critical about configuration for Windows file sharing? All I want to be able to do is transfer files and share media back and forth. If I get rid of NetBIOS, I would go into the Network config and remove File and Print Sharing? I know back in the day you had multiple network protocols you could bind to various adapters, so you could do NetBUI or NetBIOS over TCP/IP. Here's what I have now: Client for Microsoft Networks File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks QoS Packet Scheduler TCP/IP I have no idea what these three are, I think they installed with my Wi-fi card (they only exist on my one machine): Jumpstart Wireless Intermediate Driver Wireless Intermediate Driver Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder Wait a minute, now that I think about it, I remember back in the day having the IPX/SPX/NetBIOS protocol - should I have that running or no? - Brian Weeden On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 11:50 AM, Ben Ruset [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your Mac is doing it because you have Windows file sharing turned on. If you're not sharing anything on the Mac to Windows clients then you shouldn't need to have it turned on. One thing that you could do to get around the browser issues would be to not rely on NetBIOS for name resolution. You could do this one of two ways: 1) Give all of your machines static IP's, and make entries for each of them in each machine's hosts file. 2) Set up a local DNS server, and have your DHCP server send over the IP and hostname info to the DNS server when they register a lease. This is easy to do with Windows DNS/DHCP, slightly harder with Linux, and probably impossible if you have your home router handling DHCP. You'd have this problem even if you had a Windows Home Server or *nix box running. For whatever reason NetBIOS over TCP/IP is not working right in your environment. You'd have the same sort of problems connecting to a Microsoft or Samba SMB share. Using something besides NetBIOS for name resolution should net you some performance benefits. Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about this problem and really haven't solved anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a snip
