Is it advisable to set up ATV wired or wirelessly

[barnetda]

Hi
I am newbie with the Apple TV product.

I am thinking of adding an Apple Tv unit to my home theatre system.

Wll be primarily used to buy/rent movies and Itunes music.

I have a good wireless signal in that room but also can easily run an ethernet cable under the house into the Apple Tv.

Would it be worth my while to do so?

Thanks

 

[NightStorm]

Personally, I get better streaming performance wirelessly (802.11n 5GHz) than wired. I'll never understand why they didn't include a gigabit Ethernet port on the AppleTV.

 

[mrrory]

I've only ever had mine set up wirelessly and it's great for playback, but a little boring trying to fast forward or rewind through video. I've been meaning to wire it, but after reading that it doesn't have gigabit ethernet, I might not bother.

 

[barnetda]

Thanks very much guys.

Looks like wirelessly will be sufficient, certainly saves me clambering under the house!

 

[rogervzv]

I have two TVs set up on Wi Fi and it works great. It works best if you have a dual channel router with one channel dedicated to the TV.

Be sure to disable your Windows Firewall for best results if you are using Windows.

 

[mhdena]

I have two TVs set up on Wi Fi and it works great. It works best if you have a dual channel router with one channel dedicated to the TV.

Be sure to disable your Windows Firewall for best results if you are using Windows.

I have 2 ATV, a macbook, an imac, 2 dell laptops all on the same one channel router.

I don't have any issues with drop outs or connectivity. Though I sync, not stream to my atvs

 

[barnetda]

Thats perfect, thanks very much to you both.

Looks like it will be fine wirelessly.

Many thanks

 

[emaja]

The wireless works great for me. With the wife and 3 kids, I have 9 wireless devices connected to my AEBS and no stuttering or any other wireless issue.

Just be sure that you use a channel that no one around you uses.

 

[xraydoc]

I have 3 Apple TVs - two are connected via ethernet and one via WiFi (802.11n 5GHz).

While all three will stream movies just fine without any video hiccups, I find the two connected via ethernet to be more responsive - fast forward/rewind is faster and smoother, movies (streaming, not off the ATV's HD) start up faster, and syncing any media to/from the AppleTVs is an order of magnitude faster via ethernet than via WiFi.

 

[barnetda]

I purchased the ATV 160gb over Xmas. Setting up wirelessly was a breeze.

It is awesome , will change the way i listen to music , buy and watch films.

thanks for your advice guys.

 

[tom1971]

Wires will provide a faster connection. However I never had any issues using wLAN.

 

[roidy]

Wires will provide a faster connection.

Not strictly true. The ATV's wired ethernet if Base 100 and gives a max data rate of 100Mbit/s where as the wireless is 802.11n and has a data throughput of between 50-144Mbit/s. So if you've got a really strong wireless signal with low interference and a short range then the wireless connection could out perform a wired connection.

 

[belvdr]

Not strictly true. The ATV's wired ethernet if Base 100 and gives a max data rate of 100Mbit/s where as the wireless is 802.11n and has a data throughput of between 50-144Mbit/s. So if you've got a really strong wireless signal with low interference and a short range then the wireless connection could out perform a wired connection.

Speed isn't the only factor though. Wireless connections are half duplex so that only one side can communicate at a given time. Half duplex also causes a lot of retransmissions.

A lot depends on the environment. Have the wireless device too close to the access point can also degrade performance.

 

[barnetda]

Wires will provide a faster connection. However I never had any issues using wLAN.

I have set mine up wirelessly and it couldnt be any faster. Its as quick as my wired MacPro !

i am so pleased with the set up, better than i thought.

 

[roidy]

Speed isn't the only factor though. Wireless connections are half duplex so that only one side can communicate at a given time. Half duplex also causes a lot of retransmissions.

A lot depends on the environment. Have the wireless device too close to the access point can also degrade performance.

Which is why I said COULD out perform it and not will out perform. As you say with a wireless signal there are a lot of external factors to consider. The fact that wireless is Half duplex make very little difference to the ATV as the data mainly travels in one direction. This can be easely proven by streaming a file wirelessly to my Appletv while watching the network usage in the Windows resource monitor. Itunes sends an average of 2500-3000 kbytes/sec to the ATV but only recieves an average of 5-40 bytes/sec back. Which means the network spends 99.987% of its time transmitting to the ATV and only 0.013% receiving. To me that means hardly any data is lost or retransmitted, at least on my connection.

 

[belvdr]

The fact that wireless is Half duplex make very little difference to the ATV as the data mainly travels in one direction. This can be easely proven by streaming a file wirelessly to my Appletv while watching the network usage in the Windows resource monitor. Itunes sends an average of 2500-3000 kbytes/sec to the ATV but only recieves an average of 5-40 bytes/sec back. Which means the network spends 99.987% of its time transmitting to the ATV and only 0.013% receiving. To me that means hardly any data is lost or retransmitted, at least on my connection.

Unidirectional has nothing to do with it. Put a hub in between two machines and copy a file from one to the other. Watch the collision light (all hubs have these). Additionally, you cannot tell how much data at all was retransmitted by those figures. You need to look deeper down. Any retransmission is a bad thing, but whether it impacts the user experience is another. With the figures you state above, a 100Mb wired connection is more than fast enough to handle that (10-11 MB/sec is normal), so there's not even a need to examine the extra bandwidth that the wireless can offer. In that case, I'd take a wired full duplex connection over it any day.

In the case of a UDP stream, it won't matter, as the client won't respond to any of the server's packets. However, on a TCP stream (which this must be the case), the client must respond with ACKs to the packets or the server will resend them. These responses can collide with the data and both machines must stop transmitting for a brief period of time and then restart.

In real life, you'll likely not notice any effects unless there's a ton of data being sent over the half duplex link, in this case wireless.

 

[carlcosby]

Hi Roidy

Which is why I said COULD out perform it and not will out perform. As you say with a wireless signal there are a lot of external factors to consider. The fact that wireless is Half duplex make very little difference to the ATV as the data mainly travels in one direction. This can be easely proven by streaming a file wirelessly to my Appletv while watching the network usage in the Windows resource monitor. Itunes sends an average of 2500-3000 kbytes/sec to the ATV but only recieves an average of 5-40 bytes/sec back. Which means the network spends 99.987% of its time transmitting to the ATV and only 0.013% receiving. To me that means hardly any data is lost or retransmitted, at least on my connection.

Hi Roidy,

What would i need to stream content from my MacBook pro to my ATV, the wired way? Do I simply put a two way adaptor in my cable modem and attach the MB Pro and ATV to it? How do I then set both up to talk to each other please?

Im new to all this, as you may have gathered

Regards
Carl

 

[flynz4]

Hi Roidy,

What would i need to stream content from my MacBook pro to my ATV, the wired way? Do I simply put a two way adaptor in my cable modem and attach the MB Pro and ATV to it? How do I then set both up to talk to each other please?

Im new to all this, as you may have gathered

Regards
Carl

Carl,

Carl, do you have a router attached to your cable modem... or does your cable modem contain a router? Typically your cable modem would connect to a router, which would do a few things:

1) Give you a hardware firewall (NAT) to protect you from intrusions
2) Provide IP addresses to each of your computers or equipment inside you house on your LAN
3) Optionally... provide a wireless access point for your LAN.

Assuming that you have a router, you would just connect your MBP and your ATV to two different LAN ports on the router. If you do not have enough ports, you can add more by using an ethernet switch.

/Jim

 

[carlcosby]

Thanx for info

Carl,

Carl, do you have a router attached to your cable modem... or does your cable modem contain a router? Typically your cable modem would connect to a router, which would do a few things:

1) Give you a hardware firewall (NAT) to protect you from intrusions
2) Provide IP addresses to each of your computers or equipment inside you house on your LAN
3) Optionally... provide a wireless access point for your LAN.

Assuming that you have a router, you would just connect your MBP and your ATV to two different LAN ports on the router. If you do not have enough ports, you can add more by using an ethernet switch.

/Jim

Thanx jim,

I stumbled across these, think I will go down this route. I think there are more powerful ones too!!

http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd...duct&fm=13&sm=1&tm=2&sku=105909&category_oid=

regards
carl

 

[ascender]

I think the answer to this going on my experience with ATV is that its whatever works for you. Some have it running perfectly with wireless, some with wired, some can use either. But there's definitely no hard and fast answer with this device.