question about wireless networks/file sharing

[NooDle]

So, the situation is this :

I have a setup like this at home : desktop PC on the first floor, telephone wire + modem on the ground floor. because I couldn't be arsed to have a mile long wire connect the modem to the PC, I went the wireless way.

So its now phone + modem + wireless router.
The desktop I have has a relatively large HDD, with tons of videos and music on it.

Now, i'm considering buying a laptop for just surfing a bit, and maybe reading emails. I'm looking into the EEE PC range, but the question is this :

can I easily share all the crap on my desktop so I can access it with the laptop, through the shared wireless connection?

Since EEE Pcs have a small HDD, I don't want to go copy crap all over the place, but when I do want to watch a video, I don't want to go and search all over the place, i'd like to watch videos/listen to music via the wireless.

Now I know you can share folders, but what about bandwith? I'm talking atleast 200 GBs of stuff here, would it eat my bandwith if I'm "streaming" (sort of) a HD movie from my desktop to my laptop through the router?

[Hercules286]

You could easily do that with an FTP server on your server and a package that mounts an FTP directory on the EEE. In fact, I'm doing that at home, but with wires. And a HTPC instead of an EEE.

As for the bandwidth question, I don't think you'll experience much of a slowdown and you could always set a speed cap on the FTP server....

[Yaco]

You could set the desktop's hdd to share with the network then just access the drive and open it like you would if the drive was on your notebook. I think that will work but it may be sluggish.

[cvrefugee]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304040

Basically what Yaco suggested is the most simple solution.

[NooDle]

thanks for all your answers so far.
I have another though so you're not off the hook just yet.

If I setup my outlook on the laptop, and DL the emails from there, I won't be able to get these emails on my other comp, right? And yeah I know I can use webmail and check emails before they are downloaded, but it's just a hassle with passwords every time...

what I would ideally like, is to be able to download emails on both pcs at the same time, without "losing" a mail because it's on the other PC. is there a way to do this? (I know you can forward all mails to another adress, but that would be cruel to my ISP because there's a ton of them every day)

[Dogbert]

Originally Posted by NooDle

what I would ideally like, is to be able to download emails on both pcs at the same time, without "losing" a mail because it's on the other PC. is there a way to do this?

In Outlook Express:

Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings -> Leave Messages On Server

[NooDle]

^you guys fucking rule!
I'd +rep you but I can't ATM

[Dogbert]

[NooDle]

Originally Posted by Yaco

You could set the desktop's hdd to share with the network then just access the drive and open it like you would if the drive was on your notebook. I think that will work but it may be sluggish.

finally have the netbook to do this, and it works

ATM i just stuffed all the audio & video (all 250GBs of it) into the shared folder and it does work...

but it slows down both PCs... is there a more elegant way of sharing that doesn't use so much bandwith... I can watch "streamed" movies from the other HDD, but it slows things down on the desktop much

not that it isn't usable anymore, but it is noticable...

IT people, any ideas?

[DanRoM]

For the email issue: Use IMAP instead of POP3.

[TechZ]

I have 2 HDD's in my Shuttle XPC, one is for the OS+daily downloads, the other is for content that is accessed over my network, this means that no matter how much is being accessed on the 2nd drive, I don't even notice it. If you're using wireless, make sure your signal+channels are setup right so you can get good speed, or just invest in a wireless-n setup.

[NooDle]

^hmmm, I have quite a good wireless setup, as I notice quite good downloadspeeds on both PCs, it's only when accessing the other shared folder that things slow down...

[PacketCollision]

I assume you mean the internet slows down on the desktop, not that the entire machine lags? If so, it's probably because copying a video across the network uses a lot more bandwidth than internet access, and actually saturates the connection, increasing the latency / decreasing the speed for other connections. I don't know that there is a lot you can do in that case, except maybe upgrade to N if you don't already have it.

If the entire desktop slows down when a video is copied, you might be running into a hard drive or CPU barrier. Knowing a bit more about the desktop would help in that situation: do you use RAID? What speed is the computer? How much RAM do you have, how much CPU is used when copying?

[NooDle]

^I have N already

and yeah it is just the internet access slowing down...
desktop is an Intel Core2 2.13 Ghz with 2 GB of RAM, so I doubt the bottleneck lies there...

Ive just unshared a whole bunch of stuff, now I 'only' have 9 GBs in the shared folder, I'll see if it gets any better now

[TechZ]

Originally Posted by PacketCollision

I assume you mean the internet slows down on the desktop, not that the entire machine lags? If so, it's probably because copying a video across the network uses a lot more bandwidth than internet access, and actually saturates the connection, increasing the latency / decreasing the speed for other connections. I don't know that there is a lot you can do in that case, except maybe upgrade to N if you don't already have it.

If the entire desktop slows down when a video is copied, you might be running into a hard drive or CPU barrier. Knowing a bit more about the desktop would help in that situation: do you use RAID? What speed is the computer? How much RAM do you have, how much CPU is used when copying?

I steam 350MB AVI's and it takes like 100-200KB/s max, its nothing on a network, even a lowly wifi one. I wonder why his machine is sluggish as a result.

[viilaaja@pt cruiser]

i recommed that you (if you can) put the pc on a wired connection and keep the laptop wireless.
That way you can still surf the net with your pc and (maybe) with your laptop also.
Then your pc don't saturate the wireless and the speed are used only to your laptop.

(remember, i don't have wireless network in my home, only wired between 2pc's and laptop used to have wireless thou).

[PacketCollision]

Does your netbook support N? If not, is it connecting via G? How is the signal strength? Are you getting much packet loss? Do you have B enabled? If so, are any B devices connected? If not, can you disable B? How 'bout G? When you are watching a video, how much bandwidth is being used on the desktop? On the laptop? What kind of router do you have?

[NooDle]

^whoa question overload

It seems a whole lot better now that I've chucked most of the stuff out of the shared folder...
I can now watch TG videos (700 mb ones) from the other PC without any slowdown on the desktop... weird...

[viilaaja@pt cruiser]

Originally Posted by NooDle

^whoa question overload

It seems a whole lot better now that I've chucked most of the stuff out of the shared folder...
I can now watch TG videos (700 mb ones) from the other PC without any slowdown on the desktop... weird...

your hd didn't like the erhmm collection you had there

[PacketCollision]

Originally Posted by NooDle

^whoa question overload

It seems a whole lot better now that I've chucked most of the stuff out of the shared folder...
I can now watch TG videos (700 mb ones) from the other PC without any slowdown on the desktop... weird...

Sorry about that, I didn't really mean for you to answer them all, just wanted to get you thinking about potential causes.


If putting fewer files in the shred directory helped though, most of those questions aren't really relevant. I've never noticed a network slowdown with large shares (all of my ~1TB of media is on the same share), but I use Samba on a Linux server, not Windows. Still, I find it hard to believe that Windows sharing wouldn't be able to handle it. Maybe it has something to do with using the "Shared folder" rather than sharing your media folder, or maybe windows is trying to generate movie thumbnails over the network.