Sunday, November 20, 2005
Streaming Bandwidth Usage
I’m a little perplexed and would appreciate some feedback on this if anyone’s got some info. Right this moment, I’m playing some music from iTunes on my laptop. But the music isn’t actually on the laptop—rather I’m using iTunes’ feature to stream from a shared library that’s located on my G4 tower/server. In addition, instead of playing it on my computer’s speakers, I’m sending the audio out to my newly acquired AirPort Express from which I’ve connected an audio cable out to the amplifier in my den.
It’s all working fine, but the part that I’m not understanding is the amount of bandwidth used for the two different streams. My download bandwidth—which represents the music coming off my server to my laptop—is only running between 15 and 25 KB/sec. However, the upload bandwidth—which represents what I’m sending to the AirPort Express—is showing between 115 and 130 KB/sec. Why is so much more needed?
Not that I think this matters, but both the server and the AirPort Express are communicating via an ethernet cable (yes, the APE’s wi-fi is off right now). The laptop is on wireless, communicating through my Netgear router in the closet which the server and APE are connected to via ethernet.
» Posted by ALBj at 09:58 PM (ET)
Category: Musings
Comments
I would guess that it’s sending from your server to your laptop in mp3 format, which is compressed, but sending to the APE in raw uncompressed sound format (wav, or something like that). It would make sense for the APE to not understand mp3 natively.
» Posted by Tanner Lovelace
November 21, 2005 09:41 AM
Sorry, due to comment spam abuse, new comments on this entry are closed until I find time to upgrade Movable Type and enable registration and moderation.
Run a packet sniffer and see what kind of traffic it is.
» Posted by Queue
November 21, 2005 04:57 AM