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User

06.03.2011 03:29:59

Remote Buddy somehow constraining Drobo file transfer bandwidth

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

This is going to sound crazy, but Remote Buddy (v1.16.6) is causing a per-flow rate limit on SMB transfers to my Drobo FS. I noticed that my Mac Minis were having a really hard time streaming video from my Drobo FS (I have two, both configured with Remote Buddy). I spent all day troubleshooting. I replaced Ethernet cables, wired the Mac Minis direct to the Drobo FS, performed iPerf tests between my two Mac Minis and my iMac, and transfered files between machines using SMB. Machine to machine transfers worked great. SMB transfers from my Drobo to my iMac worked great. But I couldn't get anything over 2MBps (yes, MBytes/sec) to my mac minis. So, I start turning things off on the Mac Minis. It turns out, as soon as I turn off Remote Buddy, file transfers shoot up to 35MBps (280Mbps). This is easily duplicable.

The really strange thing is that it's not an overall bandwidth throttling. It's a per-flow throttling. When I select 10 files at once and drag them from my Drobo to my Mac Mini, the files are transferred serially and the transfer only gets 1-2MBps. If I drag the files one-by-one from my Drobo to my Mac Mini, *each* file gets 1-2MBps of bandwidth and the overall bandwidth goes up to a ceiling of about 35MBps.

I can't think of any reason why an IR utility would affect data transfer, or why that utility is only affecting SMB data transfers to my Drobo, but not to other machines on my network. Anyway, this drove me nuts for a good 5 hours today, so posting in case others have seen similar problems. Hopefully the devs know what to do with it.

These entries from the FAQ may be relevant to this topic:

Hardware - Apple® Remote

After uninstalling/quitting Remote Buddy, my Mac® no longer reacts to the Apple® Remote. (FAQ015E0241)
To enable you to use all capabilities of the IR Receiver of your Mac®, Remote Buddy is using its own driver. In contrast, all other applications with integrated Apple® Remote support usually use the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

As long as you're running Remote Buddy, Remote Buddy and its driver are responsible for turning the received button presses into actions. As soon as you quit Remote Buddy, this task is again handled by the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

If other applications don't use the interface to the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem correctly, this can lead to the effect that nothing happens when you press a button on your Apple® Remote. For as long as you're running Remote Buddy, issues like this are covered by Remote Buddy and it's driver and are therefore not visible to you. However, as soon as you quit Remote Buddy, the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem is back in control and any issues caused in it by other applications become visible.

Therefore Remote Buddy is neither the cause of the issue nor is it responsible for it. Instead, the cause of the issue exists independently of Remote Buddy. It's located elsewhere and can also only be solved there.

Although our products can't cause any such issues, we're regularly contacted about such issues and asked for help. In order to make locating and fixing the cause of such issues as easy and efficient as possible, we've developed a free diagnostics tool: Remote Control Diagnostics. It can locate issues with a single click and will provide you with information about the issue as well as with instructions on how you can fix it.

Hardware - iPhone™ / iPod® touch / AJAX Remote

How can I listen to / watch content from iTunes® on my iPhone™ / iPod® Touch? ("Streaming") (FAQ015E0229)
First of all, setup the AJAX Remote as described in the FAQ entry "How do I setup the AJAX Remote?".
Then follow these steps:
1. In AJAX Remote on your iPod® Touch or iPhone™, tap on the "Music" symbol.
2. Now tap on "Library" (upper-right corner) and navigate to the media file you want to playback on your iPod® Touch or iPhone™.
3. Tap on the blue play button.
4. If QuickTime® thinks that it can playback the file, you can now start playback by tapping on dark-blue playback button.
All preference settings are already set correctly by default. If you don't see any playback symbols: the remote access to files is only supported if you have set a password ("Require password" is enabled) and the option "Allow access to the files in your iTunes® library ("streaming")" is enabled as well. Both options can be found at Preferences > AJAX Remote.

User

07.03.2011 10:48:01

Re: Remote Buddy somehow constraining Drobo file transfer bandwidth

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Thanks for asking.

Are you using a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connection and a Wii Remote (or another Bluetooth remote)?

Best regards,
Felix Schwarz

User

08.03.2011 00:22:00

Re: Remote Buddy somehow constraining Drobo file transfer bandwidth

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

I have a wifi router with both 2.4 and 5Ghz signals. This is manifesting itself when the wifi is off and the Drobo is directly connected via ethernet (and via a switch- I've tested several different physical topologies with different ethernet cabling). No, I'm just using the standard IR Apple Remote.

User

15.03.2011 17:42:01

Re: Re: Remote Buddy somehow constraining Drobo file transfer bandwidth

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Thanks for the info.

I asked, because Bluetooth shares the 2.4 GHz range with WiFi and pairing a Wii Remote with Remote Buddy can increase traffic over it, leading to more collisions. In that case, connecting to WiFi over a 5 GHz range is the solution.

If you're accessing your Drobo via Ethernet, I can't see how the use of Remote Buddy could directly affect your network performance. It contains no code that could.

I can, however, imagine a possible indirect effect of one option:

At Prefs > Movie Library, Remote Buddy offers the option to automatically find VIDEO_TS folders using Spotlight (on by default). If the index Spotlight has built isn't sufficient for Spotlight to serve the results to Remote Buddy's query, Spotlight might perform a full scan of your network drive - which can result in a performance hit when you access that network drive at the same time. You can turn off this Spotlight search at Prefs > Movie Library.

Best regards,
Felix Schwarz

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