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P1i fails on m.youtube.com |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
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I have been testing this, and i've noticed that the media player app will stop without warning and the tell you there is an error with the file. Given that I am more than confident that its not my adsl or router loosing any packets I believe this to be a fault with the media viewer app.
Unfortunately it is not consitent.
@Nipsen
What stream do you get this error with? I'd be happy to test it tommorrow evening when I get back from work. |
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701
Joined: Nov 26, 2002
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From: Romania
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On 2007-10-14 14:42:01, henkeee wrote:
701, what's the name of your WiFi-router?
I've been to a bar didn't make any setting just connected and played a few clips. |
Nipsen
Joined: Jul 31, 2007
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..well, you can try bbc radio streams
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/saturday/
, and c-span streams. They die for me after a few minutes, and about at the same time every retry. But you're right, it's not consistent. Sometimes it's eight minutes, sometimes it's a bit longer, or shorter... It's like the first realmedia plugins, it seems to me. Just failing for no reason when the packet stream had to handle too many corrections, and things of that sort. |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
Posts: 403
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@701
Indeed, this is because the router has a decent firewall - mine didn't the stupid thing thought the stream was a Denial of Service attack 
@Nipsen
Yes, i remember, maybe thats what real did with their first (not so good) code? It took several releases for the real player streaming to actually start working well, maybe the UIQ player is based on this rather flawed code.
[edit]
yes, i see what you mean. It played 3-6 mins then either errored out or just exited. Having said that i did kick of a large download from my laptop (also wifi) which might have affected it i suppose.
Alternatively I guess the IP Stack in UIQ could just be a bit naff - rather like the first IP stacks on win95?
[ This Message was edited by: pnf1973 on 2007-10-14 23:13 ] |
Nipsen
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On 2007-10-14 23:41:32, pnf1973 wrote:
Alternatively I guess the IP Stack in UIQ could just be a bit naff - rather like the first IP stacks on win95?
I think we can safely say it's not that bad. 
But that would explain why some connections drop out and things go slow, and so on. Still, I don't have these problems on the school's wlan.. So, maybe it's a combination of wlan implementation (resets on the network diagram screw things up) and the ip- queue? |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
Posts: 403
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Given the number of people complaining of WLan issues then there is something going on. I think much of it is down to people routers - as previously discussed - but a good part of it is the transmit power on the p1, which I think has been set rather low.
The reasoning for this will be quite simple, at the moment I think you can get between 4-5 hours constant wlan usage from the p1 - if SE upped the transmit power to the point where the wlan on the P1 worked more like a laptop computers wlan (which is what most people seem to expect it to be like) then the power drain will be such that i wouldn't be suprised to see the battery life drop by half or more.
Of course, hardly anyone actually positions their wlan router properly either - how many people know that the wlan signal radiates down from the antenna? Myself I'm gonna try getting a better antenna for my router and see if that improves matters any. |
701
Joined: Nov 26, 2002
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From: Romania
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Don't get me started on WLan. Sometimes it doesn't connect, sometimes it does. Absolutelly random.
" They say i'm sick; they`re right, it's called 'Terminal Boredom!' " Follow me on twitter.com/bogramaRead my Symbian UIQ 3.0 reviews at Juvo's |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
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OK, is this to a router you can configure? Have you tried changing channels on it? If there are other wlans in your vicinity you could be getting some interference from them.
You could also try statically assigning your IP and DNS settings on the P1 and reserving a IP address on the routers DCHP for it - alot of routers seem to take too long to respond to dchp requests for the p1's liking. |
Nipsen
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No.. I definitively think it has something to do with the thread priority. I tried coreplayer for streaming an mp3- podcast today. And it has the same problems if you switch the program to the background while you're connecting. But it tends to work pretty good if you just leave it alone. So I'm sure it's possible the problems show up more easily with a noisy wlan- connection, but it's not what causes the hangs. |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
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It is possible, although now I doubt it myself. The network transport should be fairly easy on the CPU, you are after all only reading small packets of data from a socket. Also don't forget that the actual TCP stack should be part of symbian, rather than UIQ, so if its a problem at that level we would see it across all symbian handsets not just sony ones.
I am starting to think that SE have not implemented the WLan very well at the driver level, with some problems with timeouts and retry thresholds. I am currently investigating settings for the RTS threshold (in the advanced settings for the WLan account) which - if set right - might just help matters. At the moment the p1 defaults to quite a high threshold (over 2k) on busier wlans this really ought to be lower to help with overall performance. I am also planning to investigate exactly what the "power save" function does in the P1. |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
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@Nipsen
Interesting, now got one of the BBC audio streams up as far as 45mins! with power save off - rts threshold of 1468. Gonna try again later with power save on......
Updates as events warrant 
[EDIT : The stream got to well over an hour before it bugged out, i will try again with power save on tommorrow, when i have a full battery again!]
[ This Message was edited by: pnf1973 on 2007-10-15 21:19 ] |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
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My investigations into the P1's wlan continue..... I checked my logs from last night's streaming test - it appears that the p1 only uses the 1mbps speed!
Basically I started a large download off on my laptop. Packet analysis showed it using the 24-36mbps speeds, then I turned the wlan on my p1 on and the router suddenly stopped sending at any of the g speeds. I expected this, wlan always works at the lowest speed of any connected client for all connected clients, but I expected (as I was only a few feet from the router) to see packets continue to be received on the 11mbps band (the maximum of wifi b), but no, as soon as the p1 connected all packets from the router were in the 1mbps band! This would explain rather alot of connection issues with timeouts and what not - especially when the router has more than one connection active. I confirmed this further by then switching off the wlan on my p1, after a few mins the downloads started to come through using the 24mbps speed again.
I can understand that battery life is important to SE, but this is somewhat silly IMHO, remember that when the P1 is on the WLAN that ALL clients connected to that network will be forced to use the 1mbps speed! It would not take many active connections to swamp the available bandwidth at this speed, causing slow down for all.
Now my ADSL is only a basic one, 512kbps, but those of you lucky enough to be able to get 2meg or even more you will cause a significant slowdown in browsing speeds for other users each time you connect your P1 to your router! |
Nipsen
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*nods*. Think it's possible that's just the implementation of the wlan and the authentication handshake? I mean, I've seen better speeds than 150-180kb/s on larger networks. But like you, I have 2mbit max some times on my home- network (I mean, I have that anyway, because of another laptop with a lousy modem, and a cheap AP that struggles all the time..).
It's just that reducing the size of the authentication packages can sometimes help reduce problems with packet- loss. It won't remove packet loss or interference, so..
edit: eh? I disabled some function called "Spanning tree", and things suddenly moved a lot quicker.. hmm.. no, I give up.
[ This Message was edited by: Nipsen on 2007-10-16 22:42 ] |
pnf1973
Joined: Oct 04, 2007
Posts: 403
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanning_tree_protocol
All you wanted to know about the spanning protocol but were afraid to ask. Never heard of it myself.
Looks like it just adds overhead unless you have lots of nodes on the network to co-ordinate.
But anyways, yes, the speed of the connection is just a parameter in the handshake - so it should be a simple job to actually speed that up. Well, simple if you're SE, not simple for us. Come on SE! Listen to us, the users! (like that'll make any bloody difference) Myself, I'd like the option to set the speed of the wlan. I'd probably just leave it on 1mbps to keep my battery life but it would be good to be able to change it. |
Nipsen
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Thanks.. I'll ignore it until I have to setup a bridged lan of some sort *cough*.. 
Still.. as I said, I've seen better speeds with the p1 on other networks. So it would make sense if the implementation is just picky with the routers. Or, that the problems have something to do with what sort of authentication is used, or what sort of handshake frames the ap uses (there are different implementations out there before the wpa was included in 802.11i, after all. Perhaps they focused on commercial Radius authentication, and skipped past the early psk implementations?)..
I mean, I've seen several times that a network can easily handle different speeds on different units (even my lousy router could do that). Even if some of the units were struggling with connecting. It was the same thing with someone I know who has a tytnII - it would fail to connect, and then manage to hook up after a long while (i.e., the handshake takes very long). And then it would be stuck on either 1 or 2mbit, and then drop out once in a while, even when in close range. As I said, it's the same thing I've seen on a laptop with a lousy modem, or that's using an "early" Wireless Zero implementation on windows.
So I'm guessing some of the hangs are caused by exceptions that aren't handled extremely well in the implementation (even if the p1 works better than certain other units I've seen). Then again - wifi is all about exceptions and error- correction.. so... |
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Posted: 2007-10-14 23:05
