23

We all know the Pi can play 1080p video no problem, but is it fast enough to act as the basis for a file server that can stream 1080p video over its wired network connection?

I'm thinking of using mine as a media server of sorts to stream 1080p HD video, (with DTS-HD audio), and I am interested to know if anyone else has tried it or if the Pi is up to the task.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
22

I tested network throughput with iperf and it can push around 90 Mbps of TCP through happily. If I recall corectly, Full HD video requires around 25-35 Mbps, so my guess would be that yes.

You may want to consider something faster than a SD card to store media files on. While a Class 6 is probably enough, Class 4 probably isn't.

UPDATE: I did a more realistic test of I/O - reading from SD card and pushing the data over the network.

On Raspberry Pi (Raspbian):

nc 192.168.105.225 337 < /dev/mmcblk0

On another machine on the same LAN (bridged):

nc -l 337 > /dev/null

The router (bridge) showed 44 Mbps of traffic being pushed by Pi. Considering that I have a Class 4 SD card this implies that I/O on Pi is not a bottleneck at these speeds.

Resource consumption during a test (it's quite high): top

I will try with an attached USB hard drive soon to see if it can push a full 100 Mbps.

Improve this answer
11
  • 1
    Thanks for that. Sure, a USB hard drive (externally powered) seems like what I'm going for in terms of storage at present.
    – berry120
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 14:44
  • I retested just to be on the safe side and it is actually slightly less - around 90 Mbps, but still well enough for streaming.
    – user13
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 14:52
  • 3
    A Class 6 SD card should be capable of 6MBps read speeds (6 Megabytes per second), so unless there is some limitation in the Raspberry Pi SD interface, a class 10 card should be more than capable of saturating a 100mbps (100 megabits per second) once protocol overheads are taken into account.
    – Mark Booth
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 15:18
  • 1
    @ppumkin iperf tests only network performance. If I recall correctly, it sends 0123456789 repeatedly. Will do a test with SD card I/O soon and let you know.
    – user13
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 10:14
  • 1
    I am not happy, of course not :) But it is understandable. Even TCP itself is quite a resource-intensive protocol. It has to calculate checksums all the time, fragment data, take care of retransmittions, ..
    – user13
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 10:53

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.