Media Player Resource Conflicts with Wireless Network

2 Oct 2006 4:52 AM

Magnus

I've got a problem while using the corporate Wireless Network and Media
Players simultaneously. While connected to the Wireless Network, within
minutes of starting a media playing application, the application hangs
up and stops playing the media. The CPU usage for that process spikes
up to 100% thereby not allowing other processes. The user interface
hangs up and the media player just stops playing there. However if we
forward to next song in the media player, the player plays for a while
and then again hangs up.

I thought this was systemic to my laptop, but I've found this problem
with friends who use the wireless network. I'm using a HP laptop while
my friends use different other brands. Further, I've tried a number of
players from WMP 11 Beta, WMP 10, WMP 9, Winamp, to iTunes 6.0/7.0 as
such and still every player acts in the same way. On the other hand,
the media players work perfectly when disconnected from the network.
I've swapped the Cisco VPN software to old versions, yet, this happens.

My network officer maintains that it has to do with corrupted files in
my laptop locally. If that is the case, my friend has a brand new Acer
laptop (only a month old and we havent exchanged any files) and he
experiences the same problem. And it happens irrespective of the
browser (Firefox 1.5/IE6.0). I'm using Win XP SP2 running with latest
critical updates.

Does anyone hav an idea to resolve this problem?

2 Oct 2006 5:40 AM

V Green

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"Magnus" <magnus.ast***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1159764748.210479.201760@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> I've got a problem while using the corporate Wireless Network and Media
> Players simultaneously. While connected to the Wireless Network, within
> minutes of starting a media playing application, the application hangs
> up and stops playing the media. The CPU usage for that process spikes
> up to 100% thereby not allowing other processes. The user interface
> hangs up and the media player just stops playing there. However if we
> forward to next song in the media player, the player plays for a while
> and then again hangs up.
>
> I thought this was systemic to my laptop, but I've found this problem
> with friends who use the wireless network. I'm using a HP laptop while
> my friends use different other brands. Further, I've tried a number of
> players from WMP 11 Beta, WMP 10, WMP 9, Winamp, to iTunes 6.0/7.0 as
> such and still every player acts in the same way. On the other hand,
> the media players work perfectly when disconnected from the network.
> I've swapped the Cisco VPN software to old versions, yet, this happens.
>
> My network officer maintains that it has to do with corrupted files in
> my laptop locally. If that is the case, my friend has a brand new Acer
> laptop (only a month old and we havent exchanged any files) and he
> experiences the same problem. And it happens irrespective of the
> browser (Firefox 1.5/IE6.0). I'm using Win XP SP2 running with latest
> critical updates.
>
> Does anyone hav an idea to resolve this problem?
>

Wireless, when being used simultaneously by many users
(corporate environment as you describe), simply is a poor medium
for streaming. Too much overhead + interference + collisions +
re-transmits + dynamic data rate shifts, etc, etc, etc.

Same thing happens here with our city-wide Wi-Fi - it's just not
up to the task of delivering a CONSTANT stream of uninterrupted
data - tho' it does fine with "bursty" stuff like Web browsing.