# Does Elite have 10/100/1000 Gigabit Wired Ethernet?



## mchiles (Jul 13, 2007)

I wired my whole house a couple of years ago with Cat-6 and I have gigabit ethernet router connected to a DOSCIS 3 cable modem and a gigabit ethernet switch behind each TV in the house. I am trying to justify to myself the purchase of an Elite to replace a failing S3. I have seen conflicting reports as to the Elite's wired ethernet speed. TiVo says the Elite has only 10/100 wired ethernet. Reporting on this forum seems to suggest the Elite rocks 10/100/1000 gigabit wired ethernet. Which is it???

Thanks,

mchiles


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mchiles said:


> I wired my whole house a couple of years ago with Cat-6 and I have gigabit ethernet router connected to a DOSCIS 3 cable modem and a gigabit ethernet switch behind each TV in the house. I am trying to justify to myself the purchase of an Elite to replace a failing S3. I have seen conflicting reports as to the Elite's wired ethernet speed. TiVo says the Elite has only 10/100 wired ethernet. Reporting on this forum seems to suggest the Elite rocks 10/100/1000 gigabit wired ethernet. Which is it???
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> mchiles


It has a Gigabit Ethernet port. But in my tests I've only seen it peak a little above 100mb/s speeds.


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Network speeds are usually limited by the CPU not the port on TiVos. So in general, it doesn't matter if it is gigabit or not. Although perhaps there is a chance they can update the drivers to get better speeds.


----------



## rblum (Sep 11, 2009)

Premiere & elite to series 3 are enough faster than real time that shows can be immediately watched and fast fwd through commercials. Premiere to premiere is noticeably faster than that.

Part of my network is gigabit and the part of it with the tivos is not (wire in walls). When I first got my elite I was xferring a bunch of shows to the new one and it used enough bandwidth that streaming a movie was a problem while that was going on. Maybe that would go away with all gigabit speed.

Point is even with a 10/100 network it is faster than you "need" it to be.


----------



## JoeTaxpayer (Dec 23, 2008)

rblum said:


> Point is even with a 10/100 network it is faster than you "need" it to be.


Agreed. Infinite speed is overrated. The first time I went to transfer and immediately start that show, and by the first commercial, I was able to skip ahead to the show again, I shouted to the Mrs "how cool is that?" 
Of course if you're reloading a full drive from a backup on a NAS box, that's another story, but for regular use, it's perfect.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

rblum said:


> Premiere & elite to series 3 are enough faster than real time that shows can be immediately watched and fast fwd through commercials. Premiere to premiere is noticeably faster than that.


"Faster than real time" is still quite slow.



rblum said:


> Point is even with a 10/100 network it is faster than you "need" it to be.


Not at all. Often I would like to transfer 4 or 5 shows at a time. The engineers at TiVo have chosen not to allow this because of the poor network performance.


----------



## socrplyr (Jul 19, 2006)

lrhorer said:


> "Not at all. Often I would like to transfer 4 or 5 shows at a time. The engineers at TiVo have chosen not to allow this because of the poor network performance.


Do you have no facts to back up that statement? The Premieres seem not seem to have any significant network performance issues. The Premiere's maximum possible throughput is 100Mbps due to the chipset used (I don't think any of the SoC's at the time of design support 1000Mbps). Realistically, the fastest transfer of an HD program is 4x real time over 100Mbps. So realistically, it couldn't support more than 2 or maybe if you are lucky 3 in real time. Now that plus the extra cpu time needed for both streams and the overhead of load balancing probably can't be handled reliably with the cpu. Remember at the time of launch the cpu was one of the fastest (if not fastest) available SoC with the necessary tuning capabilities. In reality, it probably isn't much of a choice by Tivo, but a reality of the available hardware. Either way I haven't seen any indication of poor network performance.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

lrhorer said:


> "Faster than real time" is still quite slow.
> 
> Not at all. Often I would like to transfer 4 or 5 shows at a time. The engineers at TiVo have chosen not to allow this because of the poor network performance.


I am now getting about 13 minutes to xfer a 1 hour HD show from TP to TP using the N wireless connection, the xfer speed I am getting is over 65M/sec.
Most people don't need much a faster Xfer.


----------



## hillyard (Nov 1, 2011)

When I transfer from unit to unit plenty fast. When I transfer a 1080p from computer to tivo slower than real time. when I transfer 720 from computer to tivo right at or slightly faster than real time. I am hard wired with cat6 and gigabit router. One unit is a premier the other is an elite. able to stream and skip commercial between the two units with no problem.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

hillyard said:


> When I transfer from unit to unit plenty fast. When I transfer a 1080p from computer to tivo slower than real time. when I transfer 720 from computer to tivo right at or slightly faster than real time. I am hard wired with cat6 and gigabit router. One unit is a premier the other is an elite. able to stream and skip commercial between the two units with no problem.


I know in my setup with 720p or 1080i it transfers at much faster than realtime when going from the PC to the Premiere.


----------



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> I know in my setup with 720p or 1080i it transfers at much faster than realtime when going from the PC to the Premiere.


Same here, several times realtime. 80 to 90 Mbps.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

socrplyr said:


> Do you have no facts to back up that statement?


No, but it is a reasonable assumption, and there certainly is no restriction at any hardware layer or any software layer below layer 5 that prevents multiple TCP connections. Indeed, it is possible to get the Tivo to allow multiple simultaneous video transfers. I've done it. It just isn't allowed by the application layer software in the UI.



socrplyr said:


> The Premieres seem not seem to have any significant network performance issues.


Then why doesn't every transfer peg out the network interface?



socrplyr said:


> The Premiere's maximum possible throughput is 100Mbps due to the chipset used


Then why have people reported throughputs of more than 100Mbps for some operations?



socrplyr said:


> (I don't think any of the SoC's at the time of design support 1000Mbps).


I find that hard to believe, although I do not have specific data. It's been quite a while since I did any hardware design. Even if an SoC capable of 1000M was not available, however, 1000M was certainly possible at design time using discrete components.



socrplyr said:


> Realistically, the fastest transfer of an HD program is 4x real time over 100Mbps.


Well, first of all, that assumes the programs are all HD, which may not be the case. Even limiting it to HD, however, the maximum continuous data rate from a standard QAM with industry norm rate shaping is 18Mbps, so even with the highest bandwidth material, a 100M pipe can easily handle 5 MPEG-II HD videos at real time. Secondly, if one is trransfering h.264 content, which is usually the case for me, one may easily transfer six or even seven video streams in real time on a 100M pipe. Thirdly, it is not entirely necessary to transfer all of the streams in real time. The only one that needs to be transferred in real time is the one that is actually playing. It is not at all difficult to assign a priority to the streams, giving the one being viewed a higher priority and the others lower priority.



socrplyr said:


> So realistically, it couldn't support more than 2 or maybe if you are lucky 3 in real time. Now that plus the extra cpu time needed for both streams and the overhead of load balancing probably can't be handled reliably with the cpu.


Yes, it can. I've done it on a Series III. Load balancing, BTW, requires almost nothing of the CPU. Indeed, unless both tuners are active, the CPU loading is quite low, even with multiple streams transferring.



socrplyr said:


> Either way I haven't seen any indication of poor network performance.


I certainly have. The fact is, when transferring 720p MPEG-II material, neither the S3 nor especially the THD can keep up in real-time for a single stream, not even if both tuners are disabled. Although considerably faster, reportedly the Premier does not peg out the network interface when transferring an MPEG-II transport stream, either.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> ...........I certainly have. The fact is, when transferring 720p MPEG-II material, neither the S3 nor especially the THD can keep up in real-time for a single stream, not even if both tuners are disabled. Although considerably faster, reportedly the Premier does not peg out the network interface when transferring an MPEG-II transport stream, either.


When I had my S3/TiVoHD boxes they transferred any of my HD recordings in faster than realtime. Of course nowhere near as fast as Premiere to Premiere.


----------



## socrplyr (Jul 19, 2006)

lrhorer said:


> No, but it is a reasonable assumption, and there certainly is no restriction at any hardware layer or any software layer below layer 5 that prevents multiple TCP connections. Indeed, it is possible to get the Tivo to allow multiple simultaneous video transfers. I've done it. It just isn't allowed by the application layer software in the UI.


That isn't proof of poor network performance. It isn't really even an indication of it either. It is a feature that isn't supported.



lrhorer said:


> Then why doesn't every transfer peg out the network interface?


It seems to come pretty close as the effective interface is the 100Mbps. 80-90Mbps is pegged out.



lrhorer said:


> Then why have people reported throughputs of more than 100Mbps for some operations?


I have only seen one claim and it wasn't much over that. I doubt it was sustained and most likely a fluctuation based upon the measurement method (not controlled by the end user). According to Broadcom, the SoC (BCM7413) has dual Fast Ethernet (2x 100Mbps ports). http://www.broadcom.com/products/IPTV/IPTV-Solutions/BCM7413 On the Elite Tivo could have chosen to connect both into the 1Gbps switch and bonded the links together, but that wouldn't be an issue free implementation. I definitely don't blame them for not doing that.



lrhorer said:


> I find that hard to believe, although I do not have specific data. It's been quite a while since I did any hardware design. Even if an SoC capable of 1000M was not available, however, 1000M was certainly possible at design time using discrete components.


You are correct that they could have added a discrete card. I am sure there are PCI versions of them, but that isn't typical for this type of device. It also would have added significantly to cost. I agree it could have been done.



lrhorer said:


> Well, first of all, that assumes the programs are all HD, which may not be the case. Even limiting it to HD, however, the maximum continuous data rate from a standard QAM with industry norm rate shaping is 18Mbps, so even with the highest bandwidth material, a 100M pipe can easily handle 5 MPEG-II HD videos at real time. Secondly, if one is trransfering h.264 content, which is usually the case for me, one may easily transfer 6 or even seven video streams in real time on a 100M pipe. Thirdly, it is not entirely necessary to transfer all of the streams in real time. The only one that needs to be transferred in real time is the one that is actually playing. It is not at all difficult to assign a priority to the streams, giving the one being viewed a higher priority and the others lower priority.


Agreed that that not all is HD, but in order to have a consistent product you probably want to cater to the worst case (that is also realistic). That would be HD streams. A 100Mbps Ethernet interface has overhead and realistically, you can only expect consistently to run 80Mbps-90Mbps. Typically you then have to give yourself some overhead to make sure things run smoothly, which takes you down to at best 4 streams (if not 3).



lrhorer said:


> Yes, it can. I've done it on a Series III. Load balancing, BTW, requires almost nothing of the CPU. Indeed, unless both tuners are active, the CPU loading is quite low, even with multiple streams transferring.


Agreed that load balancing doesn't use that much CPU time, but pushing that much data through the cpu for multiple transfers does have overhead that a single one doesn't.



lrhorer said:


> I certainly have. The fact is, when transferring 720p MPEG-II material, neither the S3 nor especially the THD can keep up in real-time for a single stream, not even if both tuners are disabled. Although considerably faster, reportedly the Premier does not peg out the network interface when transferring an MPEG-II transport stream, either.


We aren't talking about the S3 or the HD, but the Premiere (and specifically the XL4/Elite). Where are you indications that the Premiere doesn't "peg" out the network interface?

I am actually all for Tivo supporting the feature you suggest, if it can be done without significantly increasing the price and with consistent behavior and performance.


----------



## Just_Chris (Oct 13, 2008)

What you're all missing is the fact that some people transfer programs from the Tivo to the PC, strip commercials and then transfer the edited shows back to the Tivo. I want the fastest possible speed I can get because i'm moving multiple shows at a time, from both directions. "Faster than real time is fast enough" doesn't apply in this case.

Now, the premier is MUCH faster than the Series 3 HD over cat 5. Possibly twice as fast but I have NO data to back it up. All I know is I can transfer an HD hour long show in under an hour and for my 3 it was OVER an hour. I had quit stripping commercials on the 3 due to the time it was taking sending over the wire. With the Premier I'm sending in BOTH directions and still faster than the 3. I don't recommend trying to stream a movie from Netflix while you're doing that though! (Don't tell my wife! I blame the neighbor kids and their x-box).

I would say the Premier not only has a GB ethernet the processor bump also helps speed up the transfers. On the 3 I use to turn the channel to "dead" ones or SD to help speed up the transfers and on the premier I don't need to do this.


----------



## JoeTaxpayer (Dec 23, 2008)

Just_Chris said:


> What you're all missing is the fact that some people transfer programs from the Tivo to the PC, strip commercials and then transfer the edited shows back to the Tivo. I want the fastest possible speed I can get because i'm moving multiple shows at a time, from both directions. "Faster than real time is fast enough" doesn't apply in this case.


Understood, and agreed. I wonder what percent of users have their computer in the loop for storing or editing. Not that it matters, so long as you're doing that, the speed is important. I have iTiVo pulling shows to send to my iPad, but it's automatic and I see they are there by the next day.


----------

