xlights multicast seems to bring other computers to a crawl

[Steve Gase]

I've not noticed this behavior before with earlier releases.

I left xlights on in test mode, sending multicast e1.31 to my EtD...  I found that another computer on the network was having extremely sluggush behavior...  the mouse would freeze or crawl/jump.  When I disconnect the barn (where the xlights was running) I found my computer performance recovered.

I had another computer using wireless that had similar problems -- but not to the same degree.

i shut off the test mode and the computers all returned to normal.

not all computers were similarly affected.

• any ideas on configuring win7 machines on the network to ignore multicast?
• any explanation on why this behavior might have changed since october's builds?

[taybrynn]

I know someone will have a BETTER answer for you.    I know it creates a ton of network traffic as my home internet was super slow during show hours last year.   This year I just installed a second gigabit network adaptor ($11) into my show computer and that will isolate the etherdongle traffic from the home network.   That's my workaround.

[dkulp]

Multicast and WIFI are extremely bad combinations, particularly with 802.11a/g/b.   In those cases, the entire WIFI network drops to the slowest speed for pretty much the entire duration which can really kill performance for everything.   Either use unicast or find a way to make sure the show traffic stays off the WIFI.

[sean]

nothing has been mdified in the routines that talk to unicast or multicast over the last few years. Could you do a wireshark capture with an old version and with a new version to see if there is any difference in the signature.

[Steve Gase]

since some computers are not affected, and wireless are affected to a small degree compared to my primary windows 7 desktop -- I suspect that I have an app on that computer that has that multicast port opened.

my best "workaround" is to find the xlight-generated port number and use my computer-based antivirus/firewall to block that traffic.