Hi all – I’ve been trying to troubleshoot my windows SMB connection to the Apple TV Infuse. I’m using a wired connection on the windows desktop with a 2.5 gb adapter. Ookla speedtest on the desktop shows download speed of 2.2 GB, this is where all my media is and Apple TV is connected over Wi-Fi. On the Speedtest I’m getting about 700 Mbps on Ookla speedtest on the Apple TV.
When I do the SMB Speedtest on using a movie the Windows SMB maximum I’m getting is about average speed of 130 Mbps.
I plugged my media drive into the router and then I was getting around 650 Mbps on SMB speed test. Clearly the Apple TV over Wi-Fi can transmit at that higher speed but when I’m doing it over the windows SMB I can’t cross 130. I know that that is still a very good speed but now I’m curious as to why I’m not getting similar performance from the windows SMB. I’ve tried the different SMB protocols aka SMB 2/3
Out of curiosity I also created an SMB from my MacBook and got pretty much consistent results at 130 Mbps.
Is there any fix for this? Or is this a known limitation? The key question is how is SMB from my router giving 650 Mbps to the Wifi Apple TV but the wired Ethernet desktop PC is only giving 130 Mbps on the same Apple TV also on wifi.
I think that’s pretty much what you get using SMB over Wi-Fi on Apple devices (at least on Apple TV). I think 130 Mbps is actually pretty high, I remember my speed was barely over 100 Mbps when I tested it last time.
Edit: Here are my results using the same files with both Plex and SMB on an Apple TV 4K (3rd gen).
| Source |
Wi-Fi |
Ethernet |
| SMB |
120 Mbps |
460 Mbps |
| Plex |
290 Mbps |
930 Mbps |
Thanks but still doesn’t explain how I’m getting 650+ when I plug the hard drive into the router and ATV is connected using wifi
I suspect the router implementation of SMB is an old v1 or maybe v2 version which doesn’t have the security overheads that the newer versions of SMB implement.
The version of SMB on your windows and Mac systems is probably the newer versions with more overhead which is affecting the performance. For example SMB v3 which is what your windows system is probably using does end to end encryption.
Update: I just realized that my router connection protocol is UPnP/DLNA not SMB which is giving me the high speed. Is there any way to use this protocol on Infuse on Windows? And will there be any limitations or issues using this protocol?
A real big limitation, the Infuse Library features will not be available when connecting via UPnP or DLNA.
As long as your not experiencing any problems the lower speeds are not really an issue.
Stick with SMB and try leaving the SMB set to either SMB 2 or Legacy.