[Live-devel] NIC overruns on IBM stbx25xx embedded platform

[Richard Flude]

I'm using the live.com/livemedia libraries to write a simple rtsp
player application for Hauppauge's MediaMVP (IBM's stbx25xx platform).
The MediaMVP's bundled software is for Windows, I'd prefer to use an 
alternate
OS.

I'm experiencing high packet loss (10-14% for a dvd) due to
overruns, which makes the video unwatchable. This does not appear to be
an issue with the Live libraries, however a creative solution is sought.

The MediaMVP device uses a smc91111 nic, with only a
tiny on-chip buffer. I've tried increasing the kernel's RX buffers
with no improvement. I believe (please correct me if
I'm wrong) overruns are an indication that the nics
interrupts aren't being handled fast enough to
transfer the data from the on-chip buffer to the
kernel's buffer (ie not the same as dropped), if so the
lack of any improvement from increasing the kernel's
buffers is expected.

Load is not a problem on the unit (<4% cpu).

A solution appears to be, to me at least, to try and spread out the 
burst of
video from the rtsp server, or introduce some kind of inter packet
  gap. Does this solution make any sense?

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I've subclassed MediaSink for a new stbx25xx class to
play directly to the PPC405 onboard decoders, and I'll
be pleased to contribute the new class to the project
if I can get it working and if there's any interest.

Thanks

Richard