Network node takes forever to open

[JhotIII]

Hi
I have been using mm for 2 years now (gold), and I am happy with it. Due to the large collection (over 300' entries) I have had my music stored on several computers. I have now build a "music server" and moved all music to this server. Now to my point. During this process and when working with my collection I prefer to
a) use UNC names for path (\\server\share\artist\album\song)
b) work with my music through the location path
I have experienced that using this node (location\network) is extremely slow. When opening a network node (even if it is the local computer) it takes forever to open (and consumes a lot of cpu). I suspect this might have something to do with how MM "looks up" the network path. I do not see this delay when using explorer and "my network places".
Performance when playing music is generally good over the network, and this approach makes it easier to share the MM libary between 3 computers.
If I map a network drive and use this drive in the "My Computer" the performance is good. I have changed to gigabyte network and the comuters are all in my hosts file mapped to ip-adress.
Has anybody else experienced this and is there something I can do to speed this up, as I would like to continue working with my collection through the location node. Any help / tips would be highly appriciated.
Thanks

[Lowlander]

First of all working thru the network path is preferred over using a mapped network path.

Can you give some more specifics about the network? Like what machines are you using (all windows boxes)? What protocols (like SMB) are involved (mainly the case when not using windows boxes)?

Another thing to try is to use the File > Maintain Library regularly. Does that speed things up at all?

Anyway in my experience my Windows XP machine always takes ages with the network (Not thru MediaMonkey). You should try some test by opening the same folder thru the UNC path (You can use Start Menu > Run) and also open the folder thru the mapped network drive. See the difference in time it takes. Maybe this whole problem is with Windows (not sure how MediaMonkey handles the Location node).

[joy]

HI
I have been using MediMonkey for about two years. As my collection are growing (almost 500GB of music on my server) I feel I have too loook for other solutions because of the waiting time. I have not enough time to get all the tags correct (even if I try), so I prefer storing all my music in the correct location "\\server\drive\music\artist\YYYY album\## title"
MediaMonkey can use about a minute for opening each node when working through the Location node. If I opens through the My Computer node it is much quicker, but then I don't get the Album Art view. (I have other hardware mediaplayers connected to the same server, and I can reach my server through theese with no speed problem.) I think the problem is that the database does not have the neccesary information stored in a sorted manner, so MediaMonkey has to work through large amounts of data to find the content of each folder I am opening.
Thanks (if you fix this I will become a Gold user.)

[Lowlander]

Have you tried maintain library? It might help a little. If you go thru the My Computer node in MediaMonkey do you experience the same slow access?

PS. MediaMonkey 3.0 will be a big redesign so it might address this issue.

[joy]

No maintain library does not help.
No the My Computer node is quick, but then I dont get the Album Art as I stated.
Looking forward for MM 3.0 with hope.

[Lowlander]

I'm sorry, but I don't know what could be causing this. Does navigating thru the different library nodes work as slow? Does browsing directories on the local PC thru the Location node works as slow as the network?

[joy]

No it is only the Location node that is really slow, the other nodes are OK.
It is slower on the laptop I am using at my HiFi than on the server or other computers at my network. I think this is because of the old laptop I use at the HiFi. It is lot of network activity for each click when working through the Location node. Sometimes I have copied the whole database to this laptop and got a little speed improvement, but it is still too slow.
Even if it is a little quicker when working directly on the server it is still so slow that it is annoying to work with.

[Lowlander]

Are you connected thru WiFi or are you using a wired connection? What are the specifications of the laptop and what are they for the machine hosting the songs and DB?

It might just be a network speed issue due to the DB being accessed over the network.

[joy]

The laptop is connected on WiFi, but I would not relate the speed propblem to this. The real problem is that on a large music collection MediaMonkey is much slower when navigating through the Location node than through the other nodes. This relative speed difference happens both on the server and other connected computers both on WiFi and wired.
I also think that the reason for this is the way the database is built.
The laptop is old and slow, but even when I use a modern laptop the Location node is slowed down. The server is a Pentium 4 Windows XP pro, 2800MHz(I think), 1GB Ram, and the music on 2*250GB RAID striped disks.

[Teknojnky]

The laptop is connected on WiFi, but I would not relate the speed propblem to this. The real problem is that on a large music collection MediaMonkey is much slower when navigating through the Location node than through the other nodes. This relative speed difference happens both on the server and other connected computers both on WiFi and wired.

I agree, location node is generally slower than the other nodes (artist/album/etc). I beleive this to be related to cpu speed more than anything.

Still, faster than pretty much all other music managers with large libraries.

[joy]

Teknojnky wrote:

Still, faster than pretty much all other music managers with large libraries.

But it is still much quicker to open the folder in My Computer or in another node than Location, so I think this speed problem could be fixed with a better database structure?

[Teknojnky]

Well, I don't know if it's the db structure vs whatever processing is done with the data...

that said, MM 3.0 has been said to not need or use obdc/access stuff, so I can only guess a new database type is used which hopefully will be more efficient.