Network Interface Card Tweaks for the WheatNet-IP Driver

Network Interface Card Tweaks for the WheatNet-IP Driver

Introduction

Many of the tweaks listed here require administrative rights so it’s best to just log on as an administrator when performing these adjustments. You may still be asked by Windows to “approve”
certain changes but if you are logged on as an admin you won’t need to enter your credentials each time.

The NIC is the heart of the AoIP system. It is responsible for sending and receiving audio packets and has a number of settings that, if not optimized for network audio, can disrupt your programming. Microsoft has a habit of changing settings for you (they are trying to “help” you) when updates are applied to your system so even though you go through this document carefully and tweak every setting, it’s possible you may have to do this again. And again. So keep this document handy.

With the use of multi-core CPUs several new Property Settings are available for Network Interface Cards (NICs) used to stream audio with a WheatNet-IP network. When properly set, these will improve NIC performance with streaming audio.

For Win7, we recommended setting the NIC binding priority so the WNIP NIC always got top priority, but this capability was eliminated in Win10. One can, by manually setting the NIC Metric to 5, somewhat reinstate this behavior.

The NIC Metric and other new settings are made in the Ethernet Adapter Options window. Press the Windows key & x and Network Connections or open the Windows Settings and select the Network & Internet panel to get that window. Click on Ethernet and in that window select the Related Setting: Change Adapter Options which then lists all your network adapters. Right click on the adapter connected to your WNIP Network and select Properties.

To set the NIC Metric, select Internet Protocol Version 4 and select Properties. In the window that opens, select Advanced, then uncheck Automatic metric and enter 5 into the Interface metric: entry
box. 5 is the most appropriate setting for gigabit network links according to Microsoft’s documentation.

To set the new Properties, click Configure (shown below). In the window that opens, select the Advanced tab, which is shown below right. If not all four settings are listed, select the Driver tab, and
select Update Driver to see if there is a newer driver available. Note: Verify the Driver Provider is the NIC’s OEM and not Microsoft since the OEM driver will result in better NIC performance.

Interrupt Moderation Rate

Click to highlight the property Interrupt Moderation Rate and set its Value to Adaptive.

Maximum Number of RSS Queues

Highlight the Property Maximum Number of RSS Queues and set this Value to equal the number of CPU cores in the PC. For example, if the PC is an i7 with four physical
cores, select 4 Queues. But in no case should you select a queue number higher than the actual number of cores in the PC or else your performance will suffer.

Receive Side Scaling

Highlight the property Receive Side Scaling and set the Value to Enabled.

Important Notes

If any of these Properties are not listed, even with an updated NIC driver, that NIC may not be appropriate for use with streaming audio although you may see some improvement by adjusting the
Properties which are available.

PCs with a single core will not support a 24-channel audio driver, whereas a modern i7 quad-core PC will be expected to only have about 30% utilization even with 24 active receive channels.
The PC’s built-in Ethernet adapter, included on many Intel motherboards, typically supports at least 2 RSS Queues. Server-grade NICs, such as the Intel 82576 dual NIC PCIe card, can support 8 or more queues. Wheatstone recommends a server-grade NIC for best performance.

It must be emphasized that the RSS Queues number should never exceed the number of physical cores. The core number advertised for some PCs include hyper-threaded cores. It’s the number of actual physical cores which is the only number that matters when it comes to the RSS Queues setting.

After changing your adapter settings, the PC must be rebooted or the WheatNet IP Transport service must be stopped and restarted.

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