network rendering is slower using 16 cores on 3 PC than just using just one PC

[Konginchains]

Im not much familiar with network rendering but i've managed to get it to work on 1 pc with 8 cores and 2 laptops with 4 cores each. In my pc of 8 cores, i was able to render 70% faster the wine bottle scene( 5 sec) through the hard drive(not network) than if i sent the render job to the network to have it rendered by 3 of my computers with a total of 16 cores. (rendered the scene in 14 sec)

Why is my rendering much slower even if i am using the power of twice the amount of cores as my PC? Does rendering speed also dependent on the speed of my internet connection? I'm also curious if my internet bandwith consumption is being used when i am rendering through the network?

Here are the details of my installation,
main PC 8 cores - master and slave
1st laptop 4 cores- slave
2nd laptop 4 cores - slave
= i have all cpus to set it to use all cores in the network slave tray.

[DriesV]

If your render finishes in barely 5 sec on your main machine, it could well be that the latency (due to network traffic and network rendering overhead) makes network rendering slower.
Before making any further judgements, I advise you to do a comparison using a scene where network rendering actually makes sense (not much need for NR if you can do it already in 5s per frame, is it? ).
Take a scene that at least takes a couple of minutes to render on your main machine.

Does rendering speed also dependent on the speed of my internet connection? I'm also curious if my internet bandwith consumption is being used when i am rendering through the network?

Network rendering doesn't need an internet connection to run. You only need internet when you want remote slaves (not inside your LAN) to connect to the master. However, I would advise against that.

Dries

[Konginchains]

I see, well I'd still like to be able to use network rendering for heavy scenes(not necessarily animations). This is so i can still use my computer while rendering. I've tried it on a scene that would take me 30 min to render a still image on my machine, and when it renders over the network with 3 machines, i get roughly an hour instead.

What would you advise now about tweaking some options to improve the latency 

[DriesV]

This is so i can still use my computer while rendering.

So, KeyShot (your working scene) is still running while the job is being finished on the network? This would effectively halve the network rendering performance of your workstation.
If so, can you check network render times again when you close all active KeyShot windows?

Also, what are the specs of your machines' CPUs (brand, type number...)?
Your notebooks are maybe only marginally contributing to network rendering...
You're not running NR over Wifi, are you?

Dries

[Konginchains]

Yes you are right. i am running network rendering through WIFi, which is why i initially thought you needed to have internet connection to be able to render over the network. In which case, is my bandwith also being consumed?

I guess i'd have to quit keyshot first after i have sent a job over the network to be able to render at optimum speeds. I will try that and get back to you on the result.

As for my main cpu it is running on i7, 16 gig ram, gtx 580 vid card. my 2 other laptops are just i5. one has 6 gig of ram and the other only 4. both are only using native onboard video cards. They are all running windows 7.

[Konginchains]

I am running into this kind of problem in my network rendering from time to time wherein i sent a job in for rendering into the network and the job doesnt render at all. In its status, it just says "ready", but doesn't proceed any further than that.

I sometimes have to send 2 or 3 more jobs in and move up the job i want to be rendered up the list before it will begin to start. This is really annoying provided the fact that in my heavier scenes just sending a job over for render takes quite a lot of time.

Hope someone could help.