Best Isp for streaming

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Tara-jade22

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Hi everyone,
I'm new to the streaming world and would just like some advice on which isp to go with. I've tried mweb uncapped (terrible) and afrihost capped (becoming terrible). Both started off performing really well and then buffering became a major problem. Afrihost supposedly doesn't throttle capped accounts but my connection is so slow when trying to stream.
Can anyone recommend an isp which won't slow the speed down even if you're streaming from sites which ARE NOT Netflix...if you know what I mean.
 
I am with Vox and dont have any issues provided that I get good sources on Kodi.
 
Okay thanks. And your line speed? Are you uncapped or capped? Which part of the country are you in as I'm sure this will effect the connection?
 
I'm in cape town. It's a 4mb uncapped, unfortunately fastest I can get, bit of a distance between me and the exchange.
 
I'm in Durban and looking at a capped account as I don't want it to be shaped. Don't know if these variations from what you have (uncapped, Capw town) will impact me negatively in terms of buffering...
What quality do you watch on kodi?
 
Tara-jade22 said:
I'm in Durban and looking at a capped account as I don't want it to be shaped. Don't know if these variations from what you have (uncapped, Capw town) will impact me negatively in terms of buffering...
What quality do you watch on kodi?
Click to expand...

Afrihost acknowledged there is an issue in the KZN region for streaming. I'm also affected. They state they're working on a fix. At least they acknowledged there is an issue from their side. Let's see how long it takes for them to fix.
 
Tara-jade22 said:
I'm in Durban and looking at a capped account as I don't want it to be shaped. Don't know if these variations from what you have (uncapped, Capw town) will impact me negatively in terms of buffering...
What quality do you watch on kodi?
Click to expand...
So you are using Kodi to stream, and have an issue with buffering? Sigh

Good luck using Kodi with any isp..
 
Icemanbrfc said:
So you are using Kodi to stream, and have an issue with buffering? Sigh

Good luck using Kodi with any isp..
Click to expand...

Kodi is not a streaming service. It is software that lets you watch content from various sources and one of those sources is streaming services. Kodi has nothing to do with the streaming services part other than making sure that your memcachebuffer advancedsetting.xml is setup correctly. It is not setup properly by default on Kodi so investigate if you have buffering issues. Your memcachebuffer may be filling up. If you are talking about the various streaming addons like SALTS and Exodus then again you are talking about addons and not the source of the stream either. They aggregate links from various sources, none of which utilise CDN nodes for their streaming. In fact calling it streaming is equally problematic as all you are doing is downloading the file and consuming it in real time so if you have your TCP settings doing any form of offloading to the processors you can find your CPU being the bottleneck. You are pulling this data from standard virtual private servers located on different continents that use best effort bandwidth from their hosts. They also limit TCP connections to 1. Combine all of that with Bandwidth Delay Product issues inherent in the TCP protocol (increased latency = lower speeds) and you understand why "Kodi streaming" sometimes doesn't work. It's usually a combination of the host having insufficient resources and bandwidth, TCP/BDP/ACK problems on the machine that require TCP optimisation, physical hardware issues if your CPU receives offloads from the network card, and Kodi caching problems.

In saying that, I am on Crystal Web fibre 100Mb/s and have no issues with most sources but I have a pretty optimised setup. Unfortunately the setup will be completely different for every network device, network line card, CPU, driver, type of connection, Kodi version etc so there is no single setup to share that is optimised for everyone. And some sources are just better than others. Torba for example just does not work. Not properly here and not properly overseas in my experience. Putlocker, OnlineDizi, Pubfilm and Primewire stream full HD instantly. But even some of those are just aggregating links like Primewire which actually pulls its sources from VShare most of the time.
 
Last edited:
Tara-jade22 said:
Hi everyone,
I'm new to the streaming world and would just like some advice on which isp to go with. I've tried mweb uncapped (terrible) and afrihost capped (becoming terrible). Both started off performing really well and then buffering became a major problem. Afrihost supposedly doesn't throttle capped accounts but my connection is so slow when trying to stream.
Can anyone recommend an isp which won't slow the speed down even if you're streaming from sites which ARE NOT Netflix...if you know what I mean.
Click to expand...

No ISP can make poor quality sources stream better than they are able. But if you don't want to worry about your ISP being a weak link in the chain, just move to one with a great network. I recommend Crystal Web - possibly the best quality network and definitely the best customer service.
 
Wow, thank you for taking the time to relay all that.
For some odd reason streaming on kodi works better than simply going onto putkocker- which doesn't work at all.

Do you have any advice on how I can optimize my settings on kodi for better streaming, or even know of a link I can use to follow the instructions? Bearing in mind I'm new to this and am not very clued up as yet.
 
We meet again, haha. Streaming on any other site doesn't even work, it just buffers. The only thing that works (most of the time ) is in fact kodi
 
Im on a 4mb premium uncapped account, based in CT.

On our home network there's about 4 smartphones and 2 laptops. Almost always connected at the same time.

Netflix streaming on one device, youtube streaming on another and dstv connect on a third. Buffering is quite minimal, although, we stick to standard resolution on all devices. I'll only stream content in 720p if there's a movie that calls for it.

I setup kodi yesterday. Played around with config and did some testing. Seemed to work fine. Smartphones were connected at the time.

I'd suggest you contact crystalweb, ask if you can trial a test premium uncapped account for a few hours and see if it meets your needs.

They're a bit pricier than other isp's but on the whole, I'm pretty stoked with their network.
 
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