Buffering puzzle

[Davieg]

Can anyone explain to me why when watching Terrarium there is none or next to no buffering.
However watching live TV on Modbro or TVTap buffering is almost nonstop?
I am on Afrihost and have cancelled my subscription out of frustration.
Speed tests show anything from 3,9 down to 0.35.

 

[Sopbeen]

I am on Afrihost

Yeaaaa. You'll get that with them. Among other problems.

Try another ISP. A lot of "free" streaming services have bandwidth limits and frequently suffer from the problems you are describing during peak times.

 

[Greavance]

Always try to get free test account with other providers if possible and test on the platforms you would commonly use. During normal working hours and then between 19:00 and 21:45 the higher peak times. This normally gives an indication how the services will run overall. Also is this a capped or uncapped account?If uncapped test a free capped account from them and see if it does the same. Free streaming services always have a few problems with bandwidth limitations or of the hosted content being held on European or asian servers which can also effect quality of streaming over all.

 

[SeRpEnT]

Can anyone explain to me why when watching Terrarium there is none or next to no buffering.
However watching live TV on Modbro or TVTap buffering is almost nonstop?
I am on Afrihost and have cancelled my subscription out of frustration.
Speed tests show anything from 3,9 down to 0.35.

I take it you have a 4meg line?

Some of the free pirate streaming apps cannot sustain the bandwidth requirements during peak hours. Their servers will be under pressure and this will lead to buffering. It's also the reason why some Terrarium streams are slower than others. It all depends on the amount of users per streaming server.

If you want to check whether your connection speed is ok, just load up YouTube and checkout some 1080p videos. If they are running smooth (because YouTube/Google has the fastest servers/bandwidth) then you know your connection is not to blame.

 

[websquadza]

Performance of these free streaming platforms is affected by a variety of factors, most of them related to their limited funds or P2P nature. Remember, if it's free, chances are they don't run a dedicated CDN that peers globally. The few who do run servers, as @SeRpEnT has mentioned, really don't operate them the way the CDNs do, which means limited streaming bandwidth. For the rest, you're pulling traffic from other users on the network, much like the old days of torrents (most of these sites are simply streaming versions of bittorrent). So the more users a network has, the more 'seeds' it has and the better your performance.

The next problem is twofold. Distance. TCP performance is inversely proportional to latency, so if you're picking up the link from a seed that's local, you're going to get better throughput and in turn less buffering. Popular services are therefore more likely to benefit from more local peers. If you're picking up P2P traffic from international seeds, TCP throughput drops relative to latency. Distance also results in your service provider having to acquire this traffic internationally, and depending on your ISP, you may be out of luck if they de-prioritise or outright shape P2P traffic on these routes.