Netflix too slow

J

joergd

Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2012
Messages
11
Reaction score
0
Location
Cape Town
Does anybody else have issues streaming Netflix? I get download speeds of around 7-35kb on a 2MB unshaped Afrihost line. Which makes it basically unwatchable. That's in the evenings.

In the morning I do sometimes get download speeds of about 150kb which makes it watchable.

In the evenings, if I simultaneously watch YouTube say - my download speeds go over 200kb sometimes - so it's not the actual line I would imagine.

I also don't think it's Netflix - I'm pretty certain they can deal with the bandwidth - and anyway it's during the day in America when I watch it in the evenings.

So I don't know what it is. I have used both Unotelly (proxy) and Adfreetime (DNS) - and both give me similar results so I don't think it is either of those two services.

Could it be that Afrihost is shaping that traffic? I am on an unshaped account ....

Would love to find out if others have had similar problems and been able to solve them.
 
joergd said:
Does anybody else have issues streaming Netflix? I get download speeds of around 7-35kb on a 2MB unshaped Afrihost line. Which makes it basically unwatchable. That's in the evenings.

In the morning I do sometimes get download speeds of about 150kb which makes it watchable.

In the evenings, if I simultaneously watch YouTube say - my download speeds go over 200kb sometimes - so it's not the actual line I would imagine.

I also don't think it's Netflix - I'm pretty certain they can deal with the bandwidth - and anyway it's during the day in America when I watch it in the evenings.

So I don't know what it is. I have used both Unotelly (proxy) and Adfreetime (DNS) - and both give me similar results so I don't think it is either of those two services.

Could it be that Afrihost is shaping that traffic? I am on an unshaped account ....

Would love to find out if others have had similar problems and been able to solve them.
Click to expand...

Why not try the Unotelly DNS?

I get +-1.8Mb/s.
 
Where are you situated and are you using an Afrihost uncapped account? Have you ran a traceroutr to Netflix streaming servers to see if there's any routing problem... Next, try setting a different UnoTelly DNS ip. Lastly, run a speedtest to a few servers in the States and see how consistent the throughput is. If all else fails, inform Afrihost and tell em its not good enough (I went with the last one and eventually ditched my uncapped and got the 50Gig capped bundle)
 
I'm on an Afrihost 10mbps uncapped account, on a line that syncs at 10mbps, and get very good speeds. I'm also using UnoTelly DNS service at $5 per month. Works with zero issues in the last 3 months since I started using it. I highly doubt it's an Afrihost issue, especially on an unshaped account. Perhaps you could try accounts from a few other ISPs to test with. You could ask WebAfrica for a free 5GB trial account. I think other ISPs offer the same. If you are an FNB customer, you can probably get another free 2-5GB of data depending on what account you have. Or ask a friend to loan you his access details for a few days.

I suspect congestion at your exchange during the times you are watching Netflix. Evenings until midnight are usually the busiest times, when people get home and start doing all their downloads. Do some testing outside of these busy hours, and see if the results differ.
 
joergd said:
Thanks - yes that's what I have been using - and then adfreetime - I have slow speeds with both of them.
Click to expand...

Your first post said you use the unotelly vpn. Normally vpn is slower than dns.
 
Running via Mweb off premium uncapped 4 Mb package via Unotelly.

I normally get up to SD quality when streaming movies / series.
Streaming anything animated I can get up to HD (720P), but most of the time it's SD.
I tried an afrihost account to see if anything improved, but the results were the same.
Also tried changing Unotelly DNS servers, no change.

Normal YouTube HD streaming works without any problems.
File download speeds are what can be expected for my 4 Mb line ie. +- 340 kb/sec
Netflix performance seems to be very much a hit or miss situation if you look through these forums.

Netflix performance i.e amount of buffering - in the evenings does tend to increase.
 
wizzypow said:
Where are you situated and are you using an Afrihost uncapped account? Have you ran a traceroutr to Netflix streaming servers to see if there's any routing problem... Next, try setting a different UnoTelly DNS ip. Lastly, run a speedtest to a few servers in the States and see how consistent the throughput is. If all else fails, inform Afrihost and tell em its not good enough (I went with the last one and eventually ditched my uncapped and got the 50Gig capped bundle)
Click to expand...

I am in Woodstock, Cape Town. I am using an Afrihost unshaped 75GB account.

For the speed tests do I just use one of those online tools, or is there something for the console too?

Anything in particular that I am looking out for in the traceroute?
 
Saajid said:
I suspect congestion at your exchange during the times you are watching Netflix. Evenings until midnight are usually the busiest times, when people get home and start doing all their downloads. Do some testing outside of these busy hours, and see if the results differ.
Click to expand...

The results do differ between the morning and the evenings - but still - I find it hard to believe that it should drop down to an average of about 15kb. I imagine getting a bigger line would make no difference - as my line should get me over 200kb anyway.
 
joergd said:
The results do differ between the morning and the evenings - but still - I find it hard to believe that it should drop down to an average of about 15kb. I imagine getting a bigger line would make no difference - as my line should get me over 200kb anyway.
Click to expand...

What are your line stats when it's slow?
 
Chevron said:
What are your line stats when it's slow?
Click to expand...

How can I tell? Is there a command to run? I'm on Mac OS X. The downloads speeds that I can see in my menumeters is between sometimes as low as 3kb up to say 35kb - but mostly averages at about 15kb ... If I simultaneously browse YouTube - it shoots up to over 150kb - sometimes over 200kb.
 
joergd said:
How can I tell? Is there a command to run? I'm on Mac OS X. The downloads speeds that I can see in my menumeters is between sometimes as low as 3kb up to say 35kb - but mostly averages at about 15kb ... If I simultaneously browse YouTube - it shoots up to over 150kb - sometimes over 200kb.
Click to expand...

You have to log into your ADSL modem/router, and navigate to one of the status pages, to view your line stats. It will tell you what speed you are synced at, and what your noise margin, attenuation and other figures are.
 
joergd said:
Does anybody else have issues streaming Netflix? I get download speeds of around 7-35kb on a 2MB unshaped Afrihost line. Which makes it basically unwatchable. That's in the evenings.

In the morning I do sometimes get download speeds of about 150kb which makes it watchable.

In the evenings, if I simultaneously watch YouTube say - my download speeds go over 200kb sometimes - so it's not the actual line I would imagine.

I also don't think it's Netflix - I'm pretty certain they can deal with the bandwidth - and anyway it's during the day in America when I watch it in the evenings.

So I don't know what it is. I have used both Unotelly (proxy) and Adfreetime (DNS) - and both give me similar results so I don't think it is either of those two services.

Could it be that Afrihost is shaping that traffic? I am on an unshaped account ....

Would love to find out if others have had similar problems and been able to solve them.
Click to expand...

Sorry you're having a poor experience. Confused when you mention Afrihost line, whether you are referring your line or your data from us. If it's data as well as the line - which product are you using?

Please drop me a PM, would like to look closer at this :(
 
I'm also having issues since last Friday, using Unotelly, on a 10mbps Afrihost line. Up until then I had HD quality most of the time on Netflix using a WD Tvlive. Tried swapping around the DNS but it hasn't made much difference.
 
joergd said:
The results do differ between the morning and the evenings - but still - I find it hard to believe that it should drop down to an average of about 15kb. I imagine getting a bigger line would make no difference - as my line should get me over 200kb anyway.
Click to expand...

We'll need to run some traces at the different time of the day. That should show us where the links are slower (or hops are longer if you will) and that where speeds are affected :(
 
AfriMan said:
We'll need to run some traces at the different time of the day. That should show us where the links are slower (or hops are longer if you will) and that where speeds are affected :(
Click to expand...

I have been away for three days - got back last night that Netflix not streaming. I am on Afrihost 10mb uncapped. Never saw this before. Always streamed Netflix smoothly.
 
guys the networks are quite congested at the moment with the Apple updates rolling out. I have a 4mb line and quite easily stream Netflix at 720HD most of the time

Last night it was going as low as 384k quality and at times dropped to 2xx and even had to buffer... :eek:

It will all blow over, dont waste time investigating into something you not gonna find ;)
 
Hate to say this, but I am also having issues. Have an Afrihost 10mbps uncapped bundle. Had zero issues before, but last night both Netflix and Hulu Plus struggled to stream with buffering every few minutes. I'm also using UnoTelly DNS service.

Netflix is performing far worse than Hulu Plus. I didn't really notice because I've been watching mostly Hulu Plus and local content via Plex. But last night Netflix was just impossible, and Hulu Plus was bad.
 
Saajid said:
You have to log into your ADSL modem/router, and navigate to one of the status pages, to view your line stats. It will tell you what speed you are synced at, and what your noise margin, attenuation and other figures are.
Click to expand...

Can't see too many details:

No errors or drops.

Linerate Up: 512 kbps
Linerate Down: 2048 kbps
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X