Spotify regularly pausing

[Zuldritch]

Ever since the recent cable breakage my Spotify often pauses while playing music.

It seems like when it's struggling to stream that I'm talking to an MWeb server:

So the issue may not be with Cool Ideas.

Everything seems to be working perfectly, for example I do hours of Teams video calls a day without issue.

Is anyone else experiencing Spotify issues? Are there still cables needing to be repaired which might explain why the CDN server is not always keeping up?

Also, I'm connected by cable to my router, not using WiFi.

 

[PBCool]

Hi which DNS server are you using? It's best to use ours to avoid offnet CDNs.

 

[marbro]

Just throwing it out there.

Im using Evotel lines, with MWEB as the ISP, Happens on my pc

At the gym, using Bitco? no further information, it happens too.. not often, once every 10th? song

 

[CrypticZA]

Hi which DNS server are you using? It's best to use ours to avoid offnet CDNs.

Yeah they are absolutely trash on a next level now.

Akamai can unmap the Optinet caches from your ASN and then you get the traffic directly from them.

They are now the largest peer at NAP JHB with 1.2Tbps.

Have you guys perhaps done this?

 

[SAguy]

I find this on my one google home device too for some reason, but all other devices are fine

 

[Jason-ZA]

Have you guys perhaps done this?

I was just going to quote cavedog's post as well, @PBCool according to @cavedog you guys can request to unmap optinet.

I am seeing your DNS servers return MWEB/Optinet CDN IPs for domains that used to return on-net IPs in the past.

 

[CrypticZA]

Just throwing it out there.

Im using Evotel lines, with MWEB as the ISP, Happens on my pc

At the gym, using Bitco? no further information, it happens too.. not often, once every 10th? song

My gym uses Vox and it happens to me sometimes too, we did a bunch of testing on CISP thread and an issue which was found is sometimes Spotify connected to Optinet and other times it would connect to Akamai, when it connected to Akamai everything ran fine where when connecting to Optinet it would lag, it seemed to be a regional thing so assume that happens with Vox as well. I just turn warp on my phone and spotify plays perfect then

 

[CrypticZA]

I was just going to quote cavedog's post as well, @PBCool according to @cavedog you guys can request to unmap optinet.

I am seeing your DNS servers return MWEB/Optinet CDN IPs for domains that used to return on-net IPs in the past.

View attachment 1597522

Yea i saw the post late last night and was going to ask so when i saw the thread i was like OH YES I MUST ASK

 

[PBCool]

I was just going to quote cavedog's post as well, @PBCool according to @cavedog you guys can request to unmap optinet.

I am seeing your DNS servers return MWEB/Optinet CDN IPs for domains that used to return on-net IPs in the past.

View attachment 1597522

We have requested it on multiple occasions, so not sure how it's worked for them.

Will bounce it off our am again.

 

[Zuldritch]

Hi which DNS server are you using? It's best to use ours to avoid offnet CDNs.

That's a good suggestion. My router was using Google (8.8.8.8) as primary and CF (1.1.1.1) as secondary. I've now changed it to 154.0.1.1 as primary with 8.8.8.8 as secondary. However, as per @Jason-ZA (thank you), I've pinged r-live-cache.akamaized.net which resolves (in this instance) to 197.80.130.24 (MWeb). I'll stick with the updated DNS for now.

@CrypticZA's linked post seems to me to very likely be the explanation of the issue, rubbish CDN servers, either due to their local or international peering bandwidth. @PBCool, I'm really hoping this problematic CDN server resolution issue can be resolved.

Thanks all for the input so far .

 

[Zuldritch]

If anyone else with Spotify issues can do a "Me Too" on this community post, it will hopefully get Spotify to put pressure on Akamai from their side:

Spotify Akamai CDN buffering

In South Africa, Akamai is routing audio-ak-spotify-com.akamaized.net strangely, causing constant buffering on partial downloads. For example, local server 197.80.130.136 causes issues, but routed to international server 92.123.140.88 works better. It seems to swap between these at random. DNS...

community.spotify.com

 

[PaulGherkin]

If anyone else with Spotify issues can do a "Me Too" on this community post, it will hopefully get Spotify to put pressure on Akamai from their side:

Spotify Akamai CDN buffering

In South Africa, Akamai is routing audio-ak-spotify-com.akamaized.net strangely, causing constant buffering on partial downloads. For example, local server 197.80.130.136 causes issues, but routed to international server 92.123.140.88 works better. It seems to swap between these at random. DNS...

community.spotify.com

I had this issue before I left SA. Spotify will do nothing, they don't care.

 

[Zuldritch]

I had this issue before I left SA. Spotify will do nothing, they don't care.

That's like saying "I'm just one person, my vote doesn't count", but collectively it can make a difference. Maybe it won't be enough to make Spotify pay attention, but doing nothing definitely won't work, just pressing "Me too" isn't much effort for a possible improvement.

 

[PaulGherkin]

That's like saying "I'm just one person, my vote doesn't count", but collectively it can make a difference. Maybe it won't be enough to make Spotify pay attention, but doing nothing definitely won't work, just pressing "Me too" isn't much effort for a possible improvement.

I voted with my wallet back then... closed my account

 

[Zuldritch]

I've switched my DNS to 208.67.222.222 (from this article), which resolves r-live-cache.akamaized.net to 154.0.14.6.

I'll see how it goes.

 

[PBCool]

I've switched my DNS to 208.67.222.222 (from this article), which resolves r-live-cache.akamaized.net to 154.0.14.6.

I'll see how it goes.

That's what it should be using.

 

[Zuldritch]

Sadly, despite doing an ipconfig /flushdns, and re-installing the app, Spotify is still using MWeb IPs:

 

[NR7]

Same issues. multiple devices. Openserve. Normal CISP DNS. Even Warp doesn't help most of the time.

 

[Jason-ZA]

I tracked down one of the DNS names spotify uses: a711.dscd.akamai.net

Found the IP in resource monitor:


Then ran: ipconfig /displaydns | clip
Then pasted results into Notepad and found the DNS name:



I then compared CISP vs Afrihost's DNS and it looks like Afrihost's returns the on-net IP for their cache, but every other DNS server I try returns MWEB.



Edit: CloudFlare DNS is returning a direct akamai entry, might be worth trying 1.1.1.1:

 

[giggity]

I brought this up a week or two ago in the Cool Ideas thread. Using their DNS didn't help. Seems like Akamai was just doing its own thing. Would hop between Mweb, International and some other random servers.