Twitch Buffer Issues?

[Nicholas Marzio]

Hi everyone.

I am getting pretty bad buffer issues with twitch. I have tried different computers and browsers but no luck. I had the same issues at my friend who is also on Cool Ideas 100/100 Octotel network so I think that might rule out fibre provider. Other friends on ADSL said twitch is working their side so I think it could be a Cool Ideas issue.

Anyone else having problems?

Update: VPN'ed to the UK and twitch is streaming perfectly, will contact CISP on Monday.

 

[PBCool]

Hi everyone.

I am getting pretty bad buffer issues with twitch. I have tried different computers and browsers but no luck. I had the same issues at my friend who is also on Cool Ideas 100/100 Octotel network so I think that might rule out fibre provider. Other friends on ADSL said twitch is working their side so I think it could be a Cool Ideas issue.

Anyone else having problems?

Update: VPN'ed to the UK and twitch is streaming perfectly, will contact CISP on Monday.

Very strange, if VPN resolves the issue it might be our upstream causing the trouble. Let me know if you're still having trouble, we can try route via our JHB network and see if that resolved it.

 

[mithrandi]

I've noticed occasional periods of packet loss / high latency corresponding to buffering / stream stalls while watching Twitch, but usually the problem hasn't lasted very long. I'll see if I can report some more details the next time I notice this.

 

[PBCool]

I've noticed occasional periods of packet loss / high latency corresponding to buffering / stream stalls while watching Twitch, but usually the problem hasn't lasted very long. I'll see if I can report some more details the next time I notice this.

You are seeing packetloss to Twitch itself? If you can send me the traces that will help.

 

[mithrandi]

Yeah; will provide traces etc. if I notice it happening again.

 

[Nicholas Marzio]

You are seeing packetloss to Twitch itself? If you can send me the traces that will help.

Hi Paul

Seems almost like a QoS because after around 10:30-100pm twitch starts to work properly, I know you don't shape so yeah, I will do some more testing today.

 

[PBCool]

Hi Paul

Seems almost like a QoS because after around 10:30-100pm twitch starts to work properly, I know you don't shape so yeah, I will do some more testing today.

Yes please let me know, as I mentioned we can transit it via our JHB network if need be. If there is QoS it's not on our side.

 

[Nicholas Marzio]

Yes please let me know, as I mentioned we can transit it via our JHB network if need be. If there is QoS it's not on our side.

Currently watching https://www.twitch.tv/bikeman and it is set to HTML5 and Auto quality, it's defaulting to 360p. If I set it to 720p60 Source it just continues to buffer for about 30secs then plays for 5sec then buffers a bit again. If you want to teamviewer into my system and see it you are welcome drop me a pm.

 

[agentrfr]

I have experienced buffering on specific 60fps streams on twitch for some reason. Specifically 720p60 sometimes has issues. 1080p60 will work fine but 720p60 buffers.. probably something to do with their load balancing.

If you want to check you can multi-thread the stream and play it through something like VLC player using livestreamer.

You can use this command for a 4 thread simultaneous stream from twitch

livestreamer https://www.twitch.tv/playhearthstone 720p60 --http-header Client-ID=jzkbprff40iqj646a697cyrvl0zt2m6 --hls-segment-threads 4 --hds-segment-threads 4

Note that you need the client ID to trick twitch into thinking you are using a browser to display the video

 

[F1ve_Claw]

Interesting. I have noticed I cannot stream 720p 60fps without buffer. 720p works fine, and 1080p works some of the time. Maybe I can give the Kodi twitch addon a try!

 

[agentrfr]

Wait sorry in windows CLI it is options then stream then quility so command will be something like

C:\Users\admin\Desktop\livestreamer-v1.12.2\livestreamer --http-header Client-ID=jzkbprff40iqj646a697cyrvl0zt2m6 --hls-segment-threads 4 --hds-segment-threads 4 https://www.twitch.tv/ognglobal 1080p60

 

[mithrandi]

It's a few hours later now, but I loaded up https://www.twitch.tv/bikeman and I'm streaming at Source (720p60) quality with the HTML 5 player without any issues. The stream is coming from 52.223.194.184 / video-edge-c685bc.lhr03.hls.ttvnw.net (not sure how to easily check this, I'm just watching connections from my local machine). My connection is a little faster than yours, so this would tend to paper over any small streaming stalls (since I can catch up faster afterwards), but 50 Mbps is still quite a bit over the 6 Mbps or so of the stream so I wouldn't expect any issues from that.

EDIT: Trace that I did:

Start: Tue Jun 20 14:42:24 2017                            
HOST: lorien                                Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev   
  1.|-- elvandar.mithrandi.net                 0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.3   0.4   0.0 
  2.|-- 154.0.4.1                              0.0%    10    0.9   6.1   0.8  52.5  16.3 
  3.|-- 154.0.2.125                            0.0%    10    0.9   0.9   0.9   1.0   0.0 
  4.|-- 154.0.1.66                             0.0%    10    1.4   1.4   1.2   1.5   0.0 
  5.|-- 154.0.1.142                           30.0%    10  3022. 433.5   1.4 3022. 1141.5
  6.|-- 154.0.1.222                            0.0%    10  170.3 178.8 169.6 259.3  28.3 
  7.|-- lhr01-br01.justin.tv                   0.0%    10  176.1 176.3 175.7 178.8   0.8 
  8.|-- 10.26.52.130                           0.0%    10  175.3 175.8 175.3 178.2   0.7 
  9.|-- video-edge-c685bc.lhr03.hls.ttvnw.net  0.0%    10  222.8 210.9 175.9 222.9  19.7

Everything looking fine there (aside from hop 5, but everything after that is fine so I'm guessing that's just a router rate limiting ICMP errors or some such), but I'm not having problems so I guess that's to be expected.

 

[PBCool]

It's a few hours later now, but I loaded up https://www.twitch.tv/bikeman and I'm streaming at Source (720p60) quality with the HTML 5 player without any issues. The stream is coming from 52.223.194.184 / video-edge-c685bc.lhr03.hls.ttvnw.net (not sure how to easily check this, I'm just watching connections from my local machine). My connection is a little faster than yours, so this would tend to paper over any small streaming stalls (since I can catch up faster afterwards), but 50 Mbps is still quite a bit over the 6 Mbps or so of the stream so I wouldn't expect any issues from that.

EDIT: Trace that I did:

Start: Tue Jun 20 14:42:24 2017                            
HOST: lorien                                Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev   
  1.|-- elvandar.mithrandi.net                 0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.3   0.4   0.0 
  2.|-- 154.0.4.1                              0.0%    10    0.9   6.1   0.8  52.5  16.3 
  3.|-- 154.0.2.125                            0.0%    10    0.9   0.9   0.9   1.0   0.0 
  4.|-- 154.0.1.66                             0.0%    10    1.4   1.4   1.2   1.5   0.0 
  5.|-- 154.0.1.142                           30.0%    10  3022. 433.5   1.4 3022. 1141.5
  6.|-- 154.0.1.222                            0.0%    10  170.3 178.8 169.6 259.3  28.3 
  7.|-- lhr01-br01.justin.tv                   0.0%    10  176.1 176.3 175.7 178.8   0.8 
  8.|-- 10.26.52.130                           0.0%    10  175.3 175.8 175.3 178.2   0.7 
  9.|-- video-edge-c685bc.lhr03.hls.ttvnw.net  0.0%    10  222.8 210.9 175.9 222.9  19.7

Everything looking fine there (aside from hop 5, but everything after that is fine so I'm guessing that's just a router rate limiting ICMP errors or some such), but I'm not having problems so I guess that's to be expected.

Yeap so that's over our peer to Twitch in London, that being said the last hop seem to be pretty inconsistent. So may be lack of capacity on the twitch network.

 

[Bryn]

My 100Mbps Openserve fibre connection has never been able to stream 1080p Twitch without near constant buffering. Infuriating.

 

[PBCool]

My 100Mbps Openserve fibre connection has never been able to stream 1080p Twitch without near constant buffering. Infuriating.

Why not try one of our accounts and see?

 

[Bryn]

Why not try one of our accounts and see?

Do you have a trial account I can use? Would there be costs involved in migrating my Openserve line to Cool Ideas?

 

[PBCool]

Do you have a trial account I can use? Would there be costs involved in migrating my Openserve line to Cool Ideas?

We do have trial accounts, you don't need to move your line to use another ISP on an Openserve line. Just change the PPPoE details.

 

[Bryn]

We do have trial accounts, you don't need to move your line to use another ISP on an Openserve line. Just change the PPPoE details.

Yeah but if I have a much better time with your trial account and decide to change ISPs, leaving just the line with Crystal Web seems weird.

 

[Soul Assassin]

My 100Mbps Openserve fibre connection has never been able to stream 1080p Twitch without near constant buffering. Infuriating.

Do you Twitch mostly on desktop?

 

[PBCool]

Yeah but if I have a much better time with your trial account and decide to change ISPs, leaving just the line with Crystal Web seems weird.

There is no fee to change, just the nightmare dealing with openserve to cancel your current line and order a new one through us. They dont have a "migrate/move function" as yet.