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Napalm said:
@websquadza

Can you check my link to see why my IPTV is running so wonky. I'm on the 1gbit fibre

Initially i thought maybe it's just the stream that was slow or some settings like cache or something... (so i restarted my FireTV4k and my Tenda Router and the Fibre power)

I ran a speedtest and get over 350mbit from my FireTV4K. So the internet speed isn't too bad. However IPTV is not working well at all.

I found it strange that if i switch my FireTV4K to connect to my cellphone's Mobile hotspot LTE (vodacom LTE) which is only 30-35mbit on the speedtest. I get around 30mbit LTE speeds in my area yet it streams fine without any issues on LTE.

I switch back to my Fibre and it's slowness like crazy, it streams video for about 10seconds then pauses. Loads 30seconds then i can watch video for 20seconds then pauses.
Click to expand...

Hingisp said:
Yip exactly the same experience I have had over the years. This was over couple of different ISP's too... But slap the data on the phone on and walla, no more buffering, or freezing etc
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Definitely not shaping. I know that sounds like just another line, but check the traceroutes and you won't see a non-router hop. We don't have any devices to shape traffic on the network. To be honest, it's cheaper to buy bandwidth than buy a Sandvine/equivalent box these days..

I suspect, @Napalm and that your issue only starting last week coincides with our upstream's maintenance. One of the changes they made seems to have affected TCP performance - though pinpointing isn't all that easy. It's either something fragmenting packets, or a MTU//MSS issue. Basically, any TCP issue at US level latencies will cause problems (higher latencies highlight TCP issues much more than local issues).

Knowing exact server IPs you're pulling content from helps us trace and see if there's a route issue. Please always keep this in mind.

First things first - eliminate media players (yes, I know it works great off mobile, but the mobile networks also run at a much lower MTU and aggressively clamp MSS) - and media players are generally quite bad at dealing with TCP issues. So try run the stream on a PC. Then Wireshark is your friend; download wireshark and run a monitor on your ethernet port while running a stream (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wireshark/Start). I'll send you a link on your ticket where you can drop the PCAP results, these are generally large. This will give us some insight and tell us how to resolve the above.
 
websquadza said:
Definitely not shaping. I know that sounds like just another line, but check the traceroutes and you won't see a non-router hop. We don't have any devices to shape traffic on the network. To be honest, it's cheaper to buy bandwidth than buy a Sandvine/equivalent box these days..

I suspect, @Napalm and that your issue only starting last week coincides with our upstream's maintenance. One of the changes they made seems to have affected TCP performance - though pinpointing isn't all that easy. It's either something fragmenting packets, or a MTU//MSS issue. Basically, any TCP issue at US level latencies will cause problems (higher latencies highlight TCP issues much more than local issues).

Knowing exact server IPs you're pulling content from helps us trace and see if there's a route issue. Please always keep this in mind.

First things first - eliminate media players (yes, I know it works great off mobile, but the mobile networks also run at a much lower MTU and aggressively clamp MSS) - and media players are generally quite bad at dealing with TCP issues. So try run the stream on a PC. Then Wireshark is your friend; download wireshark and run a monitor on your ethernet port while running a stream (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wireshark/Start). I'll send you a link on your ticket where you can drop the PCAP results, these are generally large. This will give us some insight and tell us how to resolve the above.
Click to expand...
Are they still busy fixing it ? The upstream's maintenance.

If it affected tcp performance. They cant change things wich negative effects users. Or someone broke something or possible shaping

Is there any settings i need to change on my side?

Fibre is suppose to be rocksolid. How can my lte be more stable and stream better.

My brother also says his been disconnecting from game servers at random and intermittent spikes as of recent. Which previously was solid. Im very worried.
 
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Napalm said:
Are they still busy fixing it ? The upstream's maintenance.

If it affected tcp performance. They cant change things wich negative effects users. Or someone broke something or possible shaping

Is there any settings i need to change on my side?

Fibre is suppose to be rocksolid. How can my lte be more stable and stream better.

My brother also says his been disconnecting from game servers at random and intermittent spikes as of recent. Which previously was solid. Im very worried.
Click to expand...

Maintenance is long finished (though we’re waiting for additional providers now for added redundancy). New paths were introduced on WACS. Additional capacity was added and equipment was replaced, this just as PCCW was added into the mix... That leaves a lot of room for something to maybe go wrong- and the internet is a big place.. At the same time, FNO networks have had weird MTU issues pop up more and More frequently lately.

Having PCAP results helps us see the errors as they occur. From there, we can diagnose. Because we don’t monitor you’re traffic, we don’t have an eye on your traffic to do this. Having IPs to test to also helps us diagnose. It’s not a matter of stability, if packets are broken, speed doesn’t matter.

Once you run the wire shark test, we’ll recommend some changes. If they work, we know what needs to be fixed and we can escalate accordingly (to the FNO or the upstream). There’s nothing to worry about. 1. We need to know about an issue. 2. We need to troubleshoot it. Please follow the instructions on the ticket you only submitted last night and give our team a chance to troubleshoot this.
 
I gave up on the iptv story because of exactly this , it became too much of a mission, and an annoyance having to use a proxy, or else it was a mother buffer to use
 
websquadza said:
Maintenance is long finished (though we’re waiting for additional providers now for added redundancy). New paths were introduced on WACS. Additional capacity was added and equipment was replaced, this just as PCCW was added into the mix... That leaves a lot of room for something to maybe go wrong- and the internet is a big place.. At the same time, FNO networks have had weird MTU issues pop up more and More frequently lately.

Having PCAP results helps us see the errors as they occur. From there, we can diagnose. Because we don’t monitor you’re traffic, we don’t have an eye on your traffic to do this. Having IPs to test to also helps us diagnose. It’s not a matter of stability, if packets are broken, speed doesn’t matter.

Once you run the wire shark test, we’ll recommend some changes. If they work, we know what needs to be fixed and we can escalate accordingly (to the FNO or the upstream). There’s nothing to worry about. 1. We need to know about an issue. 2. We need to troubleshoot it. Please follow the instructions on the ticket you only submitted last night and give our team a chance to troubleshoot this.
Click to expand...
I've got not idea what options is available to sort out the MTU/MSS issue. This is what i seem to be experiencing. Can they reset my Fibre port maybe.

Sheesh, i really would like to avoid having to buy a separate LTE uncapped service just for my Video streams to work.
It's not something i had on my budget list.
 
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Napalm said:
I've got not idea what options is available to sort out the MTU/MSS issue. This is what i seem to be experiencing. Can they reset my Fibre port maybe.

Sheesh, i really would like to avoid having to buy a separate LTE uncapped service just for my Video streams to work.
It's not something i had on my budget list.
Click to expand...

Mate with our 1Gbps fibre lines, we shouldn't be having to even think of alternative plans.. Why can't it just work. Whatever these MSS TCP IPP JOU-PP I don't care about these acronyms that have no meaning to me, why are those problems non existent on a simple phone with a data sim card hotspotting to a MEDIA player! Hook up an ethernet cable to a 1Gbps fibre line and bam welcome to buffer land on the same media player that just works perfectly through a 4g data provider.
 
Hingisp said:
Mate with our 1Gbps fibre lines, we shouldn't be having to even think of alternative plans.. Why can't it just work. Whatever these MSS TCP IPP JOU-PP I don't care about these acronyms that have no meaning to me, why are those problems non existent on a simple phone with a data sim card hotspotting to a MEDIA player! Hook up an ethernet cable to a 1Gbps fibre line and bam welcome to buffer land on the same media player that just works perfectly through a 4g data provider.
Click to expand...

110% , well said
 
Hingisp said:
Mate with our 1Gbps fibre lines, we shouldn't be having to even think of alternative plans.. Why can't it just work. Whatever these MSS TCP IPP JOU-PP I don't care about these acronyms that have no meaning to me, why are those problems non existent on a simple phone with a data sim card hotspotting to a MEDIA player! Hook up an ethernet cable to a 1Gbps fibre line and bam welcome to buffer land on the same media player that just works perfectly through a 4g data provider.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. However, streaming is not about speed. Simply put, mobile data usually runs at a much lower MTU, sometimes through EVPN tunnels etc (all resulting in smaller packets and less chance of fragmentation). It’s not better- in fact it has a whole bunch of issues of it’s own- just in your particular case (ie TCP steaming over http), it plays to your advantage. Try something real-time like voip or the like or another protocol that’s unforgiving to tcp changes, and you see why it doesn’t work well. I would love to say we should just drop MTU to test- this is what we do for GPON clients, but you’re both on VUMA trenched and it’s not an option. And home routers are pretty useless at adjusting MTU correctly.

That said, we’re not asking for the world here. Run the IPTV app on a PC, run wire shark in the background. Send us the results. More than happy to look at it and find a fix. That’s why I’m here.
 
websquadza said:
Maintenance is long finished (though we’re waiting for additional providers now for added redundancy). New paths were introduced on WACS. Additional capacity was added and equipment was replaced, this just as PCCW was added into the mix...
Click to expand...
@websquadza If this is the case then why have international speeds regressed ? I cannot get more than 200Mbps to London on a 1Gpbs line. I am happy to live with atleast half the line speed for international but a quarter or less is not acceptable.

So what is the way forward, is the international speed issue going to be addressed or i should just accept a fraction of my line speed ?
 
What iptv service maybe we can test etc

@websquadza question, I play fortnite I have packet loss on fibre and no packet loss using phone as a Hotspot on vc 4g.

Netgear d600 using Lan cable to ps4 can't run mtr as it is on a ps4
 
websquadza said:
Fair enough. However, streaming is not about speed. Simply put, mobile data usually runs at a much lower MTU, sometimes through EVPN tunnels etc (all resulting in smaller packets and less chance of fragmentation). It’s not better- in fact it has a whole bunch of issues of it’s own- just in your particular case (ie TCP steaming over http), it plays to your advantage. Try something real-time like voip or the like or another protocol that’s unforgiving to tcp changes, and you see why it doesn’t work well. I would love to say we should just drop MTU to test- this is what we do for GPON clients, but you’re both on VUMA trenched and it’s not an option. And home routers are pretty useless at adjusting MTU correctly.

That said, we’re not asking for the world here. Run the IPTV app on a PC, run wire shark in the background. Send us the results. More than happy to look at it and find a fix. That’s why I’m here.
Click to expand...
I hear you asking to load on a pc and run wireshark. However all my iptv TV streaming services are android APK's hence cannot load them on a Windows OS, so this isn't an option either.
 
Hingisp said:
I hear you asking to load on a pc and run wireshark. However all my iptv TV streaming services are android APK's hence cannot load them on a Windows OS, so this isn't an option either.
Click to expand...
Sounds like torrent streamers
 
Hingisp said:
I hear you asking to load on a pc and run wireshark. However all my iptv TV streaming services are android APK's hence cannot load them on a Windows OS, so this isn't an option either.
Click to expand...
Am using P4s, jellyfin plex and emby streames fine for me on shield and phone.

Sometimes it could depend where the iptv services sit, EU being the best location for server etc.
 
Not sure what changed, but my IPTV streams seem better now. Much smoother and less glitchy.

This morning and yesterday i could not watch 30seconds without a pause or a jump. This evening after 10pm. It seems pretty good. I watched one channel for 10-15min no hickups. Switched to a few others also. seems good

IPTV streams don't use 30mbit or 50mbit to work proper. mine seem to idle or average out around 510kb per second (around the 4-5mbit). Sometimes initially it will jump to 950kb or 900kb per second but settles down to 510kb per sec avg.
1601241519459.png
 
Napalm said:
Not sure what changed, but my IPTV streams seem better now. Much smoother and less glitchy.

This morning and yesterday i could not watch 30seconds without a pause or a jump. This evening after 10pm. It seems pretty good. I watched one channel for 10-15min no hickups. Switched to a few others also. seems good

IPTV streams don't use 30mbit or 50mbit to work proper. mine seem to idle or average out around 510kb per second (around the 4-5mbit). Sometimes initially it will jump to 950kb or 900kb per second but settles down to 510kb per sec avg.
View attachment 922743
Click to expand...

We forced MSS settings globally, it puts a little extra strain on our hardware, but takes care of your issue. Glad to hear it did the trick. A stream needs very little bandwidth, it's more about the way the packets reach you.
 
Hingisp said:
I hear you asking to load on a pc and run wireshark. However all my iptv TV streaming services are android APK's hence cannot load them on a Windows OS, so this isn't an option either.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the update. Let me know if the above MSS settings helped you. So far, only applied to CPT transit edge - but will apply to JHB later if everything holds up correctly.
 
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