How to find out the source of the problem

[mannyrothman 8]

I’ve found that for one of my users, who streams from across the country, has had a lot of trouble streaming 4K content (buffering, stuttering, etc). When they tried to transcode from 4K to 1080p, the file played much more smoothly.

How can I determine the cause of their streaming problem? Was it their internet speed not being fast enough to stream 4K? Was it the Apple TV not powerful enough to render 4K without dropping frames?

When I did a speed test using Infuse, this user pulls about 30 Mbps download, on average. Is that fast enough to stream 4K well? Their internet speed is 200 Mbps, but for some reason they only pull 30 Mbps from the server. Any ideas why this could be?

They’re my only user that has these playback issues  

Is there any way I could figure out what exactly caused the issues for them?

Edited February 27 by mannyrothman

[Luke 37099]

Hi, what was the bitrate of the video?

[mannyrothman 8]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

Hi, what was the bitrate of the video?

21 Mbps. The highest bitrate on it server is 30 Mbps. 

Edited February 27 by mannyrothman

[Luke 37099]

It could just be a case of data not getting there quickly enough. Remember that regardless of what a speed test reports, you could be dealing with ISP port throttling on either side of the connection, which is very common nowadays.

[mannyrothman 8]

35 minutes ago, Luke said:

It could just be a case of data not getting there quickly enough. Remember that regardless of what a speed test reports, you could be dealing with ISP port throttling on either side of the connection, which is very common nowadays.

I installed OpenSpeedTest on my server so my user could test her device’s connection to it. She got 270 Mbps down. But yet, on Infuse’s speed test, she’s only getting about 20-30 Mbps down. Is this what you’re referring to with port throttling?

[Luke 37099]

It could be yes. The speedtest results are not going to be relevant unless it's on the same port as what she'd be streaming with. Also ideally it should match http/https, so if you're streaming video over http, then the speedtest should be on that as well.

For ISP's that throttle, these are two variables that seem to be factored into when they do it vs. when they don't. Obviously there could be others that they're not even publishing:

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/how-can-i-tell-if-my-internet-is-being-throttled-by-my-isp

And remember the throttling could be coming from either ISP on either end of the connection, or both.

[mannyrothman 8]

9 minutes ago, Luke said:

It could be yes. The speedtest results are not going to be relevant unless it's on the same port as what she'd be streaming with. Also ideally it should match http/https, so if you're streaming video over http, then the speedtest should be on that as well.

For ISP's that throttle, these are two variables that seem to be factored into when they do it vs. when they don't. Obviously there could be others that they're not even publishing:

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/how-can-i-tell-if-my-internet-is-being-throttled-by-my-isp

And remember the throttling could be coming from either ISP on either end of the connection, or both.

Understood. Thank you for the explanation! And I believe it is her ISP as my other clients don’t have the same streaming issues as her.

She is connecting through Tailscale VPN. Does that circumvent her ISP?

[Luke 37099]

On 2/27/2024 at 5:43 PM, mannyrothman said:

Understood. Thank you for the explanation! And I believe it is her ISP as my other clients don’t have the same streaming issues as her.

She is connecting through Tailscale VPN. Does that circumvent her ISP?

In theory yes but it's not guaranteed. You could ask her to try disabling it as a test.

Also setting up https for your server as well as using non-default ports are two things that can help make this less likely to happen.