Slow streaming for remote users

[byusinger84 1]

Server specs: 

Xeon @ 2.6 ghz with 32 cores and 16 GB of RAM
1 GB dedicated fiber connection
SSDs for OS and Emby itself
GTX 1050 for transcoding
Running Emby 4.5.0.50

My Emby server is no slouch, as you can see. And yet, off and on I have users complaining about constant buffering even when trying to stream at a hard set 720p resolution at 1.5 megabit connection. It's hit or miss and isn't their internet as I can reproduce the problem on occasion when offsite. 

The only thing I can see in the logs is HTTP response times over several thousand and I've even seen up to 25,000 ms. I can't explain it. And this also happens to some users while at the same time other users continue to see no issues. It isn't always the same set of users either. 

Roku App, mobile apps, web apps, and iOS/Apple TV apps all have the same behavior but again it's hit or miss and extremely hard to reproduce on demand. 

See snippet of my logs. 

Any thoughts or suggestions?

ffmpeg-transcode-8328c39c-0160-4d9f-91c5-ae7af0205a44_1.txt embyserver.txt

Edited September 26, 2020 by byusinger84

[PenkethBoy 2068]

going to need a lot more info

how many users, how many remote streams - how many concurrent without the problem and how many with etc etc

full server log going to be needed as well - for a period before during and after the problem

where are the movies etc stored and on what and maybe where

have you looked for errors in the log - find any around the time you see the problem?

 

Might be a red herring but you dont have much ram in that server - could be an issue  - have you done any analysis - ruled anything out an how did you do that?

[byusinger84 1]

Just now, PenkethBoy said:

going to need a lot more info

how many users, how many remote streams - how many concurrent without the problem and how many with etc etc

full server log going to be needed as well - for a period before during and after the problem

where are the movies etc stored and on what and maybe where

have you looked for errors in the log - find any around the time you see the problem?

 

Might be a red herring but you dont have much ram in that server - could be an issue  - have you done any analysis - ruled anything out an how did you do that?

I have probably 30 users. Issue happens when one or 5 are streaming at the same time. It really doesn't have a rhyme or reason.

Full server log is posted. 

Movies and TV shows are both having issues and are stored on redundant NAS devices with 10 gigabit connections.

Yes. Read above what I said about the high HTTP response times. 

RAM isn't the issue as the Emby server utilizes less than 30% at any given time.

[Luke 42080]

Hi, as a test, can you have one of these users try using the 3-dot menu on an item to download a video file? how fast does that go?

[byusinger84 1]

23 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, as a test, can you have one of these users try using the 3-dot menu on an item to download a video file? how fast does that go?

Looks like it's downloading at about 30 megabit a second. They have a 1 gigabit connection and speed tests confirm it is registering at a gig. A speed test at the host location shows full gig up and down as well.

[byusinger84 1]

I also made sure I do not have a bitrate limit on the user or globally on the server level, although I have also tried adding one at 1000 megabit just to see what happens. No change. 

[Luke 42080]

There could be ISP throttling on either side of the connection. Have you looked into that?

[byusinger84 1]

15 minutes ago, Luke said:

There could be ISP throttling on either side of the connection. Have you looked into that?

Highly doubtful as I'm at a datacenter. I have not been throttled with my other servers or web traffic. 

[Luke 42080]

It could be occurring on the side of whoever is downloading. If you search this forum you'll find similar topics of users who swore there was some kind of performance problem with the server, then they dug a little deeper and found that one side of the connection was being throttled.

[byusinger84 1]

55 minutes ago, Luke said:

It could be occurring on the side of whoever is downloading. If you search this forum you'll find similar topics of users who swore there was some kind of performance problem with the server, then they dug a little deeper and found that one side of the connection was being throttled.

Maybe. It doesn't always happen though and it's hard because I'm unsure how to verify that with AppleTVs and Rokus mobile os etc. 

What's strange too is my Plex users do not even experience this behavior. 

Edited September 29, 2020 by byusinger84

[byusinger84 1]

There is definitely something going on with Emby. On Plex (which runs on this same server), I am able to download the exact same video file at 20-50 megabytes per second (still a little slow imo for my connection) while on Emby, I'm only getting 2-3 megabytes per second and it's consistent across internet providers. 

I also tested with IIS on the same machine and the transfers matched Plex but not Emby. 

For my last test, I logged into the Emby server with the internal IP on another system on the same network (both are connected at 10 gigabit internally). The speed issues are present there as well so I can definitively confirm it is not an ISP issue on either end. SMB file transfer of the same file is at full speed with zero issues. 

Thoughts, Luke?

Edited September 30, 2020 by byusinger84

[Carlo 4561]

I just tested this on 4.6.0.1 and found it only downloads at 2MB on the local network and roughly 24MB on the server itself (no lan).
Something is off.

@Luke

Edited October 4, 2020 by cayars

[Luke 42080]

Strange. Seems to be ok from here.

[Luke 42080]

I think the beta server 4.6.0.2+ should resolve this. If you can confirm then we can patch this into a 4.5.2 stable update. Thanks.

[byusinger84 1]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

I think the beta server 4.6.0.2+ should resolve this. If you can confirm then we can patch this into a 4.5.2 stable update. Thanks.

Whatever you did, that got it. Works like it should now. Thank you!!! 

[Luke 42080]

Thanks for the feedback.

[Carlo 4561]

Much faster!