Hi all,
Sorry if this is in the wrong place as it covers multiple devices.
I’ve got a server I rent from Feral Hosting on their basic Helium slot which is advertised as 1gbit connection. I’ve installed Plex on the server without any problems, and at home I have a fiber internet connection at 50mbit down and 5mbit up.
However when I try to play back anything in a high quality (approx 8mbit setting or higher on the player) on my PS4 (wired) or Windows laptop through Chrome web player (wifi) I get constant buffering coming through every few minutes. I was wondering if this is likely due to the processing speed / upload speed of the server or the download limit of my internet connection. I understand that 8mbit is much lower than 50 however have been reading on here that the bitrate will have peaks in line with what is being shown on tv above the average bitrate described.
I believe most things I watch are either having the video or audio transcoded, sometimes both if this help?
I don’t want to upgrade my internet package if it won’t make any difference, likewise I don’t want to look for another server hosting company if that won’t help and would appreciate any guidance people can offer.
The easiest way to see if the processor is slacking is to look at your Plex Media Server log after a show has been transcoding and searching for the term “Speed=”. After you get a value anything above 1 means the server is doing great. Something right at 1 means you could run into trouble with the processor keeping up and anything below 1 means that the server is too slow to transcode.
The easiest way to check your bandwidth connection from plex is to use a laptop/desktop at the same place as your client. Goto the information page of an episode or movie (The screen with the description), select the … menu in the bottom of the column on the left, and pick download. This will initiate a download of the file from your server to your computer and will give you the approximate speed your client can download from the server. It won’t be a perfect approximation, but should be enough to let you know a rough amount.
So I’ve looked at the logs, there are about 7 Plex Media Server Logs (.1.2.3 etc) but in the first one I have many values looking like this
size=6181181&speed=5.7&remaining=1576
size=12720597&speed=5.9
So from what you’re saying the server is transcoding fast enough.
I’ve tried downloading as you suggested and it starts coming through at 1400KB/s but seems to dip to around 800KB/s after a few minutes and then fluctuates up and down from there. I’m guessing this means that the internet connection is too slow and I should call my provider and ask them to increase it.
You state that you are supposed to get 50Mb/s down. You are not getting anywhere near 50Mb/s downloads.
1400KB/s = about 11 Mb/s and 800KB/s = about 6Mb/s.
You may want to call and ask them to come fix that.
As rsava stated the conversion looks like actual connection between your computer and the server.
The next step would typically be to determine if it’s an issue with your entire internet connection or just the connection to your server. To do this I would verify what a website such as speedtest.net says that checks your download and upload speed. With nothing else going on, it should give you speeds relatively close to what your ISP says while being pretty consistent.
Just to verify that the connection is between your server and home another check would be to access your remote server with their FTP app or a web interface if they have it to test the download function from there. With a 1Gbs connection on the server end you should be seeing your max speed coming from that server which would be the 50Mbps (or 6.25MBps)
There is more to streaming than simply available bandwidth. Jitter can be problematic as well as widely-varying latency. Check your own internet connection at pingtest or icsi netalyzer (hxxp://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/). If you can, also check them or something like from from the server as well.
HI guys thanks all for responding. Still looking into this I called up Virgin and they’ve told me that apparently there has been problems in my area for the last 3 weeks and are refunding me a months internet bill, although I don’t know if this was just to fob me off and get me off the phone or not. Still not resolved but they said they have engineers looking at the issue and it should be resolved in a week or so, so fingers crossed once this has been done I won’t have any more issues.
@Chappas said:
HI guys thanks all for responding. Still looking into this I called up Virgin and they’ve told me that apparently there has been problems in my area for the last 3 weeks and are refunding me a months internet bill, although I don’t know if this was just to fob me off and get me off the phone or not. Still not resolved but they said they have engineers looking at the issue and it should be resolved in a week or so, so fingers crossed once this has been done I won’t have any more issues.
I’m with Feral too. Although I haven’t installed Plex on my slot I know their network and disks can get saturated sometimes. Having said that I share my server with my girlfriend and she is on a Virgin fibre connection. Many many times she has encountered buffering whilst another friend I share with on a regular broadband connection never has issues. I would suspect the issue in genuinely with Virgin. Would love you to post back if the issue goes away.
@Chappas said:
HI guys thanks all for responding. Still looking into this I called up Virgin and they’ve told me that apparently there has been problems in my area for the last 3 weeks and are refunding me a months internet bill, although I don’t know if this was just to fob me off and get me off the phone or not. Still not resolved but they said they have engineers looking at the issue and it should be resolved in a week or so, so fingers crossed once this has been done I won’t have any more issues.
I’m with Feral too. Although I haven’t installed Plex on my slot I know their network and disks can get saturated sometimes. Having said that I share my server with my girlfriend and she is on a Virgin fibre connection. Many many times she has encountered buffering whilst another friend I share with on a regular broadband connection never has issues. I would suspect the issue in genuinely with Virgin. Would love you to post back if the issue goes away.
Will keep this thread updated and let you know what happens but I’m determined to find out what the issue is. You said you were experiencing buffering issues, what service are you using to stream your content?
@Chappas said:
HI guys thanks all for responding. Still looking into this I called up Virgin and they’ve told me that apparently there has been problems in my area for the last 3 weeks and are refunding me a months internet bill, although I don’t know if this was just to fob me off and get me off the phone or not. Still not resolved but they said they have engineers looking at the issue and it should be resolved in a week or so, so fingers crossed once this has been done I won’t have any more issues.
I’m with Feral too. Although I haven’t installed Plex on my slot I know their network and disks can get saturated sometimes. Having said that I share my server with my girlfriend and she is on a Virgin fibre connection. Many many times she has encountered buffering whilst another friend I share with on a regular broadband connection never has issues. I would suspect the issue in genuinely with Virgin. Would love you to post back if the issue goes away.
Will keep this thread updated and let you know what happens but I’m determined to find out what the issue is. You said you were experiencing buffering issues, what service are you using to stream your content?
I personally don’t get buffering ever. My Internet is 300/20 BT FTTH.
It’s my girlfriend on Virgin that does. TBH she has had less of an issue lately since she switched to a Roku client.
I have a Feral Hosting slot Helium with Plex and I have a similar problem.
I have a 15 Mbps internet connection speed, with the server I can max out 1,6 MB/s (12,8 Mb/s) with FTP and I also get the same speed with the download with Plex client on browser. The problem is that when I try to stream with Plex I can only stream WITHOUT BUFFERING with a 4 Mbps 720p transcoding or a 4-5 Mbps Original without transcoding, with 8 Mbps 1080p transconding I get buffering, with a 6 Mbps Original I get buffering. It’s very weird because my REAL speed connection with the server is 12,8 Mb/s but I only get 4-5 Mbps when I’m streaming.
anon0: your host is probably using traffic shaping to throttle you. Most hosting providers don’t really like what you’re trying to do as it taxes their bandwidth far more than their normal customers.
This is why Plex is really meant to be run on your hardware for your media to share with your family and friends. Given this, saying the necessary costs required to try and host a Plex solution is typically cost-prohibitive for non-commercial situations.
@sremick said:
anon0: your host is probably using traffic shaping to throttle you. Most hosting providers don’t really like what you’re trying to do as it taxes their bandwidth far more than their normal customers.
This is why Plex is really meant to be run on your hardware for your media to share with your family and friends. Given this, saying the necessary costs required to try and host a Plex solution is typically cost-prohibitive for non-commercial situations.
I understand where you are coming from. however Feral Hosting are actually Seedbox providers. The boxes will happily max out the connection 24/7 at least @ 150/150 full duplex with things like auto-dl irssi . They also provide custom install scripts to help install Plex, PlexPy etc… So in this particular case I’m pretty certain that they aren’t traffic shaping streaming. @anon0 What is a likely scenario with Feral is that you maybe sharing a disk who is hammering trackers with auto-dl irssi
I would suggest your options are to raise a ticket with Feral (they are pretty quick at replying especially during UK daytime hours.)
Ask them if they can help…They may offer you a change of slot if they see other users you share with are hammering the disk. Also are you European based? If not then streaming across the Atlantic I wouldn’t imagine would work well.
Failing that there are other providers than offer a similar service who do actually state how many people you will share a disk with. I’m not in anyway trying to put you off Feral. I’m a long time customer myself but I don’t have Plex installed on my slot so have nothing to compare with. I can tell you of other providers in Europe that you could check out but its really out of the scope of the Plex forums so PM me if you want to know any more,
@sremick said:
anon0: your host is probably using traffic shaping to throttle you. Most hosting providers don’t really like what you’re trying to do as it taxes their bandwidth far more than their normal customers.
This is why Plex is really meant to be run on your hardware for your media to share with your family and friends. Given this, saying the necessary costs required to try and host a Plex solution is typically cost-prohibitive for non-commercial situations.
I understand where you are coming from. however Feral Hosting are actually Seedbox providers. The boxes will happily max out the connection 24/7 at least @ 150/150 full duplex with things like auto-dl irssi . They also provide custom install scripts to help install Plex, PlexPy etc… So in this particular case I’m pretty certain that they aren’t traffic shaping streaming. @anon0 What is a likely scenario with Feral is that you maybe sharing a disk who is hammering trackers with auto-dl irssi
I would suggest your options are to raise a ticket with Feral (they are pretty quick at replying especially during UK daytime hours.)
Ask them if they can help…They may offer you a change of slot if they see other users you share with are hammering the disk. Also are you European based? If not then streaming across the Atlantic I wouldn’t imagine would work well.
Failing that there are other providers than offer a similar service who do actually state how many people you will share a disk with. I’m not in anyway trying to put you off Feral. I’m a long time customer myself but I don’t have Plex installed on my slot so have nothing to compare with. I can tell you of other providers in Europe that you could check out but its really out of the scope of the Plex forums so PM me if you want to know any more,
Thank you for the answer, yes I’m based in europe. I’ve already opened a ticket, then they opened 3 more slots to see if something change. I tried all of them, but nothing changed. They said that the problem is out of their control, because that’s what they offer, and they offered me a refund. In my slot I’m also using rTorrent with autodl-irssi. But 4 Mbps from 12,8 Mbps that I get with direct download is a huge difference.
I’ll pm you.
Hey @anon0
I decided to give Plex an install on my Feral slot purely to help you troubleshoot.
So here we go. I use PMP as my client and I’m using Blu-ray quality MKV at around 13 mbps on the Feral slot… Also I should add I’m on a 300/20 connection at home.
Initially after install I fired up an episode of Better Call Saul. Playback was fine though not a particularly stunning picture. Any alterations to the quality on the fly in PMP above 4mbps would make PMP complain about the transcoder and throw up an error. I then realised that the master settings in PMP were only set to 4 mbps for remote streams. After altering the settings in the client It transcodes at any quality and even happily direct plays.(Obviously helped my the speed of my home connection.)
What client are you using? Was it a Roku? Whatever it is have you altered the remote quality settings within settings itself? On the fly alterations failed but setting the fixed option in Video>>Remote quality works great for me.
@HitsVille thanks for the interest, I can’t use Plex Media Player (do you mean the windows APP, right?) because it requires a Plex Pass subscription. I’ve used the PS4 and the plex.tv client with a browser and directly from the server again with the browser. I’ve checked and also my remote quality option was set to 4Mbps, I then changed it to Original. I have to say that this a bit improved the max bitrate that I can stream, now I can stream up to 6Mbps with direct play. But the same I can’t stream a 8Mbps 1080p without buffering. When I stream I sometimes get the pop up message that my connection speed the server is not enough to stream, sometimes that the cpu is not powerfull enough. I’ve also checked the status on the server where you can see what are you actually streaming, sometimes it says ‘‘Transcoding (throttled)’’.
Yeah sorry I should have realised you couldn’t use PMP.
Ok so the messages you are getting…Have you looked at the settings on the server itself on the Feral slot.
I’m not sure how up to date the server version on feral is…
Have a look at Server>>Remote Access>>
At the bottom is there an option to limit remote stream bitrate?
@HitsVille said:
Yeah sorry I should have realised you couldn’t use PMP.
Ok so the messages you are getting…Have you looked at the settings on the server itself on the Feral slot.
I’m not sure how up to date the server version on feral is…
Have a look at Server>>Remote Access>>
At the bottom is there an option to limit remote stream bitrate?
The version is the Version 1.1.3.2700, under Remote Access there isn’t any option to limit remote stream bitrate. It’s very weird, it could be my home connection that have trouble with Plex streaming… but it’s very weird, in that case also the FTP speed should be slow, right?
@HitsVille said:
Hey @anon0
I decided to give Plex an install on my Feral slot purely to help you troubleshoot.
So here we go. I use PMP as my client and I’m using Blu-ray quality MKV at around 13 mbps on the Feral slot… Also I should add I’m on a 300/20 connection at home.
Initially after install I fired up an episode of Better Call Saul. Playback was fine though not a particularly stunning picture. Any alterations to the quality on the fly in PMP above 4mbps would make PMP complain about the transcoder and throw up an error. I then realised that the master settings in PMP were only set to 4 mbps for remote streams. After altering the settings in the client It transcodes at any quality and even happily direct plays.(Obviously helped my the speed of my home connection.)
What client are you using? Was it a Roku? Whatever it is have you altered the remote quality settings within settings itself? On the fly alterations failed but setting the fixed option in Video>>Remote quality works great for me.
Hi HitsVille,
So are you saying that you can stream at the Original quality setting without any buffering problems, 20Mbps+? That indicates it’s a problem on my client end rather than on Feral’s end. I was thinking about cancelling my slot with them and getting a dedicated server, perhaps from Kimsufi but if this is the case then that wouldn’t help.
Is your provider Virgin and if not what country are you in? Are you on the Helium slot also, as Feral offer some SSD slots which wouldn’t have disk IO issues.
