Download speeds are worse - local and remote

[Maddeen]

Hi there,
Hope someone can help me out of this. Sorry for such a long text but I want to put any useful information up in front.
I never used the download feature in the past, so I dont have any comparision.
But now I went to holiday and want to see some movies while in the plane.

First some important notes.
I‘m running the official Plex docker on an unRAID server.
My clients are a MacMini M1, iPad Pro 12.9“ 2020 and iPhone 13 Pro.
Imho not relevant but worth to know, every App, OS are up to date.
Which means:
Unraid at 6.12.3
Plex Server (docker) at 1.32.5.7328-2632c9d3a
iOS/iPad OS at 16.5.1

Every file transfer - local or remote - runs awesome.
That means, that file transfer from and to the unraid server (also to the shares of movies for Plex) have tremendous speed. Copying in both directions gigabytes of movies within minutes or just seconds (local via LAN or WiFi 6)
Even remote downloading / uploading via 5G and my home ISP (40 Mbit/S down / 10 Mbit/s up) running as expected. Which means, that transfering a 1GB file from my server via 5G to my iPad Pro last about 14 minutes. So thats my expectation too, when it comes to „downloading“ movies/series within Plex. But - unfortunaly - its undescribeable worse!!

Prior to my flight - while locally connected via WiFi 6 - i started to download two movies with a total amount of only 13GB. In even the worst scenario I can think of, this should only last 10 Minutes. Worst means, that transfer speed has only 150Mbit/s which is very worse, due to WiFi 6 specs and my high performance Unifi network with only WiFi 6 AP Pros.
iPad Pro has up to 1200 in theory - so 150Mbit is a very low expectation. Even 300Mbit would be bad imho.
For comparision. Downloading the same amount of data from Netflix, Amazon, Sky or Disney runs as expected - fast!

But the download of those two files last about 8 hours - forcing me to run my iPad the whole night because (btw - bad missing feature) Plex seems to immeaditely abort the download when changing to another app or closing the ipad.
Exact time isnt known to me because I went frustrated to bed.

Now I‘m in Greece and want to prepair some downloads for my flight back. And again facing this worse speeds. My home ISP provides 10Mbit/s of upload.
Currently no one is at home so full speed shouldnt be any problem. Downloading a 300MB file (as test) isnt even finished after over one hour!!! I tried four different types of transferring:

1. using Wifi of the hotel (about 60Mbits) without VPN to my home network
2. using 5G (about 120Mbits) without VPN to my home network
3. using Wifi of the hotel while being connected to my home VPN
4. using 5G of the while being connected to my home VPN

All types remains with this worse ■■■■■■ speed and now I‘m running out of ideas.
I also tried the four variants describes above with my iPhone 13 Pro - no changes.

I already checked the settings of the Plex app - of the clients and of the server.
I have no restrictions - neither on download settings nor in any place. Just set all to „Original“ and „unlimited“ where ever it was possible.

Is anyone able to help me… this feels very bad for me, because I paid for the Plex Lifetime… sadly I didnt test it prior to buying it - because I would not even spend 1 cent if download rates are so slow.

BTW — another bad thing. The iOS Apps doesnt show any transfer speed making it impossible to check the speeds. I have a tool installed on my iOS devices which normally would see the transfer rates. But due to stupid Plex app behaviour (stopping anything when switching to another app) I cant analyse anything.

Thanks for any help — i‘m very interested in even the slightes hint…

[c11umw]

I’ve noticed an issue with the latest version of PMS on Synology NAS (DSM7).
Both package and docker versions.

My post here: BUG: Issues with Transcoding in release 1.32.5.7328-2632c9d3a?

You could you try to roll back to an older version to see if that fixes it for you too?

[Maddeen]

@c11umw
Thanks for your hint. I’ll try it. But may I ask you, how I can do it?
Especially when it comes to keeping the Appdata.
In the Apps Menu I’m only see the current version I never rollbacked anything in the past.

And maybe one additional information that could be important.
Direct streaming of the same movie/series works flawlessly with a speed of 9Mbit (of max 10Mbit possible due to my ISP) without any buffering or other problems

[Maddeen]

@c11umw - i rolled back to version1.32.1.6999-91e1e2e2c
Nothing changed. Still worse download speed i can even think of
Ridiculous … especially that I paid for this software and dont get support of a staff member…

[c11umw]

Try going back to 1.31.xxxx
That worked for me in both package and docker.

docker pull plexinc/pms-docker:1.31.3.6868-28fc46b27

You can see a full list of version controlled docker tags here (for PMS)
https://hub.docker.com/r/plexinc/pms-docker/tags

[Maddeen]

Ahh ok. Thx. I’ll try it tomorrow and leave an update

[Maddeen]

@c11umw - it feels like faster, but when I look at the rates, still 2-3 MBits

What I didn’t understand too are those up and downs of the speed as you can see in the screenshot.
Do you also see this behavior captured in the screenshot?

In my expectation the blue line should always look like a flat line at 8-9 MBits and not looking like a heartbeat from 0-2Mbit.

[c11umw]

Mine does that too.
On playback the plex player will ask for loads of data up front as fast as it can get it until the player cache is filled and then it’ll ask for the next chunks to top up the cache every 10-20s.
You see the same thing with Youtube. The grey part of the playback bar is the cached video.

This is where the plex player is good compared to other direct stream players (e.g. Kodi)
If you have a network blip then it’ll be transparent in the player as it uses up the cache and when re-connected it tops it back up again. It makes for a smoother experience

Browser Plex players only caches about 30s, but the proper plex player cached about 5mins.

[c11umw]

Example… this is mine with local (direct play)
The second bump was me changing the audio track.

If you look for the Averages on the right side of your graph, that’ll show what plex is sending and should match the playback bitrate.

Monitoring your ethernet throughput, you can see Youtube doing the same thing

[Maddeen]

@c11umw
I would agree, when it comes to streaming only. But I still just want to download the file to watch it offline in plane.
So no need to buffer anything and definitely no need to stop at 2-3 Mbit.
Look at the graph while I’m streaming. It’s behave like expected. Only twice a drop to 0 - average 6Mbits.

And now compare to my screen above, when I was just downloading and look on the x-axe. It drops down to 0kbit for at least 1 second and third repeats. So imho it’s no wonder that it last hours for downloading a 2GB file.

Something works terribly wrong just as the support here from the staff.
For what did I paid for?? Or is there another way to get professional support from the staff?

[c11umw]

Logically, if you’re downloading to your device then this should show on the gold graph, not the blue one. The blue one is for external data and this may have limits set in the server or more likely in the phone app.

Try some changes in the server config to see if that helps you.
examples below (change to suit your needs)

Define your local network (common one shown)

Transcoder settings (in case it’s struggling to transcode fast enough for your phone format)

For reference, this was me transcoding and downloading a 6Mb/s HEVC film to my (android) phone’s Plex client. WiFi here is 300Mb/s, but my NAS was only able to transcode and send to my phone at ~20Mb/s

[Maddeen]

@c11umw No - in my case blue is correct in both scenarios, because I‘m currently in Greece. And that‘s what I cant understand.

I‘m in Greece in both scenarios.
First - streaming from Greece get a 6Mbit average with only two drops for <1 sec.
Second - downloading from Greece get a 978kbit/s average with drops every twice seconds for one seconds…

Update. I just connected my iPad via VPN to my home network and start copying the same episode from my unRAID server to my iPad via SMB. As you can see - running at 7,9Mbit all the time without any problem … this Plex $h!t drives me crazy

[c11umw]

Networks only care if you’re in WAN or LAN, not your geographical location.
Which is probably why the VPN wasn’t rate limited as Plex see sit as local.

Have you set your upload speeds in the configuration to match your actual internet upload?
And have you set any value to the stream bitrate?

Also, have you set any limitations in your phone’s app?
Settings for stream rate and download rate - LAN and WAN

I don’t have an iPhone, so don’t know where the app settings are.

[Maddeen]

The test with VPN and downloading via SMB was just a reference to show that my whole network runs perfectly. So no network issues as all.
I can’t download via SMB without VPN due to my security settings.

As I wrote earlier only downloading via Plex (and I guess it’s working via https) got that worse speed.

To summarize

• Downloading via VPN and SMB = fine
• Downloading via VPN and within Plex = worse
• Downloading directly (remote) within Plex = worse
• Downloading directly (local) within Plex = worse
• Streaming via VPN and within Plex = fine
• Streaming directly (remote) within Plex = fine
• Streaming directly (local) within Plex = fine

So its really only the downloading feature of Plex that isn’t working as expected. No matter if remote/local or with/without VPN.

I checked all settings on client and server. No limitations are set. Not on transcoding, downloads or others

When I’m home I’ll try a different docker providing Plex because for me it’s still looking like a problem of the original Plex Docker