Server version 1.16.3.1402
Linux Mint 19.1
All users set at 4Mbps.
I’ve noticed this behavior a lot, I think something is up with how Plex calculates bandwidth usage. Case in point, recently, I had 8, remote people streaming from me. The Plex bandwidth monitor had a nice, hills and valleys type of chart. But, the spikes (hills) were in the 50+Mbps range non-stop.
Looking at System Monitor, Tautulli and iotop, none of them showed network traffic going above about 20Mbps.
What gives? Can the Plex monitor be tuned to make it more accurate or does it calculate bandwidth usage different from those other 3 programs?
Even if you set your average bandwidth to be at 4 mbps, it doesn’t mean that the individual “chunks” of data are transferred to the client at 4mbps.
Instead they are using whichever bandwidth is available. i.e. there is no “traffic shaping”.
But why does Plex shows bandwidth spiking to 50Mbps when none of the other 3 monitoring tools showed those spikes? All 3 of the other tools showed spikes but nothing going above 20Mbps.
The reason I started paying closer attention to this is I’m probably going to be switching ISPs and my current one has an upload limit of 50Mbps and the one I’m switching to tops out around 20Mbps. Just concerned that I might be starved for upload bandwidth so I need really accurate data to make the choice of switching ISPs.
Or is there some rough data somewhere that shows if you have X amount of people pulling from you, you need X for upload bandwidth? (I know, I know…LOTS of variables with a question like that.)
upload peaks are not relevant for this. What you want is the integrated upload bandwidth over a period of time. (i.e. average bandwidth)
Then add some “safety cushion” on top and you have your upload requirement.
