Insufficient buffer for high latency connection

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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1

Server Version#:
Player Version#: 8.45 (1) - Apple TV
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I’m having a very strange issue. My friend has a server in Ohio. I’m in Washington. His internet is >1gbps symmetrical and mine is 1gbps down. I get 400-500 mbps connections to his server reliably when watching with infuse and have no issues with buffering

When watching with Plex I regularly have issues with buffering. I get notified that my internet connection is not sufficient. I am currently watching a movie direct play (30.5mbps bitrate) and about 25min into it I experienced buffering with the “internet connection not sufficient” notification.

I have experienced this on both my nvidia shield and on my apple tv. We’ve run a bunch of tests and the only thing we’ve noticed is it seems like there’s a lot of latency between us and the connection takes a bit of time to stabilize at 400-500mbps. The only thing I can think of is the way plex burst downloads during playback is not always quick enough to fill the buffer before it runs out. As I mentioned before, I’ve never had an issue with the infuse player which tells me it’s probably two issues, something with the network combined with the buffer strategy on the plex player.

What testing can I run and how can I get to the bottom of this?

2

What is the measured latency?

Did it recover on its own? Or did you have to restart the stream?

3

Measured anywhere from 75-150ms (I’ve seen up to 189ms a couple of times). I should also note that if I Speedtest directly to his ISP ping is solid around 75ms.

Yes it did. I have had it fail in the past but most often it recovers on its own.

4

Hi, it’s me, the friend. We got it a little more stable initially by increasing the TCP buffer sizes and increasing the backlog and queue depth. I belieevvveee I enabled BBR as well, but I’d have to double check and I don’t think that made much of a difference. That being said, it looks like he’s still having issues with the native plex app and I got nothing there. Let me know if there are any logs or anything I can provide to help.

Edit: confirmed BBR is on and buffers are at 128MB

5

Seems like you have it solved already.

Your version of the first party plex app is quite poor.

6

You’re not wrong, but I want to help developers or other people without an Apple TV with a solution.

Infuse doesn’t fix my Shield TV obviously and the infuse UI is inferior.