Server Version#:Version 1.40.5.8897
Player Version#:Version 1.100.1.221-94aa83fb
Hello -
I’ve been running a plex server for quite some time. Currently, the media server is running on a Windows PC (running Win 10), with an i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz, 64GB DDR4 RAM in dual channel mode. The motherboard is an ASUS ROG STRIX B560-A, connected to the network via ethernet Cat6. The OS is running off an SSD, and Plex has it’s cache/temp files configured on a different SSD. The CPU has Intel UHD 630 graphics.
The problem I’m having and have been having intermittently for some time - is that I’ll be watching a movie in my home via LAN. The videos are 1080P - no 4K. I’m watching at original resolution so no transcoding. The player is on a laptop with a wifi adapter capable of 270Mbps.
In short, hardware and network bandwidth should not be a limitation.
The experience I have is that I can watch something for long periods with no pauses or buffering - 40, 50 minutes. All of a sudden I’ll start getting frequent pauses where playback will bufffer for several seconds, play for several seconds…and this will repeat. If I go and check the server when this is happening, I’m not maxed out on any resources: CPU usage is typically under 30%, and network and disk usage the same. GPU usage is rarely over 10%. Although other processes may be running on the same machine, there is still plenty of processing and streaming capacity left. And no transcoding is happening. Similarly on the machine that is handling playback: no resources seem to be close to maxed out.
I’ve never been able to determine what causes the issue. Sometimes restarting the PMS will help for a while, sometimes it doesn’t.
Can anyone offer any advice on why this might be happening or how to track down the source of the buffering?
