Remote connection averaging 10mbps despite gigabit speeds

Plex Media Server Remote Access
1

My home server is on a symmetrical gigabit connection. Local playback is always flawless. I’m at my parents’ home across the country and they get about 500mbps down. My plex server allows direct remote connections on port 32400. When I remotely direct play on Plex I buffer at anything above 8mbps. I did an iperf3 test and only get ~10mbps on average.

Some interesting details:

  • when playback first starts my plex server dashboard shows a spike of around ~70mbps and immediately drops.

  • the first transfer on iperf3 is also at a higher speed:

     [  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  2.80 MBytes  23.5 Mbits/sec
    [  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   599 KBytes  4.90 Mbits/sec
    [  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   446 KBytes  3.64 Mbits/sec

Is this a problem with

  1. ISP routing?

  2. ISP throttling?

  3. some combination of the above two?

2

I’ve been seeing the same problem with remote streaming the last few weeks, and indeed, files that are over 8-10mbps bitrate are always buffering even though I’ve thoroughly verified that it’s not a problem with the Internet connection on either end. Speeds are at least 300mbps across the board for the FIOS connections on both the server end as well as client end, and it’s the same problem with a mobile connection that has more than enough bandwidth to spare.

Things I’ve checked:

  • Internet connections (sufficient bandwidth for all endpoint devices involved)
  • Client connection types (home WiFi, mobile Internet)
  • VPN on client side (which would rule out at least ISP throttling on the client side)
  • Manual IP connection (so maybe not the Plex hosted relay?)
  • On latest server version, rebooted server several times
  • Different client applications (Plex Web, Plex Android app, PlexKodiConnect, external video player setting in Android app)
  • Different client devices (nVidia Shield, several Android phones, laptop)
  • Varying bitrates (files with bitrates lower than 10mbps tend to be fine)

If I had to guess, the problem is probably a bug in the Plex Media Server itself.

Unfounded speculation: maybe it thinks it has a remote bandwidth limit of 8-10mbps configured despite being set to unlimited?

3

I’m going to bump this because I’ve been experiencing the very exact same issues on one of my servers. This started with the upgrade to v1.40.0.7775 but has only manifested itself on one server.

All 3 of my servers have identical settings. Nothing was changed.

I have even experimented with copying a file with a problem to the other servers. They always play fine on the other 2.

Bandwidth speeds aren’t an issue as one is on my home network, a remote one is on a 1gbps up/down network and the one with the issue is on a 10gbps network.

There’s only one other user of my servers and they experience the exact same issues since the update to v1.40.

No matter what settings are used anything with a bitrate over 10mbps gets transcoded now.

The issue remains too regardless of device being used to stream to indicating imho that it for sure is a server issue.

4

Yea i have the same - tried everything! Big spike on media start , causing buffering remotely. Also PLEX web interface needs continual refreshing - especially the dashboard

5

Same here, i upgraded to 1.40 and it worked for a week or so and then boom 1-2Mbps upload only even though the server has 1000/1000 speeds, i have tried updating to 1.40.2 and same issue, i have a post on here and they said it was a DNS issue, i resolved the DNS issue and still the same, most likely a bug with PMS sadly.

6

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