I’ve set my “Limit remote stream bitrate” feature to 3Mbs (720). However, with Plex’s new Dashboard feature I can see in real time what the bandwidth use is and based on these metrics, my streaming limitation is being exceeded. I can see at times with just 1 user streaming remotely, they are way over 6Mbs or higher when they shouldn’t be able to exceed 3Mbs if I understand the feature correctly.
I’ve tried resetting this a few times but no matter what I do, remote streamers can stream beyond the set cap.
I would guess that those peaks are just that - peaks. The overall average bitrate is more than likely right where you set it. A video file rarely, if ever has a constant bitrate, and depending on the scene and amount of action in that scene could be higher or lower. In your screen shot you see it jump up, and drop right down to nothing.
When the new dashboard came out I was fascinated with the streaming bitrate for a time. I noticed that my daughters Android was taking gulps at 20Mbps or more when the video first started for 10 or 15 seconds, even though the video’s average bitrate was around 3Mbps. Dumping into a buffer on the device I imagine. Later on, it chugged along way lower than the average bitrate of the video, with the occasional spike now and then to grab more data.
I guess so, I’ve let it stream for awhile and when it regularly spikes significantly higher, and then dips to still over 3Mbs, I don’t get the impression that the setting is even working.
Also keep in the mind that the setting sets the output bitrate of the stream, not the actual throughput through your network or the internet. So it’s possible the stream is 3 Mbps, but your network/internet is transmitting it faster in bursts.
Don’t know if this helps the OP, but I’m pretty sure this is the case. Had someone the other day watching a short cartoon, and noticed it was super spiking. I worried that another user wouldn’t be able to squeeze in, when sure enough, another one showed up. Looked like Plex was load balancing both streams just fine. The line flattened out quite a bit.
I was today years old when I learned that the setting tied to the file average, and not what was actually going to happen.
You must know that Plex is not streaming the file with a constant, contiguous datastream.
That’d produce a flat line in the graph, but that’s not how it works.
The transcoder is chopping the file into small chunks, which are transferred over to the client one by one - as fast as the network connection between server and client allows it.
Once the client has filled its receive buffer, it will not request more chunks for a while. Only after the chunks in the buffer have been played it will go and request an additional chunk.
This is the reason why you’ll often see a succession of bandwidth spikes instead of a flat line.
This is perfectly normal.
You must know that Plex is not streaming the file with a constant, contiguous datastream.
That’d produce a flat line in the graph, but that’s not how it works.
The transcoder is chopping the file into small chunks, which are transferred over to the client one by one - as fast as the network connection between server and client allows it.
Once the client has filled its receive buffer, it will not request more chunks for a while. Only after the chunks in the buffer have been played it will go and request an additional chunk.
This is the reason why you’ll often see a succession of bandwidth spikes instead of a flat line.
This is perfectly normal.
Thanks for this and all the other helping provide info. My thought was that I would see a hard cap at 3Mbs and it wouldn’t go over but yes the sending format here makes sense.
