Slow connection while oversea streaming

Plex Media Server Remote Access
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1

Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935
Player Version#: Any client

Hello,
I have a problem, that the remote streaming is currently very slow for myself (~6mbit).

I have the following setup:

  • The plex server is located in Europe at my brothers place
  • My family who is using the server is spread all over Europe
  • I am located on the West coast of north America
  • The server is connected to an 60/60mbit connection
  • I have here a 300/300mbit connection

The remote streaming within Europe is working great and without any problems. But if I want to stream a movie using my client in NA from the server located in EU, the connection speed drops to around 3 to 6mbit.

Things I already tested:

  • The movie is a direct stream
  • Speedtests on the server and my client machines are fine
  • Streaming from a friends plex server located in north America works also fine for me
  • Connecting from the client through an http proxy server in Europe to connect to the server fixes the problem and I am able to stream with the full speed
  • On the other hand using a European VPN service does not improve the connection speed at all

Now I am running out of ideas what could cause the problem and what I could do to fix it. Using an http proxy doesn’t sound like a proper long term solution to me, even more since I wouldn’t know how to configure one for the Plex Android app.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

2

Has net neutrality officially been waved goodbye in the US or have those FCC rule changes been put on hold?

You could try to complain to your ISP. That being said… the further down that communication chain the bottleneck is located, the harder it’ll be to bypass / overcome it.

3

I was also thinking about the ISP not treating my traffic correctly. But I am just confused, why using an HTTP proxy works but tunnelling the whole traffic through a VPN doesn’t improve the speed at all.

Do you have any advice how I could set a proxy for the Plex Android app in an Android TV, or is this just not possible?

4

Does this happen when both direct play and transcoding? If it only happens with transcoding, yy guess is it’s a latency issue. Run a trace route between a computer at your location and the server.

2 Likes
5

Yes, it happens no matter if it is transcoding or direct play.
Acutally during direct play, it still transcodes the audio. Could this also cause the latency issue?

6

Then, that’s not direct play. That would be direct stream. Yes, this would also be impacted by latency issues.

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So here is the trace route. Not sure if this a good result or not.
I am just a little bit worried about the “Request timed out”.

Tracing route to x.x.x.x over a maximum of 30 hops

1 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms x.x.x.x
2 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms x.bchsia.telus.net [23.16.48.1]
3 61 ms 61 ms 61 ms 75.154.223.211
4 79 ms 80 ms 80 ms equinix-chicago.bb.ip-plus.net [208.115.136.82]
5 86 ms 86 ms 85 ms x.bb.ip-plus.net [138.x.129.176]
6 163 ms 170 ms 163 ms x.bb.ip-plus.net [138.x.129.168]
7 164 ms 164 ms 163 ms x.bb.ip-plus.net [138.x.130.222]
8 165 ms 165 ms 166 ms x.bb.ip-plus.net [138.x.130.225]
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 172 ms 172 ms 172 ms x.x.x.x

Trace complete.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

8

172ms is not great, but not horrible. This would definitely slow down the speeds, but it’s hard to say exactly how much. Can you get access to the PMS logs showing your connection?

9

Should I enable debugging or verbose logging?

I was also able to find a movie which I am able to play directly.
And thanks a lot for helping me, I really appreciate it.

PlexSpeed
PlexSpeed840Ă—595 532 KB

10

Never verbose unless specifically asked.

That image looks wrong. It shows it’s direct playing an 18 Mbps file but the graph only shows an average of about 1 Mbps. My guess is something is not reporting back to PMS correctly.

11

@anon18523487 I guess I found the reason. I assume it is just the limitation of the TCP, which kind of restricts the possible bandwidth per stream, since every packet has a maximum window size and needs to be acknowledged. If my math is right the maximum possible bandwidth with a latency of 200ms is at 2.6mbit/s.
If I am not wrong, Plex is only using one stream to send the data. This should be fixable, if the Plex server would support transferring the data by using multiple streams.

12

@anon18523487 @tom80H I found a feature request here in there forum which describes the issue in detail. Seems like many people are facing the same issue.
Do you know if anything is scheduled to solve it?

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