I have a server on a Synology 1019+, multiple local players, everything is perfect. I have three remote users, two local to me, one overseas. The two locals are on a Roku and a PS3, both play everything to my max setting of 20Mbps 1080 no problem. The overseas client is on a Shield Pro and can only do 8Mbps720 without constant buffering. I’ve verified his internet speed is many times needed, no network issues, all settings are correct (same as mine here locally on my Shield Pro). What should I be looking at so he can get better results?
When a stream is passed through the internet there are many many choke points where the stream can get slowed down and that makes local internet speed tests much less helpful that what the people that write them would want you to think.
I have a friend in the North of Italy (And I am in the SE USA) and my speed test maxes out at about 250 mbs and hers is over 1000 but the best speed, so far, we have managed to attain is about 15 mbs and usually much less.
8 mbs is a bit low but there could be a relay that is delaying the stream. I once fixed a similar problem by using a VPN. Using that forced a different route to be used and we went from only having about 6 mbs to upwards of 60. I have seen programs that can watch a stream and report where any bottle necks are. But fixing them are a different matter.
I fixed another problem like yours by simply changing my DNS to Google’s 8.8.8.8 it improved my speed by almost a factor of 10 and really all the new DNS does is change the route chosen.
Streaming on the internet involves a LOT more than your local internet connection or the internet on the other end.
Very good point about choke points - I’ll have him try a different DNS server and see if it helps. Thanks!
Update - changing the dns to Google didn’t totally correct it, he still can’t match the local users. However it did make enough of a difference so he now gets 1080p which is at least good enough!
Unfortunately this will likely highly depend on a few factors that outside of your and your users control and it may still dip in and out of working, there’s a bunch of contributing factors but it is indeed a fatal flaw within plex itself and is hopefully something the plex team identify and fix, especially since I’ve seen an influx of these related posts recently.
You can always trace these issues out either simply observing the debugger in chrome/firefox playing from the web-client or using wireshark on both networks and seeing essentially a ‘wait queue’ build up that forces minor moments of what looks like buffering, but is realistically just the client attempting to play content before it has enough content to play due to the server waiting for an ACK response from the client before sending more data! which has various solutions, almost none of which are applicable to end-users (outside of potentially heavily modifying tcp stack behaviour, which may be even less fruitful on a windows desktop opposed to linux)
TL;DR : plex is running outdated methods to stream video and in some scenarios this leads to catestrophic failure. So, join hands and we can all pray the plex devs see these topics and bring the platform into modern standards fully.
Well that proved to be coincidence. Today, it was so bad he could only muster a 2 connection in SD. Guess it’s just out of our control.
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