Streaming slowdowns in the evening

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rhy7s

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#3288817 1-Oct-2024 22:37

MurrayM:

I've tried using a WiFi analyzer app on my phone to pick a channel that has the least amount of competition from my neighbours (my immediate neighbours WiFi signal is actually stronger in my lounge than my own WiFi). That may have made a slight bit of improvement, but not enough to fix the problem.

If picking channels in 2.4GHz, only use 1, 6 & 11 at 20MHz wide and if you talk to your neighbours, get them to do the same. Intermediate channels and 40MHz just leads to lots of retries due to adjacent-channel interference. It's better to share those channels than trying to split the difference. https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/design-dual-band-wifi/

For reliability and reach, you may want to use 20MHz wide channels on the 5GHz SSID as well, and depending on congestion, add another 5GHz AP [edit: hardwired to your router] on another channel to split the devices across more spectrum.

Goosey

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#3288871 2-Oct-2024 06:21

Also try unplugging the PC from the network…

MurrayM

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#3289877 2-Oct-2024 09:01

An update: On Monday night the buffering started again (watching the new series of From on TVNZ+) but a little later this time, 7:50pm instead of the usual 7:30pm. I reset the Chromecast, no difference. I cleared the Chromecast's cache, not sure if this helped but the cache went from 520MB to 29MB. I changed the WiFi band from 2.4GHz to 5GHz and that did make a difference. I was able to watch the remainder of the show without any problems. Tuesday night we watched from about 7pm to 9:30pm without any problems (I assume it's still connected at 5GHz). I'm sure I'd tried changing bands in the past and hadn't seen any difference. We'll leave it like this for a while and see if the problem comes back.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions!

michaelmurfy

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#3289890 2-Oct-2024 09:33

If you haven't done this, have both your 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi networks have the same SSID (Network Name) on your router. There is no need to split these.

That way your Chromecast and other devices will just use whatever is best.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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MurrayM

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#3289902 2-Oct-2024 09:59

michaelmurfy:

If you haven't done this, have both your 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi networks have the same SSID (Network Name) on your router. There is no need to split these.

That way your Chromecast and other devices will just use whatever is best.

Yeah, they have different names. I'll change them as suggested. Although having them separate allows me to easily see which they're connected to, which is handy.

richms

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#3289903 2-Oct-2024 10:02

I have found with the same name it results in clients wanting to use the 2.4GHz because its better, and the AP kicking it off so that it will move to 5GHz endlessly.

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olivernz

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#3289953 2-Oct-2024 11:11

My take is that it's the neighbours. People come home and use their streaming and you may be sharing Wifi channels so your weak connection gets overpowered by other Wifi networks. Debug your Wifi Channels and set them up for your Wifi environment.

noroad

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#3289960 2-Oct-2024 11:22

It's unlikely that the ISP/Chorus is the problem. There is a very significant chance your already identified poor wifi is the cause. Put in a new mesh wifi system (I would recommend TP-Link X series or higher) and there is a 90+% chance the issue will go away.

MurrayM

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#3295788 11-Oct-2024 08:51

Update: So I put in a mesh system, taking advantage of One's SmartWiFi/SuperWiFi offer. Two Deco X50 units. Been running with this for three days and so far haven't had any buffering at all while watching Netflix / TVNZ+ / ThreeNow / etc. WiFi analyser is showing strong signal in the lounge (well, whole house actually) whereas before it was weak. Looks like the problem has been solved, many thanks to all who commented here and gave me ideas.

MichaelNZ

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#3320926 15-Dec-2024 19:45

Dynamic:

I don't have strong knowledge of Chorus network or the networks of ISPs, but bandwidth cost money and must produce income to cover the expense. There must be profit so the ISP is viable as a business. Spare bandwidth costs money but produces no income. If an ISP has enough bandwidth to cover demand 99% of the time:

is that 99% good enough? Are their clients happy enough that they are getting good value for money and are prepared to put up with slowdowns during that 1% of time?
What if that 1% is typically when they want to sit down and stream their favourite show to relax at the end of a long day?
If an ISP buys enough bandwidth to cover demand 99.8% of the time, will consumers pay a premium for that 0.8%
If an ISP buys enough bandwidth to cover demand 100% of the time, will consumers pay an even bigger premium for that?
If an ISP maintains this spare bandwidth, how can they get this message through to enough consumers to pay the premium price to make it profitable for the ISP?
Should the ISP instead do traffic shaping to (as an example) slow down torrent downloads during peak times to allow enough bandwidth for streaming not to be impacted at peak times? Would there be customer backlash for interfering with their customers internet bandwidth with this traffic shaping? Does traffic shaping come at its own cost for equipment?

I work at an ISP doing Systems and Networks. I set it up from scratch so am certainly on top of whats going on. We don't compete in the lowest price category so I can't talk for those players, but we are middle of the road.

So to respond to your questions straight from the horse's mouth:

We do not provision for 99%. International bandwidth is purchased by the Gbps so we always have an excess
We are peered at both NZIX and EdgeIX where we connect with a bunch of companies including Cloudflare, Amazon, Meta (Facebook, etc), Akamai (lots of streaming on their CDN) and importantly Netflix.
We have so much bandwidth on our peering every client could stream 4K video at the same time and it would not be the slightest issue
We don't charge a premium price but some seem to think the fact we are not at the same level as [well known cheap ISP's] constitutes a premium. Having said that we don't get a lot of outwards churn. The benefits of not playing in the cut price sandpit I suppose.
We don't do traffic shaping. There is no reason to and the hardware overhead is more then its worth. The only traffic management in place is port 25 is blocked by default and can be whitelisted on request with a reasonable case.

I hope this helps answer your question.

WFH Linux Systems and Networks Engineer in the Internet industry | Specialising in Mikrotik | APNIC member | Open to job offers | ZL2NET

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