Question / Help Dropped Frames since Wednesday 5/13

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Bensam123

Member
Not sure if this is just a local problem for me, but every speedtest I've tested shows my internet connection is working fine. I'm currently unable to stream higher then 1.4Mbps without a lot of dropped frames since last Wed, yesterday. I have a 4Mbps upload and normally stream at 3.1Mbps. Is anyone else having problems with this?

Sometimes my upload will pop up to normal speeds, but then it ratchets back down. It feels a lot like maybe my connection is getting shaped (but it isn't) or there is something hogging all the bandwidth on the way to twitch.
 
Yeah, just asking if anyone else has been experiencing the issue as well as I can't seem to narrow this down.


Hmmm... Rich has a handy bandwidth analysis tool available now (not on the OBS site) and this is what I get.

HIx5FkO.jpg


That's not looking very promising. I'm sure these numbers were quite a bit different a couple days ago.
 
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Networks fluctuate on their throughput and capacity (why it's advised not to exceed 2/3 of your upstream speed, and preferably less than half if playing an online-multiplayer game). Likewise, routing paths may change upstream from your connection (and even upstream from your ISP in some cases).

Speedtest sites are next to worthless for livestreamers, as they generally test file transfer over a set time, while livestreaming relies on minimum constant throughput. Speedtest.net is EXTRA worthless, as it throws away your lowest 30% of returns to help cut down on consumer complaints about getting back slower-than-expected results.

Yep, this looks like a problem with your connection/routing to the Twitch servers. Nothing anyone here can do. Yell at your ISP, or consider getting a paid VPN hosted at a local datacenter who uses a different backbone provider than your ISP does; hopefully it'll short-hop you to the DC, then go out over a connection with better routing. I do this myself when my direct path has issues.
 
I was asking if it was a wide spread issue and may fix itself or if this is something particular to me. I haven't seen any of the other big streamers having issues, but I don't know. I'm currently attempting to contact twitch support, but they're sending generic emails back.

Keep in mind this was all fine up to two days ago.
 
With those returns from TBT, it looks like your connection/route to Twitch is taking a dump. I've had no connectivity issues for weeks, personally. Only issue I've heard of recently was a problem with the chat servers delaying message relays, but that wouldn't touch the ingests or streams.
To answer the question, nope. This isn't happening for everyone. It may fix itself, but wherever the problem is, it doesn't appear to be on Twitch's side in this case.
Check to see if your ISP is shaping your traffic (shaperprobe), but otherwise the only thing it looks like you're going to be able to do is yell at your ISP, pursue the VPN option, or test to several ingests and pick the best one (I do this pretty regularly on a testing account, as TBT/JTVPing have been pretty unreliable at estimating the rate I'm actually going to be able to stream at).

It's always fine until it breaks.
It not being broken two days ago doesn't mean it's not broken now.
Nothing changing on your end does not mean that it will continue to work the same.
Welcome to the wonderful world of networking, peering, and possibly inter-corporate political power-games.
 
Yeah tried Shaperprobe, that's apparently been down since Jan (it no longer works). I was using R1ch's Twitch Bandwidth Test to get those numbers.

I had talked to someone else in chat earlier tonight and they mentioned another streamer had a similar problem so it may not be widespread, but possibly happening to others. I'll have to get in touch with my ISP though.

Yup, I also use JTV ping. It looks perfectly normal and all ingestion servers in the US exhibit this. West coast servers are worse and EU/Asia servers I only have 600Kbps of bandwidth to.

Of course things break. Just setting a precedent that it had worked for quite some time before breaking, so it wasn't something that was misconfigured.
 
Bensam123 said:
Yeah tried Shaperprobe, that's apparently been down since Jan (it no longer works). I was using R1ch's Twitch Bandwidth Test to get those numbers.

I had talked to someone else in chat earlier tonight and they mentioned another streamer had a similar problem so it may not be widespread, but possibly happening to others. I'll have to get in touch with my ISP though.

Yup, I also use JTV ping. It looks perfectly normal and all ingestion servers in the US exhibit this. West coast servers are worse and EU/Asia servers I only have 600Kbps of bandwidth to.

Of course things break. Just setting a precedent that it had worked for quite some time before breaking, so it wasn't something that was misconfigured.
Click to expand...
I know twitch is doing a lower stream delay test with their partners so maybe has something to do with it?
 
dping said:
I know twitch is doing a lower stream delay test with their partners so maybe has something to do with it?
Click to expand...
You have to opt-in for that, or it defaults to the old (current standard) method. It also only was activated today. Given that it's literally every server for him, very few other streamers are having similar issues, and nothing has changed on his end? 99% it's something with his connection/routing, and not being caused by the ingest servers.
 
dping said:
I know twitch is doing a lower stream delay test with their partners so maybe has something to do with it?
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I was thinking... Their doing something with the backend, which is why I was trying to talk to support first before my ISP.

The option itself still isn't available for me even though it was supposed to be activated today.
 
Called my ISP, they did some tests, they said it wasn't on there end... Still trying to talk to Twitch support, so far they haven't been all that helpful. We haven't gotten to actually diagnosing the problem yet.
 
Got a new modem, hooked it up, nothing, messed around with a cable splice, nothing. Randomly was doing some pingtests on pingtest.net and eventually everything started working like magic. I have no idea what happened. I think there was a down router at some place in the network that was detected and it was turned off or something.

Weird thing was I took the same modem over to my friends across town and it worked fine over there, just didn't at home for some reason.

Also some feedback for R1CH if someone could point him at this thread as I did a bit of poking around while my internet was messed up.


As of recently I've had some issues with my internet connection and I found his really helpful bandwidth tester on teamliquid.net. I'm not exactly sure why it's not on the OBS forums and no one talks about it here. It's extremely handy for diagnosing network issues with twitch.

Suggestion for this tiny little program is maybe testing multiple TCP window sizes until it arrives at the one with the least amount of jitter and best RTT. I don't know if that's already what it does, but after playing around with the manual sizes a bit I ended up finding a better one then it was apparently using. Telling someone how to manually set this in OBS would be a good idea too as it seems to make a decent amount of difference when you do do it.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/tech-support/478845-twitchtest-twitch-bandwidth-tester

Also, found on his website he has a custom bit for dealing with streaming and latency via QoS, although it requires a piece of hardware to do it. Although not extremly expensive, it's just a router with a nice piece of firmware attached it. Something similar probably could be pretty easily done with DD-WRT, which should be common place for anyone that streams as it's basically the equivalent of the firmware on $300 routers.

DD-WRT is extremely robust and supports quite a bit of that functionality with a 'normal' install. I haven't actually attempted to do what he was talking about in DD-WRT yet as it seems to work pretty good anyway.

http://r1ch.net/11-video-streaming/4-reduce-gaming-and-streaming-lag-with-a-mikrotik-routerboard

DkC4nTM.jpg
 
Bensam123 said:
Got a new modem, hooked it up, nothing, messed around with a cable splice, nothing. Randomly was doing some pingtests on pingtest.net and eventually everything started working like magic. I have no idea what happened. I think there was a down router at some place in the network that was detected and it was turned off or something.

Weird thing was I took the same modem over to my friends across town and it worked fine over there, just didn't at home for some reason.

Also some feedback for R1CH if someone could point him at this thread as I did a bit of poking around while my internet was messed up.


As of recently I've had some issues with my internet connection and I found his really helpful bandwidth tester on teamliquid.net. I'm not exactly sure why it's not on the OBS forums and no one talks about it here. It's extremely handy for diagnosing network issues with twitch.

Suggestion for this tiny little program is maybe testing multiple TCP window sizes until it arrives at the one with the least amount of jitter and best RTT. I don't know if that's already what it does, but after playing around with the manual sizes a bit I ended up finding a better one then it was apparently using. Telling someone how to manually set this in OBS would be a good idea too as it seems to make a decent amount of difference when you do do it.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/tech-support/478845-twitchtest-twitch-bandwidth-tester

Also, found on his website he has a custom bit for dealing with streaming and latency via QoS, although it requires a piece of hardware to do it. Although not extremly expensive, it's just a router with a nice piece of firmware attached it. Something similar probably could be pretty easily done with DD-WRT, which should be common place for anyone that streams as it's basically the equivalent of the firmware on $300 routers.

DD-WRT is extremely robust and supports quite a bit of that functionality with a 'normal' install. I haven't actually attempted to do what he was talking about in DD-WRT yet as it seems to work pretty good anyway.

http://r1ch.net/11-video-streaming/4-reduce-gaming-and-streaming-lag-with-a-mikrotik-routerboard

DkC4nTM.jpg
Click to expand...

We use that software from R1ch pretty often for people with connection issues. Its just not necessarily in one of the stickies.

As for DDWRT, it can be nice and I've used it in the past
 
Yeah, the date on the post is really old so I haven't checked it recently... When I googled OBS and r1ch bandwidth test I didn't see anything pop up.

Very nice piece of software though, does everything streamers need in a test.
 
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