Question / Help Random Ethernet Disconnects while streaming

[CraftyDeluxe]

Hello OBS-Community!

Ive been an OBS-User since i started streaming on twitch and i never had any problems whatsoever (except for lags, dropped frames here and there when there were twitchserver-problems or problems with my provider, which were found out pretty quick).

But now i have a problem which i cant find out and i am in need of a little help here.

It started happening a few days agoand i can reproduce almost every stream. Sometimes - and unfortuantely its totally random - my internet-connection goes offline. It can happen straight away after 30 minutes, sometimes after a couple of hours. I only notice because spotify tells me "Lost internet connection" and i get kicked out of my games (fortnite for instance). The whole time i can speak to my friends in teamspeak, so i get not disconnected from teamspeak. Even windows will tell me my internet is fine. Then all of a sudden my friends will tell me the stream starts lagging till its offline too. I cant visit any websites at all when this happens. OBS wont tell me that i have problems. Everything looks clean. As soon as i press "Stop Streaming" my connection is back online, my games reconnect and so does my spotify. Websurfing is possible then too.

The best part is - it cant be my internet connection because my girlfriend, who sits right next to me, keeps playing with us/talking with us as if nothing is happening. She does not get disconnected. So only my pc is affected. When i play/listen to music etc. while NOT streaming i wont ever get disconnected.

I started playing around with the bitrate and a few settings, but nothing helps... i also cant imagine why my settings should be wrong because i never had problems like this and i started streaming again back in 11/2017. With the same settings till today.

Yesterday i started using StreamlabsOBS to see if it makes any difference - unfortunately i got the same problem occuring twice yesterday.

I thought maybe it has something to do with twitch, because they had lots of problems lately too (bugging dashboards, dropping frames because of bad server connection etc.) but im not quite sure and couldnt find anything on the web.

Please tell me if you need any logfiles and where to find them if you suspect anything - or at least tell me if this problem sounds familiar to you or you know someone who fixed this kind of behavior, because im on my limits now and i just want to stream problemfree again :)

To my internet-connection:
Im using cable no wifi!
Im from germany
200mb downstream
8mb upstream

RIG:
Ryzen 1700 (not OC)
32GB Corsair Vengeance 3000mhz RAM
GeForce GTX 1080
ASUS PRIME B350 Plus Mainboard
250gb SSD Crucial
1 TB HDD
Windows 10 Pro

Currently antivirus software is disabled and so is the firewall. Problem persists.
I usually used 4500 bitrate using the NVENC-codec but now i lowered the bitrate to 3000 and will give it a shot today again.

Thank you all big time for your help in advance!

Regards
CraftyDeluxe

 

[CraftyDeluxe]

Tried streaming today with lowered bitrate, 2 times internet gone. One time streaming like 10 minutes... i surfed in the web while waiting to queue site didnt load - internet breaks. My girlfriend gaming just fine - no problems...
Second Time streaming for like 45 minutes then a friend says dude your stream just hangs - i end my fortnite match - stuck in loading screen internet gone - girlfriends keeps gaming just fine without isses..

So lowering the bitrate didnt do much, like expected. As soon as i pressed "Stop Streaming" internet is back right there...

Any ideas? I might just reinstall windows today...

 

[Harold]

Where's your OBS session log?

 

[CraftyDeluxe]

Sorry - as i was saying im using StreamlabsOBS now. There is a folder in AppData/Roadming/Streamlabs OBS/logs unfortunately its complettely empty. Are the logs elsewhere to find?

Also on a sidenote - i reinstalled my windows today. Tried a little streaming but im dropping frames AF now... my bitrate seems to circle from 1,5 up to 7mb (seeing this in the StreamlabsOBS window). How is this possible, when my bitrate is set to 4000?

Please tell me where to find the logs here i sure will provide them for you.

 

[CraftyDeluxe]

I fixed the unstable bitrate it was the setting "force bitrate limit" which used all my upload. Bitrate stable now, checked with twitch inspector. Unfortunately after an hour of streaming my ethernet is gone, didnt even notice - could play my fortnite match finish after that got logged out no internet connection, spotify also down. Teamspeak still going. Stopped stream - i get logged into fortnite immediately and my spotify is moving on. Im lost...
Windows reinstall didnt work. Maybe its a problem with my ISP i dont know... they are useless potatos if i call them..most unprofessional service ive seen in my whole life.

 

[Harold]

We don't provide support for Streamlabs' version of obs.

 

[navstar]

I realised Obs dosnt like anything running on the same Internet line. For Facebook, just say I have to start the stream press go live and close the browser then obs would work fine . Depending on the hardware on your computer or laptop the ethernet only likes 1 direction of stream . What your doing is sending high quality video to Facebook and then preview ing it on the browser so that strains the cpu to clock at 100% thats why obs and the ethernet are is disconnecting

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

I realised Obs dosnt like anything running on the same Internet line. For Facebook, just say I have to start the stream press go live and close the browser then obs would work fine . Depending on the hardware on your computer or laptop the ethernet only likes 1 direction of stream . What your doing is sending high quality video to Facebook and then preview ing it on the browser so that strains the cpu to clock at 100% thats why obs and the ethernet are is disconnecting

Uh... not exactly, though for super simplistic that is sort of pointed in the right direction... kind of...
OBS, and everything else, doesn't like being asked to send X amount of data over the network and the local computer, and/or the network connection, not being able to provide that. How gracefully a system deals with congestion depends on a LOT of factors/settings

One one PC, I live stream mixing PowerPoint, pre-recorded videos (various formats/resolutions up to 4K) and a USB webcam (switching soon to NDI PTZ camera). My OBS base canvas is 1080p, and I'm re-encoding for 720p stream/30fps using 4500kpbs bitrate (more than needed). I also monitor, via a browser session, the live stream (so downloading recently uploaded video) with no problem at all. MY CPU/GPU are below 10% usage, and I have no issue at all on an Internet circuit with 10Mb/s upstream bandwidth.

For a more technically accurate answer
- OBS doesn't know/care what else is using your local network connection (but your OS does)
- absolutely .... other apps on your computer and other devices on local network (LAN) can impact your access to/usage of Internet (WAN) bandwidth
so have you turned off unnecessary background apps (like cloud drive sync software, and all other sorts of nonsense [Microsoft and 3rd party] that auto-enables itself when installed, which you don't want interfering with your activity/stream). This includes Chat type apps (Zoom, Teams, Skype, WhatsApp, etc) and more
- streaming video is really demanding stuff, so be considerate of your computer. Are you using Task Mgr / Resource Monitor to see overall resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, Network I/O) for approaching or exceeding capacity/capability?
- The 2 most typical causes of such problems are
1. You are overloading your PC, and it is 'choking'. Your logs will explicitly indicate (from what I've seen) whether dropped frames are due to encoder overload (could be caused by lots of things) or the network itself
2. your network connection. If this is the cause - then I'd recommend starting with other devices on network (which is why I put tablets, eReaders, etc in Airplane mode when not in use). Device can do background updates, etc when you aren't expecting it? For example, does you home network have WiFI? if so, are you SURE nothing else is using it (neighbor, etc). Or do you have something like Amazon Ring security cameras uploading video ?
And then there is DSL which will tend to fluctuate more in available bandwidth than cable modem service (states side anyway).. your experience may vary depending on provider. Locally, it wasn't uncommon (non pandemic timeframes) to hear cable internet slowing in afternoon when kids get home from school and start gaming. The Internet is a shared bandwidth environment, similar to a highway.... congestion can and does happen along the way... you usually just don't notice it as most traffic isn't latency/jitter sensitive, and video streaming download playback devices have buffers built into them to deal with that exact problem.

In original posters situation, as girlfriends PC seems fine, most likely it is his PC (or her computer has a slightly different network/NIC config, and is handling congestion better). 8Mb/s upstream could easily be a constraint for 2 sessions of 1080p/30fps gaming (assuming she is laying with you)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

More specifically

I realised Obs dosnt like anything running on the same Internet line.

sharing Internet line is fine. Every company does that every day. Overloading that link is not fine

For Facebook, just say I have to start the stream press go live and close the browser then obs would work fine .

That indicates a computer resource problem with rendering video, not a network problem (as data still being streamed in both directions

Depending on the hardware on your computer or laptop the ethernet only likes 1 direction of stream .

Not true. Ethernet handles data streams equally well in both directions simultaneously. People often forget to calculate TCP reply packets in bandwidth calculations though. Some (especially older) versions of WiFi Access Points are designed to prioritize Sending data (ie to your device, from Internet) in a similar way that most DSL and cable Internet connections have more downstream than upstream bandwidth (as that is what typical, non video conferencing traffic looks like)

What your doing is sending high quality video to Facebook and then preview ing it on the browser so that strains the cpu to clock at 100% thats why obs and the ethernet are is disconnecting

Yes, it is certainly possible than an under-resource computer (CPU, GPU, RAM, disk) will get overloaded and then bad things will happen (slowness, crashes, and other glitches).. all dependent on specific circumstances. On aPC with OBS that is overloaded, yup streaming will suffer

I had a 5yr old gaming laptop that was overloaded trying to do a simple OBS stream (with non-optimized settings). Completely choked... dropped conenction/ended stream altogether. A really powerful engineering class workstation laptop had a brief disconnect every livestream (no noticeable low resource contention) weekly for months... I suspect corporate security software (DLP, etc) was the cause. Why? A brand new computer is doing more (recording stream at higher resolution than I'm streaming at, etc) and it isn't breaking a sweat.