RTMPS or HLS

[ehcah74]

Please delete if this is not posted in the correct place.

A few weeks back, I started running into streaming issues at a few arenas in our area, where I had no issues previously. These technically fall under a different municipality than our home arena which has remained rock solid. Different IT groups managing them.

Speedtests at these arenas produced 100MB + Up and Down. Bandwith is not the issue. Earlier in the season, I was able to stream at these arenas and nothing in my config has changed. It works perfectly elsewhere.

I can open YouTutbe and watch videos. I can I even use my camera as a live webcam. It's the combination of OBS and YouTube that causes the issue. I stream to YouTube using an RTMPS key. I don't fully understand RTMP vs HLS, but read that one is TCP and the other HTTP. Is this likely a protocol issue?

I've been to arena's where Facebook and YouTube are blocked. But here, both still work. Would moving to HLS produce a change or likely give me other headaches I'm not yet aware of? Or am I looking in the wrong direction for troubleshooting?

Thank you in advance for any feedback!

 

[Tomasz Góral]

What is arena ?
Http protocol is still tcp.
Basic protocol is tcp and udp, level higher is http.

 

[ehcah74]

Arena - Hockey Rink. I'm trying to determine why I'm no able to stream through OBS in a few facilities with lots of bandwith available and youtube does not appear to be blocked.

 

[Tomasz Góral]

How you check network cennection, maybe is something wrong.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Different IT groups managing them.

And probably different firewalls, routers, possibly ISP, etc. .. all important factors

I can open YouTutbe and watch videos.

not really relevant other than to indicate Internet connection exists. But downloading a video on one protocol says NOTHING about your ability to upload using a different protocol

I can I even use my camera as a live webcam. It's the combination of OBS and YouTube that causes the issue. I stream to YouTube using an RTMPS key. I don't fully understand RTMP vs HLS, but read that one is TCP and the other HTTP. Is this likely a protocol issue?

Yes, HIGHLY likely a protocol (and/or port) issue
When using OBS, typically (default) you are using streaming protocol (used to be RTMP, then RTMPS, or Google's Live Streaming API article indicates you could also use HLS or DASH, both better for 4K). I'm guessing you are using RTMPS. Presuming encrypting you live stream isn't important, have you tried configuring for RTMP, so that security configuration at these arenas doesn't block your traffic.
Have you checked with other IT team to see if they updated their network config (plenty of good reason to do this) and see if they happen to be blocking outbound RTMP(s) [as well as probably a lot of other outbound traffic/protocols, etc]?

When using live webcam, you are using browser and HTTP(s). HTTP can be over TCP or UDP... don't get caught up in that aspect of network traffic ... hopefully. HLS = HTTP Live Streaming. So, decent chance if RTMP is blocked, you could use HLS instead, BUT (this is NOT my area, never looked into before, actually) though looks like that means some Advanced/Custom settings and tweaks to OBS to get to work???

I've been to arena's where Facebook and YouTube are blocked. But here, both still work.

Again, don't confuse download vs upload traffic, and different protocols. Sorry - no easy button, these technical differences matter.

Would moving to HLS produce a change or likely give me other headaches I'm not yet aware of? Or am I looking in the wrong direction for troubleshooting?

My suggestion - get in contact with the other municipality IT team overseeing firewall/network security at those arenas. And ask if
1. livestreaming is specifically disallowed?

- the live webcam working would imply they aren't monitoring by destination and bandwidth, or even live webcam could be blocked.​

- but another option is they intend to block outbound streaming traffic, but the live webcam (likely using HLS) is too much trouble for them (at the moment) to block​

2. if they are ok with livestreaming, ask about protocols allowed

- RTMP(s) being blocked may be an accident/unintentional, and can be 'fixed' [could be opening protocol, or destination, or ??]​

- or they may have a recommendation on settings. ports/protocols, WiFi SSID to connect to, etc. LOTS of possibilities​

- or they may consider your use case unsupported, and offer no assistance whatsoever [ in which case, someone local to that town going to their town council {or whatever} may get further.​

*IF* you don't get assistance, my guess would be that the HLS is likely to be your best route to test, either that or a re-streaming service than can ingest RTMP traffic via destination port 443??

 

[ehcah74]

@Lawrence_SoCal Thank you very much for the detailed response. I am not super network technical. But, been around long enough to suspect this was something port related. Especially where all things being equal, my unchanged setup works in 7 of 9 arenas we play and they worked in these, last season. The other 2 being part of this same municipality. I've reached out to the city's IT department. I'm guessing High School Hockey streaming won't be a big priority for them, but who knows? I'm going to try HLS this week at our home arena and cross my fingers the experience is transparent with the exception of a youtube key change.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Be aware that port does NOT = protocol.
Yes, there are common protocols that used specific ports (typically). but that is by convention, not requirement. Pretty much you can run any protocol on any port (assuming you can configure/define both sender and receiver)...
just semantics.. but avoiding talking about port and protocol as synonymous when talking to IT people
poor analogy: protocol = language, port = phone #

Good luck