Starting a stream causes Ethernet adapter to flutter up/down status

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gogurtsonline

New Member
So recently my streams have been suffering due to framedrops reaching in the 10-15% average range, which is pretty unheard of because I have gigabit up and down. I have an ASUS RT-AX58U router running asuswrt-merlin. When investigated further, it appears that when I go live, my stream will drop frames due to a loss of connection. If I open my network adapters menu in the control panel, I can see my Ethernet adapter flipping from an "Unplugged" status to "Enabled", at a random interval. This ONLY happens when streaming. This does not impact any other devices on the network. I have verified that this problem is isolated to my computer, and not a router issue, as I can test the stream and watch my traffic graph on the router and see the connection dips. I also double checked this by running a continuous ping to my default gateways address, which does show packet loss when I start a stream and the connection flutters. Another thing I have noticed is that after a connection failure, OBS will indicate my bitrate nearly double of what it's set at (6,000 is where it should be and 12k is what I'm seeing it spike to sometimes). I have updated my drivers, updated my graphics drivers, reinstalled OBS, changed which port I'm plugged into on the router, rebooted the router, turned QoS on, turned QoS off, etc etc. I've turned off QoS Packet Scheduler in the Ethernet adapters properties, as well as Flow Control and Large Send Offload. I'm stumped and I can't seem to find anyone else that has a similar issue.

Here is an image of the network graph. The light blue indicates upload speeds. The duration of this test was about 5 mins:

network graph.JPG
 
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gogurtsonline

New Member
Did a little bit more troubleshooting this morning. I've determined that I can set my bitrate to 4625 kbps max before it starts causing disconnects and degraded quality. Anything over that immediately drops my internet and repeatedly disconnects with the same behavior described above. I just want to be able to stream at the full potential quality, given I have a pretty decent computer and network connection.
 
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R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
Try forcing a 10 or 100mbps link speed, if that works then you have a physical layer issue (cable, hardware). Flapping ethernet links are almost always cable or hardware related and not affected by software from my experience.
 
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gogurtsonline

New Member
R1CH said:
Try forcing a 10 or 100mbps link speed, if that works then you have a physical layer issue (cable, hardware). Flapping ethernet links are almost always cable or hardware related and not affected by software from my experience.
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I didn't think to try this, thank you. When set to 100mbps full duplex, issue completely disappears. Only when on Auto or 1Gbps Full Duplex does this occur. I'm thinking this might be due to the switch I have between my computer and the router. I'll have to play around with getting a direct line to my router to see if I can narrow down whether it's a cable somewhere or if the switch needs to be replaced.
 
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gogurtsonline

New Member
bh56 said:
How did you determine it was your switch was the issue?
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I tested my stream with a direct connection to my router without the switch in between and it worked fine. It was only when connected to that switch that the issue occurred. I’ve since replaced the switch and had no issues. I don’t know exactly the cause of the issue but it was old hardware to begin with.
 
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