How to improve streaming multiple devices simultaneously

[fonewiz]

I have over the years encouraged my family members to embrace streaming on our Roku devices. We now have 5 in the house and many evenings there are 3 or more going at a time on Netflix, Hulu or HBO Go.

I have two WAN links plugged into my PfSense box, using the 300 meg Timewarner as the primary, I have an 8 meg connection I reserve for work and failover.

Most things are connected wireless included all the Roku boxes, Xboxes, tablets blah blah etc.

In the evening, my Roku in my bedroom becomes useless and keeps cutting off and buffering. Since I have tons of TWC bandwidth, I can't see how even 10 streaming devices could overload it. I have checked and I am actually getting 300 meg, sometimes even a little more, at least according to my speedtest which I know are not always 100% accurate.

So, I thought it may be wireless limitations in the house. I decided to plug my Roku directly into my gigabit switch but the buffering just continues to be an issue so I don't think it's wireless related.

Not really sure where to start trouble shooting this.. I feel like with dual connections and all the TWC bandwidth I have, 3 or 4 streaming devices at once shouldn't even put a dent in my WAN connection. Maybe it's something on my pfSense box, maybe that's the bottle neck. I have gigabit cards in it but, who knows what could be happening.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[netwrks]

You certainly have enough bandwidth. Some thoughts.. Is your router configed for dual WAN failover? If it is, perhaps there is an issue with the config, or the 8mb is being seen as you primary, for some reason. Anything in the pfsense logs?
As a test, if it's possible to do, I would try just using the 300mb plugged in and see what the outcome is.. Are your WAN ports showing up as 1000mb Full Duplex, and are error free?

 

[abailey]

That really sounds like a wireless issue. Are you sure your test Roku was using the wire. My Roku seems to default to wireless even if I plug it in unless I go into the config and tell it to use wired (at least I think it worked that way... it has been a long time since I have had to do any config on my Roku).

 

[fonewiz]

You certainly have enough bandwidth. Some thoughts.. Is your router configed for dual WAN failover? If it is, perhaps there is an issue with the config, or the 8mb is being seen as you primary, for some reason. Anything in the pfsense logs?
As a test, if it's possible to do, I would try just using the 300mb plugged in and see what the outcome is.. Are your WAN ports showing up as 1000mb Full Duplex, and are error free?

It turns out it's only an issue with HBO Go and only in the evening. Same issues are not present with other streaming services such as Netflix.

I am certain I was not using the 8mb connection. I was watching the graphs live and nothing at all was hitting my 8mb.

Anyhow, I also learned that if I use HBO Go on my PC on the same connection/network/router/switch, it doesn't buffer at all, only through the Roku.

Hmmmm.. This new info makes me even more curious.

 

[System Error Message]

You have more than enough bandwidth, when you see it buffering, make sure you're using ethernet and looking at the router's bandwidth utilisation.

Is the roku having trouble with encoding? Sometimes buffering is because of lack of CPU/memory. Some media servers like plex will encode for other devices and you can add channels to it. Some services use better quality streams and even better audio.

 

[sfx2000]

Different clients, even though same service, may go through different CDN's, and also the client/source feedback for rate adaptation may be different...

 

[fonewiz]

Thanks everyone for your help. At this point I have to conclude that Roku + HBO Go + Peak Viewing Hours is just not as smooth of an experience as it once was. In fact, it's pretty much unusable for me during primetime hours 7-11pm central. I don't know the exact hours but that's a rough guess. I have NEVER had this issue until recently but I think it's just a result of more people using HBO Go these days. Unfortunately, I am not sure there is a good solution other than watching HBO Go through my laptop during those hours. It's unfortunate because after staring at the computer all day for work, I really don't want to look at it during my relaxing time when and if I get any

 

[System Error Message]

If the service uses CDN than not having a minimum DNS cache time on router and client is very helpful around peak hours for load balancing.

 

[fonewiz]

Where would I change the DNS cache time min? I just use Google's DNS on the network, I guess my pfSense could be caching DNS but haven't looked. I understand the TTL on domains I host the DNS for but not sure what you are suggesting here.

 

[System Error Message]

Where would I change the DNS cache time min? I just use Google's DNS on the network, I guess my pfSense could be caching DNS but haven't looked. I understand the TTL on domains I host the DNS for but not sure what you are suggesting here.

Yes remove the minimum TTL and cache time if there is one. Google's DNS network is better than ISPs so dont worry about it and they will work with load balancing and CDNs but if your experiencing buffering it could be that the server thinks you're in the wrong region and gives you to a server far away. Overloading can happen but these services if they have the resources and knowledge will notice it and do something about it.

 

[fonewiz]

Interesting, I just realized that my default DNS on the network for DHCP clients is OpenDNS which I use as a basic porn filter for the kids on our home network. I best if I change that to Google DNS my buffering will go away for just the reason you mentioned. I may just be getting a bad result from OpenDNS due to the nature of their DNS services. I was thinking I was using Google DNS because that's what I hard code into my devices. That may help, I think you might have nailed it. Thanks..

 

[sfx2000]

Interesting, I just realized that my default DNS on the network for DHCP clients is OpenDNS which I use as a basic porn filter for the kids on our home network. I best if I change that to Google DNS my buffering will go away for just the reason you mentioned. I may just be getting a bad result from OpenDNS due to the nature of their DNS services. I was thinking I was using Google DNS because that's what I hard code into my devices. That may help, I think you might have nailed it. Thanks..

One of the challenges with third party DNS and CDN's is that you can get a lookup to a CDN node that is not optimal...

One thing to try temporarily - go back to your operators DNS - many have CDN endpoints directly within their core network...

 

[fonewiz]

One of the challenges with third party DNS and CDN's is that you can get a lookup to a CDN node that is not optimal...

One thing to try temporarily - go back to your operators DNS - many have CDN endpoints directly within their core network...

Yep, I am going to give it a try tonight and see what happens. Thanks