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N66U slow online video streaming

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JonDenver

New Around Here
I’m having surprising results when streaming online video services using my N66U router. I’m somewhat comfortable with computers, but I’m not a networking expert. All values reported below are Mbps, not MB/s.

I have a CenturyLink 40/20 connection. The C2000A modem is in transparent bridge mode and the N66U does all of the routing. I have the 5Ghz channel disabled. I can verify my 40/20 connection using a wired computer on speedtest.net, uploading/downloading via Dropbox, and uploading/downloading via Google Drive. No problems there, everything looks good +/-10%.

First question:
When streaming video to a wired computer from Netflix, the bitrate is ~9.5Mbps. When streaming HD from YouTube the bitrate is ~12Mbps. These values are pulled from the router’s traffic monitor. I believe Netflix has a 25Mbps steaming tier, why is my steaming only ~9.5Mbps? Is this Netflix throttling, CenturyLink throttling, backbone congestion? Is there anything I can do to improve this and make better use of the 40/20 connection?

Second question:
When streaming video to a wireless device from Netflix or YouTube the bitrate is ~2.5Mbps. This was tested with nearly identical results using a Chromecast, phone, and laptop. I can transfer large files from my phone (wireless) to a computer (wired) directly at ~88Mbps, so the wifi does not seem to be the bottleneck. Running speedtest.net from any of these wireles devices shows roughly 22/20. If the wifi can transfer at 88Mbps, why does speedtest.net show a reduced internet speed, and why is the streaming video bitrate reduced to ~2.5Mbps over wireless?

Ideally I’d like to bump up the streaming bitrate to make better use of our 40/20 connection and make the wireless results more closely match the wired results. Is there something I can optimize in the router, or is this behavior to be expected?

Thanks in advance for any help,

--Jon
 
Last edited:
Have a look here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/183586/ask...isp-is-throttling-netflix/?PageSpeed=noscript

Keep in mind that a wired connection to the router is more exclusive then the wireless connection which is shared.
To exclude wireless issues at your end it is good, as you did, to test with a wired connection to the router.
To test the wireless connection make sure that there are no other clients in your network that are using the same wireless connection (turn thesee OFF).
Anyway wireless 802.11n is not the fastest and best you can get these days.
Did you try the same on 5 GHz?
 
Have a look here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/183586/ask...isp-is-throttling-netflix/?PageSpeed=noscript

Keep in mind that a wired connection to the router is more exclusive then the wireless connection which is shared.
To exclude wireless issues at your end it is good, as you did, to test with a wired connection to the router.
To test the wireless connection make sure that there are no other clients in your network that are using the same wireless connection (turn thesee OFF).
Anyway wireless 802.11n is not the fastest and best you can get these days.
Did you try the same on 5 GHz?

Thanks for the link.

After some additional testing, the original unexpected results can be attributed up to flawed testing methods. Netflix can provide much faster bandwidth depending on the source material. For the following tests I used the Netflix clip “El Fuente: 30 Main.”

Wired PC - 26.4 Mbps
Wired Laptop - 26.4 Mbps
Wireless Laptop (same device as above) - 20.8 Mbps
Wireless Phone - ~19.2 Mbps
Wireless Chromecast - ~8 Mbps

My takeaway from above is that Netflix can stream up to 26.4 sustained. There is a small hit when switching from wired to wireless, but 20.8 is significantly better than the 2.5 Mbps I was observing in my original tests. The Chromecast takes a big hit, but that is likely due to the weak antenna. I’ve ordered an adapter to convert the Chromecast to a wired connection. This will hopefully resolve that issue and bump the Chromecast into the 26.4 range.

I ran a second round of tests on YouTube and observed a maximum sustained rate of ~16 Mbps.

HBO GO was consistent across all devices wired and wireless at a meager ~7 Mbps. We will be switching to HBO NOW soon, and I’m curious if the MLB servers will be any more generous.

My error in the first round of tests is that I was using whatever clip came up first on Netflix/YouTube. I needed to ensure that the clip I was testing with was consistent across devices and was high bandwidth source material. Rookie mistake.

--Jon
 

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