Could comcast be throttling the bandwidth somehow? They could be purposely targeting the Sky Angel IP in the case of this customer. Just a thought?
IPTV Buffering problems
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Could comcast be throttling the bandwidth somehow? They could be purposely targeting the Sky Angel IP in the case of this customer. Just a thought?
bufferfest
We had complete bufferfest last night.
We have plenty of bandwith, and had the computer off. It didn't seem to matter what channel we went to, we couldn't even watch it because the buffering just went on and on.
We understand we are dealing with new techinology, and it doesn't happen all that much to us, but man when it does it is really annoying. The programming they offer is great, but sometimes I am not sure of the point in paying for service I can not even watch.
Just had to vent.
We are waiting and watching while our contract with them runs its course. If it doesn't get much better, I think we are going to take a second look at glorystar. Glorystar seems to have only gotten better and better.
We had complete bufferfest last night.
We have plenty of bandwith, and had the computer off. It didn't seem to matter what channel we went to, we couldn't even watch it because the buffering just went on and on.We understand we are dealing with new techinology, and it doesn't happen all that much to us, but man when it does it is really annoying. The programming they offer is great, but sometimes I am not sure of the point in paying for service I can not even watch.
Just had to vent.
We are waiting and watching while our contract with them runs its course. If it doesn't get much better, I think we are going to take a second look at glorystar. Glorystar seems to have only gotten better and better.
We had complete bufferfest last night.
We understand we are dealing with new techinology, and it doesn't happen all that much to us, but man when it does it is really annoying. The programming they offer is great, but sometimes I am not sure of the point in paying for service I can not even watch.
Just had to vent.
We are waiting and watching while our contract with them runs its course. If it doesn't get much better, I think we are going to take a second look at glorystar. Glorystar seems to have only gotten better and better.
I don't have the buffering problem and I've had the IPTV service since its beginning. Please don't blame Sky Angel or Neulion for a problem that isn't theirs. What is your STB speed test results?
Jeff
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I recently received an email from Comcast that stated that their maximum AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) is 250 GB (Gigabytes) per month, this is at least on our system. Remember that 8 bits make one byte. I have been told by a reliable source that the IPTV box left on a channel 10 hours a day for 30 days would use 119 Gigabytes. My math came to about 125 GB, but that was with a constant 928 kb/s, but that must not be the case in actual use?
Jeff
Please don't blame me for something when the problem isn't on our end! We have way more than enough bandwidth, that is not the problem. But, if you want to make an assumption that we don't or blame us as subscribers, have at it.
Then why does mine work?
Can you attach a photo of your STB speed test on this site?
Jeff
You may be over simplifying things. You may live in a different area of the country and therefore you are on a totally different server than another user that is having problems. Go to the main menu, then My Account, then Customer Support and look at the first letter in the lower left corner. It tells you which of three server locations you are on. It also matters what channels you are watching and at what times. Myself and others called during the big nights of the Republican and Democratic conventions and the Sky Angel support personnel themselves admitted that they were having problems with the Fox News channel.
I'm on the New York server; I understand the other two are in Dallas and San Jose. I have had buffering on Fox News, but it's been very few and far between, in fact Fox News was on for several hours yesterday evening with no buffering whatsoever. I did have one evening a couple of months ago when I couldn't connect at all; the problem was corrected the next day. My experience with Sky Angel IPTV has been very positive as well as with my ISP (Comcast) so maybe I should count my blessings.
Have you been able to view my digital photo attachment from yesterday evening? Click on the thumbnail to view a larger image. I would like to view the results from other forum members. Maybe Neulion needs to add additional servers and more locations?
Jeff
The below image is from the bandwidth monitor in my router. The first blue hump is the one minute long speed test initiated from the SA box. The second shorter spike is from the Dallas Speedtest.net server (since my SA box is using a Dallas server) initiated from a computer.
You can see that my internet connection bandwidth is much greater than the maximum that SA uses and the amount used in the SA speed test is much higher than what a streamed SA IPTV channel requires.
My SA box speed test looks very similar to the way yours looks but I don't have a digital camera handy. Test Results 2.99 Mbps
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Did anyone have any buffering problems with Fox News on election night? I typically don't have any problems with buffering on Fox News but it was so bad on election night that I had to switch to the Fox Business News channel which surprisingly worked better. My first thought was that there was probably heavy internet usage that night nationwide because of the election and so maybe it was just normal internet congestion. I haven't had any problems with buffering since then. But that also makes me wonder that if there is ever another national disaster or emergency, that the same thing could happen and then I wouldn't be able to find out what's going on at least from the Fox News perspective. Just curious if other people experienced the same thing.
We had problems here too. Ended up watching the F0X coverage on the local OTA affiliate (which we just have been able to receive since getting the DTV conversion box), which wasn't the same as on FNC. Usually don't have problems either.
good news
Well.... I think we got things fixed. I spent an hour and half on the phone with a very helpful man from tech. support. He went over everything, and even stated to us that the problem was not on our end. We live in extreme northern Wisconsin (by Lake Superior) and they had told us over and over that we should be on the New York server, which is what we were on. After checking everything else, the gentleman I spoke with said, "Well I suppose it would not hurt to try switching you to the Dallas server." For some reason, this was it. This was a week and half ago and it has not buffered even once.
I'm not sure why this is, in fact they are not sure why this is, but a different server was the ticket for us. I hope it stays this way, because now that we can actually watch and listen it is great. We even bought an FM transformer to be able to listen to Christian radio throughout our home. (Got the idea from this forum). It is truly a blessing to us.
All I can figure, is that where we live something does not make it from New York. Maybe they need another server in the north central U.S. But finally, Sky Angel has lived up to what we hoped it what be!
Well.... I think we got things fixed. I spent an hour and half on the phone with a very helpful man from tech. support. He went over everything, and even stated to us that the problem was not on our end. We live in extreme northern Wisconsin (by Lake Superior) and they had told us over and over that we should be on the New York server, which is what we were on. After checking everything else, the gentleman I spoke with said, "Well I suppose it would not hurt to try switching you to the Dallas server." For some reason, this was it. This was a week and half ago and it has not buffered even once.
I'm not sure why this is, in fact they are not sure why this is, but a different server was the ticket for us. I hope it stays this way, because now that we can actually watch and listen it is great. We even bought an FM transformer to be able to listen to Christian radio throughout our home. (Got the idea from this forum). It is truly a blessing to us.
All I can figure, is that where we live something does not make it from New York. Maybe they need another server in the north central U.S. But finally, Sky Angel has lived up to what we hoped it what be!
Can I get some information from folks
I too have had trouble with Buffering problems.
The last post made we think that even in Virginia - Dallas might be better then New York.
Here is what I found.
If I do an NSLOOKUP of www.iskyangel.com I get the following.
C:\>nslookup
Default Server: cns.manassaspr.va.dc02.comcast.net
Address: 68.87.73.242
> www.iskyangel.com
Server: cns.manassaspr.va.dc02.comcast.net
Address: 68.87.73.242
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: iskyangel.com
Address: 208.78.8.12
Aliases: www.iskyangel.com
Then when I do a TRACERT to 208.78.8.12 I find that New York server is 12 hops away. (All hops pretty fast but - - I still get buffering - - Mostly Fox News)
Could someone who is on Dallas or the other server drop out to DOS and run NSLOOKUP against www.iskyangel.com and tell me the IP address?
I too have had trouble with Buffering problems.
The last post made we think that even in Virginia - Dallas might be better then New York.
Here is what I found.
If I do an NSLOOKUP of www.iskyangel.com I get the following.
C:\>nslookup
Default Server: cns.manassaspr.va.dc02.comcast.net
Address: 68.87.73.242
> www.iskyangel.com
Server: cns.manassaspr.va.dc02.comcast.net
Address: 68.87.73.242
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: iskyangel.com
Address: 208.78.8.12
Aliases: www.iskyangel.com
Then when I do a TRACERT to 208.78.8.12 I find that New York server is 12 hops away. (All hops pretty fast but - - I still get buffering - - Mostly Fox News)
Could someone who is on Dallas or the other server drop out to DOS and run NSLOOKUP against www.iskyangel.com and tell me the IP address?
Back to basics...
BrnAgn93,
How many times have you run this test? Is this a consistent result? It's unlikely that your cable company would build bandwidth throttling rules for individual IP addresses or even entire subnets. (ie. the SkyAngel servers.) It's more popular to throttle individual port ranges. (This is done in many instances with P2P sharing protocols.) Even then, I find this to be an unlikely issue.
There's a number of items about your setup that concerns me. First of all, your bandwidth from the cable company. Yes, 2Mb technically meets your bandwidth requirement, but when it comes to what we call "real time" services, it's hardly a good idea to go with bare minimum. But you said here that you got over 5 megs. What is your average result? What's unfortunate for these types of scenarios is that cable connections can be so "up and down". Meaning that sometimes you'll get your full speed and other times, you'll get your ".5" you mentioned earlier. Cable is especially bad because your connections are "shared" with the people around you. On some old cable networks (back when 1.5Mb was very fast) you could often see your neighbor's PC in your Network Neighborhood pannel.
Second, VoIP is typically associated with QoS issues that could be causing additional headache with your video service. Normally I would tell you to just shutdown your VoIP for a few minutes and test again, but, well, it's built into your router. I'd like to find a way to take that router out of the equation and test again. (I'll mention this again in a few seconds...)
Lastly, you're using 802.11 to connect your STB to the internet. I love wireless. Really. My laptop is my life, but it does come with certain restirctions and problems. And unless you have a several thousand dollar spectrum analyzer, you have no definative way to test your environment for interference. (Or just all-in-all crappy signal.)
Here's my recomendation: Unplug your router from your cable modem. Bring your SkyAngel box to your cable modem, and plug into it using the ethernet cable. The point here is to completely bypass your Vonage gear AND wireless Network. Obviously, this will break your phone service and Internet on your computers. When you turn the STB back on, MAKE SURE that you are not still using the wireless connection on accident! (If you are, and your router is unplugged from the cable modem, it will stop working completely.)
If this works, we can go from here. Run your speed tests on the SkyAngel box while it is plugged in like this. See what is different about your results. It may give us something to work with... it may not.
You might try rectifying the issue of varrying bandwidth from your cable company. That's something you'll have to get a feel for on your own. I don't have enough information about your Internet performance at this point to make that call. Bandwidth issues can easily be caused by a bad cable or similar issues with your service. (If you ever had HD service from your cable company that seemed to crap out a lot, this is a giant red flag of just that.)
Anyway, my thing is networking, not really tv. I hope this helps. Keep us updated.
--
Steve
BrnAgn93,
How many times have you run this test? Is this a consistent result? It's unlikely that your cable company would build bandwidth throttling rules for individual IP addresses or even entire subnets. (ie. the SkyAngel servers.) It's more popular to throttle individual port ranges. (This is done in many instances with P2P sharing protocols.) Even then, I find this to be an unlikely issue.
There's a number of items about your setup that concerns me. First of all, your bandwidth from the cable company. Yes, 2Mb technically meets your bandwidth requirement, but when it comes to what we call "real time" services, it's hardly a good idea to go with bare minimum. But you said here that you got over 5 megs. What is your average result? What's unfortunate for these types of scenarios is that cable connections can be so "up and down". Meaning that sometimes you'll get your full speed and other times, you'll get your ".5" you mentioned earlier. Cable is especially bad because your connections are "shared" with the people around you. On some old cable networks (back when 1.5Mb was very fast) you could often see your neighbor's PC in your Network Neighborhood pannel.
Second, VoIP is typically associated with QoS issues that could be causing additional headache with your video service. Normally I would tell you to just shutdown your VoIP for a few minutes and test again, but, well, it's built into your router. I'd like to find a way to take that router out of the equation and test again. (I'll mention this again in a few seconds...)
Lastly, you're using 802.11 to connect your STB to the internet. I love wireless. Really. My laptop is my life, but it does come with certain restirctions and problems. And unless you have a several thousand dollar spectrum analyzer, you have no definative way to test your environment for interference. (Or just all-in-all crappy signal.)
Here's my recomendation: Unplug your router from your cable modem. Bring your SkyAngel box to your cable modem, and plug into it using the ethernet cable. The point here is to completely bypass your Vonage gear AND wireless Network. Obviously, this will break your phone service and Internet on your computers. When you turn the STB back on, MAKE SURE that you are not still using the wireless connection on accident! (If you are, and your router is unplugged from the cable modem, it will stop working completely.)
If this works, we can go from here. Run your speed tests on the SkyAngel box while it is plugged in like this. See what is different about your results. It may give us something to work with... it may not.
You might try rectifying the issue of varrying bandwidth from your cable company. That's something you'll have to get a feel for on your own. I don't have enough information about your Internet performance at this point to make that call. Bandwidth issues can easily be caused by a bad cable or similar issues with your service. (If you ever had HD service from your cable company that seemed to crap out a lot, this is a giant red flag of just that.)
Anyway, my thing is networking, not really tv. I hope this helps. Keep us updated.
--
Steve
I didn't pay close attention ( I was doing something else with Fox on) but I know that it buffered between 6-12 times. Not real bad. Not real great.
