Streaming video at night, is it me?

[Carnagerover]

Hi all,

I use have Sky unlimited broadband and my download speed is 1.1MBps - 8.8Mbps, however I'm having some streaming problems. When I watch Sky Go at night mostly with football on the Xbox 360 I get various picture quality from good to terrible, yesterday I signed up for Netflix and in the day HD streaming was working however last night it wasn't able to maintain HD and was fluctuating. I realise that performance degrades when alot of users are online at peak hours but here is why I don't think it is me.

I have a Asus N56U router which is just about as fast as it gets that I use with sky, it's a great router and all my devices including my 360 have full wireless signals. When I wasn't able to stream at HD speed last night I set a download going on my PC which is also wireless and my speed was maintained at 1.1MBps and I also tested my ping which was 29ms which is what it normally is. Does that rule me out or is there something I am missing?

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

Don't stream/game over WiFi - you're asking for trouble. Use Ethernet whenever possible as anything can affect WiFi and it will always be out of your control

[Carnagerover]

Don't stream/game over WiFi - you're asking for trouble. Use Ethernet whenever possible as anything can affect WiFi and it will always be out of your control

I know what your saying but both my PC and 360 are in my bedroom where Ethernet is not possible.

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

Might be worth changing WiFi channel and see if that helps. Download InSSIDer and let that have a look:

Download inSSIDer and Discover the Wi-Fi Networks Around You | | MetaGeekMetaGeek

[timc]

I know what your saying but both my PC and 360 are in my bedroom where Ethernet is not possible.

Could be worth looking into HomePlugs , giving you ethernet over the mains. Works very well indeed.

[dms05]

True HD streaming requires a bandwidth of over 2 MB/sec so at 1 MB/sec you are only in the SD streaming range. Are you really achieving a range of 1 - 8 MB/sec? That seems so variable that it might be worth looking at your set up. Have you tried testing your line stats from the master socket http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/view-routerstats.html Might be worth posting the results and seeing if anyone can help. Homeplugs could provide a more reliable connection but suffer the same loss of speed as WiFi does.

[Carnagerover]

Thanks for the replies,

I will look into InSSIDer and see if I am on the best channel, however I can stream full BD rips from my wifi PC to my boxee box no problem, when I transfer films from my wifi PC to my wired NAS drive I get just under 8MBps so I don't think the problem lies with my wifi, the Asus N56U has great wifi.

I am trying to stream Netflix HD content which only requires 5Mbps which is 0.6MBs. I will plug the 360 into the router direct and see if that changes anything to rule out the wifi.

I ran a speedtest;



I have a filtered faceplate on my phoneline and my 1.1MBps linerate is as good as it gets and still performs 100% stable, never drops the line.

I also moved the wireless channel as there were others using 1 like myself.

[Carnagerover]

Last night my streaming was better worked great in HD till around 11pm then started to lose the HD ability. I noticed that sky were upgrading there bandwidth by adding fibre in there backbone or some other such suchness so that would be ideal if that means you don't lose speed at peak times.

It's still weird though that I can hold 1.1MBs at peak times but my streaming ability weakens at night which makes me think that it might still not actually be me.