Hello everyone,
SOMEONE must be able to help me....................please.......I'm actually begging now. Since June I have been live streaming semi-successfully via Twitch on top of my full time job. In these difficult times, it's helped bring in a bit of money on top of my usual full-time job salary. Being the only source of income in the household due to my partner being a full-time carer for our son who has CP, it is really much needed.
However, come November, the problems started - poor internet service and Intermittent dropped packets meant my streams were becoming unwatchable due to the dropped frames and buffer. I've had maybe 6 or 7 stable streams since then and I'm losing money because of it. I have tried everything, literally everything to fix the problem:
What package are you on? We've been on the M100 package which wasn't a problem. The service was great, I streamed successfully for months. November is when the problems started and have persisted. After about the 500th time of ringing VM I managed to get a loss of service credit to my account and with the last throw of the dice upgraded to the M500 package. I got ONE stable stream on Thursday (21st). It was great, not a single dropped frame. One day it lasted........ streamed on the 23rd. The dropped packets persisted. So the boost in upload didnt help.
Have you checked your hardware? Yes! Repeatedly. In fact, I recently upgraded my Wi-Fi adapter to the TP-LINK - Archer TX3000E PCIe Wireless WiFi 6 and purchased the TP-Link Archer AX50 Dual-Band Gigabit Wi-Fi 6 AX3000 Router to compliment it. Yes, I have tried hardwired also - The problem persists. I have tried the HUB3 in and out of modem mode, wireless and hardwired. no matter what variation I put the network in, the dropped packets persisted.
Have you checked the software? Yes! Repeatedly. I have done a fresh install of the streaming software I use (OBS). Ensured the settings we're correct. No matter what settings I used - the dropped packets persisted. I currently have bandwidth test stream going to test the dropped packets in off-peak real-time......and well at the time of writing: Dropped Frames (Network) 31893 / 121822 (26.2%). This will only get worse the longer I leave it running.
Have you had an engineer out? Yes! An engineer visited our house on the 7th of January. He informed us that the wrong connectors have been installed. However, this doesn't explain why the service would suddenly be so poor after it been absolutely fine. Regardless, the problem persists.
What are your HUB3 stats? I will provide the stats in the next message of this thread. Although the last time I provided this I was informed that I should have FOUR upstream channels when in fact I only have two. I was told it would take an engineer to put this right. When I informed the engineer of this he said two upstream channels should be fine. So which is it? After scouring the many threads on this forum I have only seen people with four upstream channels??
What's your current speed? The current speed at 16:40 is Download - 365Mbps, Upload - 25.48Mbps ------ I mean on a M500 package that's not what I should be getting but whatever.
Have I set up a BQM? Yes. However, if I understand it correctly the BQM isn't telling the full story - I'm seeing no dropped packets. But, I can see the drop in kb/s in real time during my bandwidth streaming tests, which have been running on and off all day - it's relentless. BQM -
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/0c6852701b85e8a389ec2465e244ed5acf781eaf
Over-utilisation? Hmmmm not in my area (Area 22, LS26). Virgin has only been in the area just over a year. And as far I'm aware the M500 package isn't constrained by the traffic management policy which throttles uploads on the other packages during peak hours.
Someone somewhere must know what the issue is. I really don't want to switch but at the moment it's the only option I can see happening.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and any help anyone can provide