Time to change internet provider?

russell · Post by **russell** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 12:33

For the last month or so we have been experiencing a lot of buffering in the evenings watching UK TV with Filmon. Filmon say that they are having no problems with their servers and SFR deny that there is anything wrong with their network. Well, they would wouldn't they?

Most of the time I have good connection speed, about 8.5 Mb/S. In the evenings it can drop to about 3 Mb/S which should still be good enough for Filmon HD yet I even get buffering on SD.

I tried sending a "ping" to SFR's server every second and watching the response time. During the day I get a response in 40 to 50 mS. In the evening it is about the same but occasionally comes back in 2000 mS and sometimes times out completely. That delay is almost certain to cause problems with Filmon.

Last night I left my laptop monitoring the network, once every 10 minutes, from about 7 pm to 3 am with the following results:

Speed in kb/S

Packet loss in %

So:
Is anyone else having this problem with SFR?
Any recommendations for a better IP?
I have thought about Free as I have a mobile phone contract with them but do they have their own equipment like the major providers or do they rent time/space on others?
. . . . or should I just watch TV after midnight

Russell

malcolmcooper · Post by **malcolmcooper** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 13:38

What did you use to get those results? It might be interesting to compare.

russell · Post by **russell** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 13:41

malcolmcooper wrote:What did you use to get those results? It might be interesting to compare.

http://download.cnet.com/JDs-Auto-Speed ... 47312.html

Russell.

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 13:52

russell wrote: I have thought about Free as I have a mobile phone contract with them but do they have their own equipment like the major providers or do they rent time/space on others?
. . . . or should I just watch TV after midnight

Russell

As I understand it, free have their own kit in any exchange which is dégroupé. They are certainly not immune from falling speeds at busy times of day. My free line in the P-O is not currently in service, but my sister's line in Paris droops quite noticeably. And there has been controversy on the web about their allegedly inadequate capacity for particular content-providers (eg YouTube). Ideally you would find a near neighbour who is on free and see what they get.

malcolmcooper · Post by **malcolmcooper** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 14:01

Well I got the software (without all of tha add ons) but I don't know how to get the result sets that you did.

russell · Post by **russell** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 15:20

malcolmcooper wrote:Well I got the software (without all of tha add ons) but I don't know how to get the result sets that you did.

After you run it you will get a folder in your "Documents" directory called Speed_Tester. In there there will be a file called Speed_Test.csv. I just opened that in a spreadsheet program (LibreOffice Calc) and extracted and plotted the data I wanted.

Russell.

malcolmcooper · Post by **malcolmcooper** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 15:32

I suppose I'm being a dummy. I've got data but nothing I understand and no graphis.

Nigel · Post by **Nigel** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 17:11

Russell...have you considered sat tv via an alternative satellite to astra

Prosserp · Post by **Prosserp** » Fri 27 Feb 2015 21:32

We changed to sfr about a year ago from orange , we were getting too much buffering with orange ,,, we now get no buffering at all and no break in our programmes at all , we watch filmon all evening from 5pm till 10pm ish
We however do not use a laptop as they are rubbish for using filmon , you wont solve the problem using one , get yourself an apple ipod or apple iphone
Or similar device ... And attch it to your tv ... And watch buffer free

russell · Post by **russell** » Sat 28 Feb 2015 11:25

Prosserp wrote:We changed to sfr about a year ago from orange , we were getting too much buffering with orange ,,, we now get no buffering at all and no break in our programmes at all , we watch filmon all evening from 5pm till 10pm ish
We however do not use a laptop as they are rubbish for using filmon , you wont solve the problem using one , get yourself an apple ipod or apple iphone
Or similar device ... And attch it to your tv ... And watch buffer free

Where are you? It is likely to vary from area to area depending on how congested is the equipment your data is routed through.

I don't have Apple equipment. I can use Android, Windows, and Linux here (Linux being based on Unix like Apple's OSX). I don't think changing to Apple will have much effect with a congested internet connection. It is generally accepted that you need less than 1% packet loss for good quality video streaming and less than 2.5 % for adequate video. With up to 10 % packet loss the video streaming will be poor whatever operating system is used. This is borne out by the fact that I can get perfect HD pictures during the morning when there is very little packet loss in the network but even the SD pictures can sometimes be un-watchable in the evening.

I see from "degrouptest.com" that SFR do not offer the HDTV option here but Orange do. Orange also predict 14.7 Mb/S download speed as opposed to 7 Mb/S for SFR so perhaps here Orange is better.

Russell.

montgolfiere · Post by **montgolfiere** » Sat 28 Feb 2015 13:59

Your Laptop may be 'Rubbish' at 'Streaming Filmon' but i dont think it correct to state 'all Laptops' are rubbish at Streaming Filmon.
My 'run of the mill' Toshiba works well with the Filmon HDi Player and i know of many many people happily streaming their Filmon output to their TV's.
I am actually on a 2.1 mb/s (max) Connection with Alice..aka (Free)

john_d · Post by **john_d** » Sat 28 Feb 2015 17:09

I suspect Prosserp is right. We watch via Filmon through a (non-apple android) tablet and it is dreadful during the course of most evenings, with constant buffering and interruptions. My little Ipod is better but not perfect (and is limited to about an hour since the charger connects through the same socket as the TV connexion). We are with Orange and suspect that all internet providers are much the same - i have little faith in any of them when it comes to customer service. Speedtest regularly gives download speeds of around 8Mbps which should be great, but...

We are based in Argeles and more often than not watch French TV now if we can find anything watchable on - otherwise is the Kindle/book.

russell · Post by **russell** » Sat 28 Feb 2015 18:15

john_d wrote:Speedtest regularly gives download speeds of around 8Mbps which should be great, but...

Yes, should be but it also depends on the data you ask for actually arriving and arriving in the right order. It doesn't matter how fast your connection is if you get a high percentage of lost packets. It takes time to request them to be resent and receive them.

Russell.

montgolfiere · Post by **montgolfiere** » Sat 28 Feb 2015 19:01

Yep... it is notall about speed. the quality of the connection is also important. This does make IPTV very tricky!!! I for one, stopped supplying/ reccomending Subscription IPTV over 12 months ago due to this uncertainty.

Allan · Post by **Allan** » Sun 01 Mar 2015 07:37

Speed and quality often go hand in hand. Packet loss at peak times is a sure sign of a congested network, there just isn't enough capacity in the network for all the traffic to get through.

Too much emphasis is placed on Speedtest, it simply shows the speed at a point in time between you and a defined server on the Internet. If the result is low all the time then you will probably always have problems but a high result is no guarantee that any service will work. It's a bit like thinking that just because road traffic is flowing freely between Perpignan and Narbonne at 2pm on a Sunday that you can get to anywhere in France at any time at the same speed.

Filmon uses several content delivery networks to serve users, between them they have thousands of geographically distributed servers, there is no easy way of telling what bandwidth exists between you and whichever anonymous server they connect you to.

The problem is made even worse because the majority of Internet service providers 'throttle' downloads for heavy users at peak times, so the more you watch, the worse the connection. They normally disguise this limitation as. 'Fair use policy'.

I'm not sure that there is ever going to be a 'best' internet provider as Internet usage and bandwidth is totally dynamic.

russell · Post by **russell** » Sun 01 Mar 2015 12:16

Hi Allan,

If I do "traceroute" and then ping the first IP address that comes up I get high packet loss so I guess that my problem is relatively local. Would you agree?

Russell.

Allan · Post by **Allan** » Sun 01 Mar 2015 13:34

russell wrote:Hi Allan,

If I do "traceroute" and then ping the first IP address that comes up I get high packet loss so I guess that my problem is relatively local. Would you agree?

Russell.

Yes but if it is happening at this time of day then it is unlikely to be congestion. More likely a poor connection between you and the exchange.

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