High latency Not a channels problem but hope someone can advise

#1

Hi,

I experience high latency (200-400ms) frequently. Speed is ok (300-400mBit/s). I have a problem when I try to skip ahead or back. It takes FOREVER.
When I have low latency (4-20ms) skip works great.
I have Google wifi and amazon fire TV 4k.
Once, I restarted just the fire stick and latency dropped to 4ms for a couple of days. Then quickly crept back up. I have tried restarting the fire stick several times again without any luck. I did a factory default on amazon fire stick. No success.
I Restarted Google wifi and had no improvement.
I have determined the correct sequence is restart Google wifi, then restart amazon fire stick. This has worked the two times I've done it but it only fixes the problem for a day or two.
I've read some negative reviews about Google wifi latency and am willing to replace it if that is the problem.
My question is, does anyone know if Google wifi or amazon firestick is the culprit? I will happily replace whichever hardware is the problem.

Doug

#2

I assume this is internet speed test? Or test over wifi to your DVR?

Is this watching at home in original quality, or something else?

#3

I'm at home (assume original quality, I haven't set it otherwise) using the Channels speed test to DVR server. My server is Windows 10 ethernet connected to my Google wifi router which connects over wifi to the fire stick. Because the latency drops to 5 or under when I restart Google wifi & the fire stick, I assume the computer connection is fine.

#4

Try it from a different client. If you have the issue on wifi then (if you can) try a client over ethernet as well. (Dont use the web player).

What you should do is try to triage where the problem lies. Is it your server, wifi, firestick, location of the firestick, etc? Also be methodical and dont make several changes at once. Rebooting the firestick and your wifi may seem like good troubleshooting but if that solves the problem then which one fixed the issue?

#5

Slampman, thanks for the advice. It hadn't occurred to me to see what the performance was like on my Android phone client. I just did a Channels Speedtest on my phone client and it is bad (71mbit/s Download & 260.75ms Latency).
Just did a phone restart. Download better, Latency still bad (236 Mbit/s & 305.63ms).
Restart the wifi router. Download good, Latency still bad (350.91Mbit/s & 300.03ms).
Restart the client app. Both good. (366.9Mbit/s & 5.76ms).

I didn't close the app before doing the phone restart. There may have been cached information carried over. I should have tried closing the app as a 1st step and again after the phone restart.

Unfortunately, both my clients have good numbers right now. I will have to wait until they creep back to bad to try the test again.

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#6

Best way to reduce latency (round trip time to destination) is using a wired connection.
If you have to use a Wi-Fi router/access point (which is half-duplex and bandwidth is shared by all Wi-Fi devices using it) then use a good Wi-Fi 6 unit with MIMO, multiple antennas, use 5GHz, use beam-forming and ensure short distance and no obstructions between router/access point and device.
The more devices using the Wi-Fi router/access point, the higher the latency will be.
Other apps on your device using Wi-Fi at the same time will increase latency.

You can also test latency between devices using ping. Run it continuously and change things while it's running to see the effect.

#7

Latency still a problem. Here's what I've done.

  1. Bought a new mesh WiFi to replace the Google WiFi because I saw several people describe my exact symptoms while on Google WiFi and fixed it with TP-Link Deco XE75. Spoiler alert: this did not fix the problem.
  2. Changed Channels DVR priority to high in the task manager thinking it may be the bottleneck.
  3. Done a factory reset of the Fire Stick.
  4. Installed the Beta client on the Fire Stick.
  5. I can't go wired, Fire Stick is WiFi only.
  6. The computer, where Channels DVR lives, is wired to the router. Only the Fire Stick is WiFi and they are physically 24ft apart with nothing in between.

None of this has solved the problem.

I ping the amazon IP from my computer (Win10) and always get around 100ms regardless of the latency report from Channels client (either at 5ms or 250ms).

Does anyone know what is being measured exactly by the Channels client speed test? Is it ping, tracert, or something else? Does it send a signal all the way into the DVR or simply ping the IP of the DVR? That would help me understand if it might be my computer.

I also don't get why once the latency gets bad, it never recovers. If there were a temporary surge in traffic creating latency, shouldn't it recover when the traffic slows down? Plus, I don't believe our family of two is ever overwhelming the router.

The only thing that temporarily works is reboot of the mesh and then reboot of Fire Stick. Rebooting one or the other does not fix the latency.

I don't know what to do to try to debug the problem. I could through more money at it by buying a new Fire Stick but that seems almost as foolish as buying the new mesh WiFi.

This is becoming a deal breaker for my SO. The delay on skip ahead or back is mind-numbingly slow when latency is high.
Any suggestions or more information needed?

#8

...

This sounds like your wifi is saturated.. Note I don't necessarily mean bandwidth saturation -- I feel like this is more a tx/csma-ca issue. a device that's right on-the-edge of being able to connect to your network can slow the whole thing down because the whole network has to wait while that slow client is sending data. if that client is sending a lot of data (even a few mb/s -- like a webcam, file server, r/t energy monitor, etc), it would make a lot of sense.

first things i'd investigate:

  • are all your wifi devices 802.11n or ac (or 6/ax)? if you can get any legacy, a, b, and g nodes off your network, you can set your wifi to n/ac/6 mode which is much more efficient.
  • I don't have google wifi, but many APs have a summary screen that shows how well each client is connected. during the bad performance periods, i would go and disconnect the slower devices one-by-one.
  • if you have multiple google wifi access points, a client may be switching between them to try to be smart, but may be performing bad when connected to one and not the other (causing that csma-ca issue above). if that's true and you can pin down the bad client, you should be able to pin it to the happy ap.

There is a great adapter that I use on all my firetv sticks. if you have wired available, this is certainly the easiest+best way.

#9

jkister, thanks for the education! I can get an ethernet cable over to the Fire Stick and will probably try that. I really appreciate the explanation about devices causing problems. I will start shutting down devices and see if one pops out. I would like to figure it out. I have a feeling that is what slampman was suggesting, I just wasn't savvy enough to understand it.

#10

I forgot I have one more question. Even if it is a device that is acting up, I assume it must settle down sometimes but the latency never recovers. Do you know why?

#11

There is a phenomenon called "Buffer Bloat" which causes all sorts of latency problems. Basically some device along your path has a lot of memory since memory is now so cheap, and the device uses it to hold data when it gets busy for a while. That means that even though you usually experience very low latency, it can occasionally become much worse.

That behavior all depends on the devices involved, and the design of the software inside each. I'm not sure exactly what your configuration looks like, but any device in the path between your Fire Stick and your Channels server can cause buffer bloat.

My suspicion would be the Google router/wifi box, assuming it is in the path. Even if you've added a new mesh wifi, if your connection between the Stick and Server still goes through some other device, that device can cause problems.

Carrier-provided boxes are often suspect, since their designs may be optimized for traffic to/from the Internet, rather than traffic to/from devices in your house.

If you think that's your problem, I suggest trying to reconfigure so the path from your Stick to Server does not go through the Google box at all. You may be able to accomplish that by putting your own router as the only device connected to the Google box, and then plug all other stuff in your house (wired devices, wifi mesh hub, etc.) into your router, so that your internal traffic does not go through the Google router at all.

Here's one story about how someone solved the latency problem with their Google wifi:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleWiFi/comments/j3hdd0/howto_guide_a_costfriendly_way_to_fight/

Hope this helps...
Jack

#12

Yeah basically just isolating things trying to get to the root of the problem. You could have interference going on as well. I hardwire everything i possibly can and use wifi just for devices that have to use it.

I dont use any sort of consumer grade router. I use pfsense for my router and then unifi access points throughout my house. If i need additional AP's i run ethernet to it and let the unifi controller handle the handoffs between AP's. Mesh networking sounds cool but in reality, wifi is still only half duplex.

IMHO the firestick is a sub par device. Go with an appletv with ethernet. If you are married to android TV, pick up one of the ONN boxes. Basically anything wired would be an improvement (even the firestick with an eth adapter if nothing else)

#13

Having some experience with TP-Link Deco devices, I think you're limited in which settings you have access to. Generally I would recommend that first you scan your area and see which frequencies are least congested, and have your home network use those channels. Then, you should have 2 WiFi networks, one which is solely 2.4GHz for IoT, and a second for other devices. Your 2.4GHz network should have a channel width of the standard 20MHz, while your computers/streamers on the 5/6GHz band should have a channel width of 80 (or 160) MHz ... or as high as all of your devices support.

Unfortunately, I don't believe the Deco software gives you that level of control ... but their meshing and WiFi is better than Google's, in my experience.

#14

I'm not so sure it ever needs to settle down. I mean if the problem is actually that transmitting issue i was writing about, as long as that latency is crazy, that/those devices are getting in the way of the rest of the network because they're busy sending data.

If we imagine the scenario where you have 2 APs in your mesh and the client has some algorithm that makes it connect to the AP that is actually behaving worse for it, the problem might never fix itself. But if that AP goes offline (for a reboot or whatever), the client could detect its AP is gone and could connect to the other AP that it thinks is worse but actually works, and all is happy until it moves itself over to the original AP sometime after it comes back online again.

Or, if the "misbehaving" device is a camera and it is streaming to a server you have, the connection could work good enough to get the stream started but then at some point becomes so poor that the server gives up and stops asking for the video feed. then the wifi gets happy, the server could retry the stream, and the behavior goes in circles.

lots of possibilities with weird wifi behavior.

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#15

The adapter from Amazon is even cheaper.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Ethernet-Adapter-Fire-Devices/dp/B074TC662N/r2C231

#16

That one is 10/100, the other is gigabit. The usb speed limits it down to 480 though. But yeah 100 is more than fine. I’m just weird like that.

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#17

Wow! So much information from everyone. My biggest takeaway is hardwire everything I can.
I'm getting an adapter for the Fire Stick (which I'm keeping because I have it but will go appleTV when the Fire Stick dies) and getting my old router out to act as a switch, putting the more critical devices on that to avoid having internal paths go through the mesh router. I'm pretty sure that will fix my problem. It's too bad I couldn't find the culprit just to know who it is. When I have some extended free time alone in the house I can deactivate everything for a thorough test to satisfy my curiosity.

#18

Do yourself a favor and dont do this, gigabit switches are cheap. No sense in introducing old gear that isnt specifically designed for that purpose into the mix.

NETGEAR 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Unmanaged Switch (GS308) - Home Network Hub, Office Ethernet Splitter, Plug-and-Play, Silent Operation, Desktop or Wall Mount https://a.co/d/35yjSzJ

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#19

Hi all,
Hardware and connection detail below if anyone interested.

Two days ago I went ahead and bought a 5 port switch. I connected both computer and fire stick to the new switch. latency is 1.5ms and ping is less than 1ms as I expected. What I don't understand is why the Channels speed test still reports 200-300Mbps. I thought it would be higher, more like around 400-450Mbps.

I still have a problem with skip ahead/back.
Skip ahead/back are not as mind-numbingly slow but still often take a while. For example, I did a skip back several minutes. From the button press (seen instantly by the client) to playing it took 5 seconds!
Channels DVR is on my computer and all recordings are stored on my E: drive.
I assume the current configuration skips the router bridge and mesh router completely and I have a direct line from computer to Fire Stick?

Mesh router
 |
V
Linksys EA7500 router in bridge mode
 |
V
TP-Link switch ---> adapter ---> Fire Stick
 |
V
computer

TP-Link TL-SG105E | 5 Port Gigabit Switch.
Linksys EA7500 router converted to a bridge.
Gigabit adapter for my fire stick 4K.
Computer (win10, 16G ram, Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40 GHz)
SSD (C drive 40GB of 150GB free, D drive 11GB of 83GB free)
HD (E drive 1.1TB of 1.8TB free, 15ms seek time)

#20

Because the port/connection is USB2, which maxes out at 480Mbps. You then need to halve that for duplex operation, meaning 240Mbps up and 240Mbps down.

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