High latency Not a channels problem but hope someone can advise

#21

Id be interested to see if another wired client has the same issue. It could be the firestick in general. IMHO the amazon ad delivery tool is a sub par device. But it could be something going on with your server as well. 15ms seek time is a little high. Average for spinning drives is 8-9ms. Im not sure if thats enough to cause your issues.

To test, create a folder on your ssd and put a movie or something in there. Add that folder in channels and then try your seeking again. If it works perfectly then you know your drive is an issue. If it still has the problem, do yourself a favor and pick up an appletv.

Correct. Traffic between 2 devices on the same switch stays within that switch. Nothing to do with your issue but if it were me i would simplify your network. Remove the router in bridge mode and connect a switch to your existing router. Then hang all of your wired devices off of that.

#22

Try running the advanced troubleshooting and check out the Disk IO stats.

#23

I can skip 60 mins forwards or back on my recordings and it takes less than 1 sec to play. I use a Firestick Max with wireless only. I get between 400 and 500 mbs on the speed test to the Channels server. My latency is consistently about 4 millisec. My server is a Windows 11 using an Intel N5095 processor (fairly low end). My recordings are stored on a 4TB portable WD harddisk (maybe not the best choice, but it works for me). I only have a single consumer grade Asus wifi6 entry level gaming router connected to 500/500 Frontier Fiber internet. I have around 40 devices connected to the wifi (8 are streaming devices, but we almost never use more than 3 at one time). My main streaming devices are all Firestick Max's using wifi. They work incredibly well for me. Not sure if I have ever seen a wifi streaming problem using these devices. At any rate, not sure I have any solution for you.

#24

So are mine and I do not experience latency problems, so it is not a Fire device issue.

#25

Eric,
I assume you meant click the "Re-Run with Resource Intensive Tests". Here is the result. Seems ok to me.
Disk IO
Write: 275MB/s Read: 3.3GB/s

#26

These are mine ...2 8TB drives on USB 3.0 enclosure running Windows Storage spaces raid 0.

Disk IO

Write: 1GB/s Read: 7.9GB/s

#27

Not that write speed has anything to do with seeking but that speed is super low. Might indicate a drive issue in general.

Try serving some content from your ssd and see if that makes a difference.

#28

My intensive troubleshooting test is so slow it won't tell me what the read speed is, it is too embarrassing. But I still don't have any major delays watching recordings.

Internet Speed Test

Download: 510.59Mbps Upload: 183.82Mbps Latency: 5ms

Disk IO

Write: 54.6MB/s

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#29

What kind of Drive do you have a Floppy ? Joking you must be using USB 2.

#30

That looks fast enough that it doesn’t appear to immediately be the source of the issue with seek times…

#31

Ports and drives are supposedly USB3, but the drives are designed for low power and portability, not speed. Still they seem to work fine with Channels. I have been using this one for 5 years, originally on my Tablo. I just won't spend a lot of money for SSD unless it is necessary.

#32

Hi slampman,
I created another folder on my C: drive (SSD) and pointed to it in the library database. I moved a prerecorded show into it and changed the name thinking there might be a name conflict. I guess I need to do something more because it isn't showing up anywhere. Can you give me a quick pointer instead of me searching the database?
Thanks!

#33

Try moving a recording to your desktop. Then prune the deleted recordings from the ui. Then move the recording to the folder on your ssd and let chsnnels pick it up

#34

The trick was to create the same path on my C: drive as I have on my E: drive for a particular recording. Then I can move the file from E: to C: and channels will find it.

I got the same result with the file on my SSD. Sometimes the skip ahead/back responds and starts playing in sub-second time. It would be nice if it consistently reacted quickly like that, instead of every 3rd or 4th skip there's the 4-5 second delay.

Seems like I'm running out of things to try.

#35

It is very easy to run low or out of storage memory on most Firesticks. Channels has significant performance issues without enough client storage. Not sure if it will cause the issues you are seeing with recordings, but Channels works best with as much storage as you can free up.

Also, if you can view your desktop server at the same time as your Firestick client, then you can run the windows Task Manager. Select the Performance graph of your network interface. You should see the data sent in real time to the client as you watch a recording. You should see the data spike immediately when you move back or forwards on the timeline.

#36

Good idea to look at the task manager. What I saw kind of points to Channels, I think. But I'm sure there's lots of moving parts.
What I saw when there was a pause is the ethernet throughput dropping to almost zero and the disk IO doing the same. Basically, nothing was being pushed out of the computer for the duration of the pause. And it wasn't due to spikes. I also looked at memory (flat 50%) and CPU (10% or lower). I guess it's possible that the command isn't getting from the client to Channels quickly but I don't know how to see that. The more likely scenario is Channels is sitting on it. But I don't really believe that either.
I will purge as much storage as I can from the Fire Stick anyway and see if that helps. Maybe it does stumble on sending the command out.

#37

I now have my router connected directly to my switch with both computer and Fire Stick connected to the switch. I have removed the Linksys router from the configuration.
It was suggested before that once latency gets high it could stay high because of a rogue device.
I did a new experiment today after latency went up to 250ms again.
I disconnected all devices except the wired computer, the wired Fire stick, and the wifi harmony hub to see if latency would drop. There is nothing else on the entire LAN. Latency remained at 250ms. I then did the following:

  1. Reboot hub. No change.
  2. Reboot Fire Stick. No change.
  3. Reboot computer. No change.
  4. Reboot router. No change.
  5. Reboot Fire Stick (again). Latency dropped to 2ms.

A book could be written with what I don't know about networks.
Why didn't latency drop on any of the earlier reboots. Is there some memory that keeps latency high?
The magic sequence seems to be reboot the router then reboot the Fire Stick. What internal settings require both to be rebooted?

On a related note, I have decided it's time to rebuild a new computer. I think what I have is plenty strong enough to not be this problem but it will be interesting to see if anything changes.

#38

Try another device and see how you fare with that

#39

I have spent the time since my last update trying pretty much everything.
I last wrote that I was going to rebuild a new computer because it was time, not to solve this problem. I did that. No help.
I turned off all other devices in the house and forced my wife to use cell data instead of WiFi on her phone when at home.
My pared down network has been
WiFi Router (sometimes kept Harmony hub on WiFi, always kept my phone on WiFi)
|
Switch (bought new)
|-------------Amazon Fire Stick 4k (ethernet connected)
|-------------Computer (DVR)

That's it! Even with the hub shut down I could only go a day (or less) or maybe sometimes two days before latency would jump up to 250ms and response was terrible.
I continued to suspect Channels because I would reboot FS, no help.
I then did force stop/clear cache/clear data on channels, then rboot FS. Latency drops.
Eric and I went back and forth, me saying it's channels, him saying it's probably FS.

Eventually, I realized reboot FS was always in the mix.
I bought a new FS. No help.

FINALLY, conceding to slampman and Eric, I went out and bought an Apple TV 4K 128G ethernet box.
PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!!! Latency in microseconds, download/upload speeds 900+Mbps.

I reread all comments and realized Michael Birk and Edwin Perez both were using FS Max, not FS 4k. That was probably enough to make a difference.

I'm thrilled to see this improvement and very unhappy I didn't listen to slampman a month ago! Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions.

I still do not understand why latency was bad when Channels issued an ICMP from the FS but latency always tested great (1ms) when issuing the ping or tracert from the computer to the FS device. No one has been able to explain that to me.

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#40

I seem to recall one of the devs commenting a couple of years ago that the Amazon products were their support PITA. I use a Shield Pro 2019 and my network performance has always been stellar on the wire, never have tried wifi.