Tech Forum

All,

I'm looking for some context around the bandwidth settings folks are using for your webcasts. We are sending via the Webcast Communicator and receiving via the Webcast Receiver. We've done extensive speed tests on our connections and can consistently get the following:

Stake center (Communicator location): 80 Mbps down; 20 Mbps up.
Meetinghouse (Receiver location): 25 Mbps down; 10 Mpbs up.

We have tested pushing video from the Communicator at 1.5 Mbps, 2, and even 3. The picture gets increasingly better, but we still get buffering. At the lower setting, we get buffering after a couple minutes. At 2 and 3 Mbps, the buffering starts after only 30 s or so.

The sound setting is obviously another important variable. We tried combinations of 256 Kbps, 128 Kbps, and then 96 Kbps with the above video settings.

Long story short, the "highest" successful upload we can get right now is 1.5 Mbps on the video and 96 Kpbs on the sound (mono). This is our first set of tests since the new connection was installed earlier this year, and I have to say, we're a bit surprised by the buffering issues. (For the test feed, we just pushed a Church DVD.)

Some thoughts:

Are there practical limitations on the Church's side that would prevent us from pushing higher bandwidth numbers?

Could this issue be resolved by connecting directly to the modem for the webcast, instead of going through the firewall (hypothetically-speaking, of course -- we NEVER unplug from the firewall )? The speed tests above were performed from connections within the firewall.

Those tests were with unmixed sound and it came through pretty hot on the receiver side. Any thoughts as to how much of a factor that could be? The video was also unmixed.

Prior to this new cable internet connection, we had a couple of successful webcasts at very low settings over DSL: Just the plain 200 Kbps setting from the Communicator. Our bandwidth on the receiving end was only about 1 Mbps down, so we expected an order-of-magnitude difference now.

Anyway, I wanted to poll the group and see what thoughts you might have and what speeds you're using.

Thx

Out of curiosity, have you tried the church's speedtest at http://speedtest.lds.org/speed.html? That tests the ISP's connection to the church servers in addition to your link speed.

I'd tend to think that buffering issues is due to the inability of something in the chain to maintain a connection at the needed speed. Unfortunately the speed test only tests over a few seconds.

Great tip -- I was not aware of that link. I'll definitely be checking that this weekend from the stake center.

Interestingly, I ran this at work from my laptop and experienced the following:

Regular speed test: 30 Mbps down; 11.5 Mbps up
Church speed test: 6.85 Mpbs down; 3.90 Mbps up

sgcurtis wrote:Interestingly, I ran this at work from my laptop and experienced the following:

Regular speed test: 30 Mbps down; 11.5 Mbps up
Church speed test: 6.85 Mpbs down; 3.90 Mbps up

I got similar results from home, (22Mb/s down on speedtest.net, vs. 6.65 to the church's servers.) It seems the church's numbers are reflecting their own limitations, not yours, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

sgcurtis wrote:Great tip -- I was not aware of that link. I'll definitely be checking that this weekend from the stake center.

Interestingly, I ran this at work from my laptop and experienced the following:

Regular speed test: 30 Mbps down; 11.5 Mbps up
Church speed test: 6.85 Mpbs down; 3.90 Mbps up

Now, I have a couple of questions.

1. were these speed done wirelessly or were you directly connected?
2. What firewall has been provided to you by the church?

I have a PIX 501 firewall at my stake center and it will allow me to use the full bandwidth that Verizon says that I have. However, I haven't checked it closely, but another unit in my stake has an ASA 5505 and I believe that is limiting the speed of the Internet connection because of the filtering on it.

I would have to check with another unit in my stake because they also have a Cisco ASA and see if their speed has been diminished.

I would say as a test to take the firewall out of the picture and connect the webcast server directly to the router provided by your service provider and give it another try. If you get better performance than I would say it is your firewall that is contributing to the issue.

Terry