Twitch Dropping Thousands of Frames and Unable to Stream on $103 Spectrum Ultra Connection

rowleyweb

Hello, I've been struggling with dropped frames and connection issues with Twitch since I started streaming in April this year (at 6000kbps bitrate). I stream through my own wired network, not through wifi. For about a two week stretch, the majority of my streams which generally last around 2-3 hours would run as expected with only an occasional bout of frames dropped (usually under 1000). As time went on, the issue became worse, on certain days I would be dropping several thousands of frames over the course of an hour and the stream became unwatchable for my audience.

I originally had the 300/10 basic internet plan (over $88 in my city), I called up Spectrum support and in speaking to the gentlemen on the other end I explained the frame dropping issues with Twitch. The customer reps recommended to me to upgrade my plan since we came to the conclusion that I was simply running out of upstream bandwidth. So in June I upgraded to the "Ultra" plan (now paying over $103) with 500 down / 20 up, giving me an extra 10mbps of upstream to work with. This seemed to initially improve my connection to Twitch but the packet loss issues returned less than a week later. We're now in August and almost every stream (around 3-4 times a week in the evening) I'm having some kind of packet loss, usually between 1000-10,000 frames dropped per stream if not more. The screenshot below shows almost 100,000 frames dropped in one stream over the course of 80 minutes.

I noticed that when I was getting packet loss with streaming, when I logged into my Arris Surfboard SB8200 modem, two of the upstream channels would jump from a power level of around 40-41 dBmV to over 53 dBmV.

Doing some googling I found out that this could be the issue, that were was too much signal loss or interference between the tap and the modem, and the ISP was signaling to my modem to boost the power to make up for it. Looking at how my home is wired coming in from the cable "tap", there's an old grounding block (which wasn't grounded to anything anymore) and then a coaxial cable from the grounding block that goes to a 3-way splitter (which has no purpose anymore because I only use cable internet) and then the connection from the splitter to my modem.

My theory was that the combination of the old block, old cables, old splitter, were the culprits in this issue. I bought a brand new ground block, new grounding wire, and new 15-foot RG6 coaxial cable. I hooked it all up to my modem and.. my upstream power is now 35dBmV which is cool, but now Twitch is dropping even more frames (over 25%) and the connection to the Twitch servers is so much worse. I don't really understand how this can be the case when I installed brand new equipment and bypassed the splitter, going right from the tap to the modem.

Below is a screenshot of OBS (widely used streaming broadcasting software) showing the amount of dropped frames (almost 90,000) over the course of a 90 minute test stream after I installed the new block and coax.

Belowis a screenshot of Twitch Inspector, which is a tool to show how unstable your connection to the Twitch servers is, you can see it dips down to a lower bitrate very frequently due to the unstable connection.

Other attempts to fix the issue I've tried include:

• Streaming from a different computer with a different ethernet connection.
• Restarting/unplugging/replugging all of my networking equipment (UniFi UDM Pro and USW 24-PoE Switch) including the modem several times.
• Updating my UniFi gateway and switch.
• Turning on Smart Queues in my UDM Pro settings.
• Replacing all of the CAT6 ethernet cable between my PC, the switch, the router, and the modem.
• Plugging the ground block back into the splitter, and then re-connecting the modem to the splitter, in case the added resistance from the splitter was actually helping?

I'm at the end of my rope now, this poor connection is really unacceptable considering I'm paying over $100 a month to stream on Twitch. I'd like to add that I have no issue with my downstream connection, I can download significant amounts of files at lightning speed, it's really just the upstream I'm having a problem with.

I hope this write-up with all the screenshots and photos convinces Spectrum support I'm having a serious issue here and I really need a tech to take a hard look at this to remediate the issue. My main worry is that it is not an issue between my home and the telephone pole, but could be an issue with the neighborhood node and then running into a situation where the techs are unwilling to test that or provide a fix. I've read many horror stories online from other cable customers that have had this issue that it took many techs and several months of complaining to the ISP to get this issue solved, and I simply cannot wait that long. Streaming is my second job and I'm depending on it for income, any assistance is appreciated.

Satch

Welcome!

Is Twitch the only problem with your streaming content? What happens if you do things like online gaming or other high-graphics content at other sites? Is there a way that you could get a WIFI connection temporarily as a test to see if that improves performance?

I know that splitters can cause problems with signal strength reducing output by anywhere from 50-90%. What happens if you remove the splitter, and have a direct connection when using Twitch?

It seems that if Spectrum was to blame here there would be other sites with bandwidth issues on your end. Have you contacted Twitch? What did they say?

What devices and browsers are you using? Operating Systems? Anti-Virus?/Security? Firewall? I wonder if Twitch did something in the last several weeks to cause this? An operating system update, or some firmware update that is not playing nicely with Twitch?

What happens if you try to stream on a neighbor's or friends computer or device who has Spectrum as their ISP and you log in to your Twitch account?

Satch

HT_Greenfield

🔗 https://obsproject.com/wiki/Dropped-Frames-And-General-Connection-Issues ↳ Solutions

In any case, as long as it's unstable at > 3000 kbps, i'd ride with 720p 30fps in order to spare the frames.

🔗 https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/broadcasting-guidelines?language=en_US

rowleyweb

Satch:

1. Yes, Twitch is the only service I have issues with. I don't see how a wifi connection through my home APs would improve the situation as those types of connections have greater packet loss than wired connections over ethernet. At any rate, I don't have a wifi card or antenna for my streaming PC.
2. The second half of my post goes into detail about how I bypassed the splitter to go direct to the modem and this actually seemed to make things worse.
3. Twitch says it's an issue with my ISP.
4. Windows 11. I'm not using a browser, I stream through OBS. Standard Windows anti-virus and firewall. the UniFi UDM Pro gateway has added firewall features but I've gone through all my settings and made sure it's not causing any interference with Twitch.
5. All of my local friends are on Verizon Fios because they all live outside the city limits and have had terrible experiences with Time Warner/Spectrum in the past. To be honest I would have switched to a competitor by now but the other ISPs refuse to lay fiber in my city and so Spectrum has a monopoly on here with no competitors, that's why they think they can gouge us and charge $88 for basic internet.

HT_Greenfield:

1. That's not really acceptable considering I'm paying for a 20mbps upstream connection in order to give my audience a high quality viewing experience. Reading all the literature online you want to make sure you have a big enough overhead to comfortably support double the bitrate to prevent any drops in bandwidth. I consistently test at over 20-22mbps on speed tests, my gateway is configured for Smart Queues to prevent bufferbloat (I get an A on the bufferbloat test https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat), so a bitrate of 6000kbps at 1080p with 60fps should be easily accommodated by my upload bandwidth.

One of the most frustrating elements of this issue is that it's so inconsistent, one day it appears to be fine, the next my connection becomes so unstable the stream becomes unwatchable. For example I've been running more stream tests this morning, initially on my first stream test at around 10:15am I ran for 10 minutes I dropped about half my frames, in the UniFi OS for my UDM Pro gateway, during that test stream at around 10:15am you can see here that the system detected packet loss with a message to contact my ISP.

Now I'm running another stream test that started around 11:00am that's been running for over 32 minutes at my usual settings of 6000kbps 1080p 60fps and I've had a solid connection and haven't dropped a single frame (see screenshot below). I don't consider this to be an issue resolved because it's only a one-off, I'm fully expecting to experience the frame drop issues on my live stream later this afternoon and probably Monday night as well.

I have considered that there's maybe a correlation between time of day and the local neighborhood node getting overloaded with connections from all of the other Spectrum users in my neighborhood, and that's why the connection gets particularly bad on a Friday evening. Unfortunately there's no way for me to prove that without Spectrum techs stepping in and diagnosing that.

Can someone from Spectrum support look into this issue for me?

Satch

Hey,

Guy on Reddit was having problems with Spectrum Internet and Twitch. The problem he found was not Spectrum related when he did a follow up investigation: Here are his tips:

Following up: After digging into this. It doesn't appear to be spectrum related.

Customer hardware problems.

Something with the way the video is encoded combined with the same video card on each machine seems to be triggering some kind of driver hitch when using hardware accelerated video decoding. Both machines are Windows 11 22H2 with the latest update. Video drivers are a few versions behind.

Short term: Turn off hardware acceleration. (tested and works, but is cpu expensive)
Longer term: Update drivers from NVidia studio driver 516.93 to 517.40

Start by turning off hardware acceleration I would update your video drivers from the manufacturers website

Satch

rowleyweb

@Satch thanks for the suggestion. I'm currently on nvidia's 536.99 version for my RTX 3060 Ti and it looks like there's an update to 560.81. I will update my drivers and play with hardware acceleration settings within OBS. I don't expect it to fix the issue because OBS specifically has stats on:

• Frames missed due to rendering lag (user's hardware/software) - almost 0 every stream
• Skipped frames due to encoding lag (user's hardware/software) - almost 0 every stream
• Dropped Frames due to network issues (user's connection to Twitch servers through ISP) - thousands of drops

Nearly all of the dropped frames land in the network section as shown in my screenshots in the prior posts. Running the Twitch Bandwidth Test tool which is an entirely separate program outside OBS which sends no hardware-driven video also produces results of low quality and poor connection to the Twitch servers. https://r1ch.net/projects/twitchtest

rowleyweb

I've had a good couple of days where frame dropping wasn't much of an issue, but today (Monday, August 19) I started a stream at around 10:52am and had massive dropped frames for about 30 minutes before leveling out around 11:23am. Broadcasting went smoothly until 12:13pm-12:15pm where I had another bout of frame drops. Then from 12:55pm to the end of the stream at 1:15pm I had another large window of instability. I've recently downgraded from a 6000kbps bitrate to a 5000kbps bitrate and that doesn't seem to have made any difference. During this stream I dropped over 60,526 frames over the course of a little under 2 hours.

Satch

Thanks for the updates! @rowleyweb

What you should do is contact Twitch to open a ticket and send them your screenshots. State in the detail the games or chats that you are doing. your operating system, and any other environmental conditions that are pertinent to your streaming and packet loss. Did you apply that driver update?

I really hope Twitch can provide some constructive feedback on this issue and not pass the buck back to Spectrum. Based on the screenshots and provided information, I don't think this is a Spectrum issue. I think it is a Twitch issue. I checked how to file support to get open tickets on issues and Google search says the following:

"If something is broken or not working the way it should, file a ticket at help.twitch.tv. You can also check our status page or @ us on Twitter." I really think that Twitch needs to investigate your issue. The feedback provided here is excellent! I would recommend providing the same type of quality feedback to Twitch.

Keep us posted!

Satch

rowleyweb

Leaving a final update here in case anyone finds this through a google search and wants to know my resolution:

Called Spectrum on 8/19 to discuss the problems I've been having, the tech on the phone agreed with me that I was probably having hardware issues, he scheduled a different tech to come out the next day.

The tech who came out was very understanding and impressed with my setup and how I had re-done the ground block coming in from the tap. However, he discovered two issues:

• First, the three-way splitter I was using was dated and might not be providing the right type of resistance to the incoming signal from the tap, so he disconnected that splitter and hooked up a brand new one (Antronix CMC4002U, photo below). The tech confirmed with me that even if you're not splitting the signal coming into the house between multiple receivers and only using a modem you absolutely need to have a splitter of some kind to reduce the signal strength, otherwise it's out of an acceptable signal range.
• Second, the coaxial connections between the tap and my modem were not properly tightened. Apparently you need to have your coaxial connections wrench tight to prevent signal leakage from occurring, finger-tight is not going to work. I believe this was my biggest issue. The tech replaced the connectors (they were not designed for wrench tightening) on my one coax to the industry standard with his crimping tool, and then wrench-tightened all connectors between the tap and the modem.
• The tech ran two tests with his analyzer- a line test to see if there were any issues between the tap and the ISP, and then a full DOCSIS test. He showed me with his analyzer tool that the signal quality looked close to perfect once he had remediated the aforementioned issues. He even showed me logs of my signal issues from the past couple of weeks and showed me a comparison of those and my current signal.

I've been streaming most days since last Tuesday and at this point I think I can safely say that the issues have been resolved. I had only one day where I dropped frames for several seconds but I can easily chalk that up to just general network hiccups and not the lingering issues I was having beforehand.

So tl;dr make sure your coaxial connections are TIGHT and that you're using the right kind of splitter, don't be afraid to get Spectrum to send a tech out to take a look once you feel like you've exhausted all other options.

mstoner82

Thank you for this. I actually just started having a problem like this this weekend. Both Twitch and Youtube were dropping about 85% of my frames from OBS. I've used the same settings for years, identical almost to yours. No dropped frames due to hardware, it was all connection side. Extremely frustrating. I am going to have someone come and check the signal to my line at some point this week.

THANK YOU for the thorough post. I will be sure to point to this when I call.