A couple of year ago when I first subscribed to Netflix I got excellent streaming. But for about a year now performance is erratic. Sometimes it takes a while for a movie to start, then it occasionally stops to catch up. Netflix says something like "the speed on your end is inconsistent, so it's your problem."

My Comcast speed is pretty consistently 55-56 Mbps. I'm in Houston and I use a server in Dallas for speed testing. I don't know exactly what the correct Netflix server address is but I'll show the results from a couple:







I don't understand much about this area but it looks like these plots indicate problems. Any help will be appreciated.

Hey Jim,

Based on the information you've provided here - I don't necessarily see any issues. The "Destination Address Unreachable" message you're getting is normal for both Amazon and Netflix addresses (unless you use TCP packet types, which isn't possible with the Freeware version). We have an article that goes over this, which you can find here:

http://www.nessoft.com/kb/8

The packet loss you're seeing in the intermediate hops isn't anything to be concerned about either - it just means those routers may be set to down-prioritize (or even block) ICMP echo requests. You can see a bit more info on this topic here:

http://www.nessoft.com/kb/24

A big advantage of PingPlotter Standard (or Pro) vs Freeware is the ability to capture data over time (allowing you to compare good and bad periods). From what we can see, your screenshot looks to be from a good period - and we'd need to see a bad period in order to come up with a theory beyond "Everything looks to be fine."

Gathering data over time (like, for instance, when you're watching a movie), will allow you to capture both the good and bad periods. and then you can go back and zoom in on the appropriate period to review what happened (instead of having to jump up to look at PingPlotter each time your movie starts buffering). For the absolute best troubleshooting results here, you really need PingPlotter Standard. The Freeware version is like having one good hand, while PingPlotter Standard is like having two good hands.

Additionally, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pretty reliable. Most chronic reoccurring problems (more than 90%) happen closer to home - like in hop 1, 2, or 3 in your case. If you do decide to keep tracing with the Freeware version - I'd recommend watching for problems there. You can also increase your "Samples to include" to look back and see if you can find any packet loss or latency problems at a hop closer to home. If you can identify something like this, then you can focus your attention on that problem.

Hopefully this helps out a bit - please let us know if you have any questions!

-Gary

Thanks.

I know the name for one of those destination is amazon but if you put the IP in a browser you will see it's really Netflix.

Okay, I've collected more data.

I am posting three things:
o Link to the video referred to below, on YouTube
o The PingPlotter graph made while recording the video
o A screen capture of a speed test immediately after recording video

In the video you will see the kind of performance I get on Netflix. You can also note I get 3 dots quality not 4, in the screen capture you can see my download speed is very good. I think this suggests the problem is not on by end as Netflix keeps insisting. In addition to this abominable performance after starting a movie it stops periodically to do some catch-up Forgive me for the exceedingly poor quality of my video but I'm and old man with serious tremor.

Though the Target Name says Amazon it's not -- it's Netflix. You can verify that by putting the IP in your browser and going there.

It's my hope this will give you enough information to figure out what's wrong.

The video is Here :

Hey Jim,

Pesky, intermittent, and erratic connectivity problems such as this can be especially frustrating.

Is the device that you're using to watch Netflix here wireless by any chance? If so - have you tried moving it to a wired connection to see if there's any improvement in performance?

This is a situation where having PingPlotter Standard instead of the Freeware version would come in especially handy. Based off of the information you've sent over, it's still pretty tough to get a good look at what may be causing the issue here. PingPlotter Standard does come with a 30 day evaluation at no cost (http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html)- so you could take advantage of this to continue troubleshooting your problem.

If you do decide to utilize the free evaluation of PingPlotter Standard - try and do some more long-term monitoring (let PingPlotter run continuously while you're using Netflix), and then send us over the .PP2 file so we can take a look at things from there. For more details on what info helps us the most in trying to assist on these kinds of issues - have a look here:

http://www.nessoft.com/kb/96

Hopefully this helps get things headed in the right direction. If you have any questions, please let us know!

-Gary

Yes. It's a Roku. It's not practical to run a wire to its location

Hey Jim,

Would it be possible for you to run a trace directly to the Roku itself? You can usually find the IP address of the Roku by going to "Settings" -> "About" or "Player Info."

Please let us know what you find!

-Gary

This is the Roku

The first is 60 samples, 150 seconds, taken at of 2.5 second intervals


The second is 480 samples, 20 minutes, taken at of 2.5 second intervals

The third is 960 samples, 40 minutes, taken at of 2.5 second intervals

The fourth is 1440 samples, 1 hour, taken at of 2.5 second intervals

Hey Jim,

A few things here:

When tracing to your Roku, you want to make sure that it's during a period that you're using the Roku to watch Netflix. The goal is to catch any issues as they happen - so you can see what patterns develop when issues arise (which can help out tremendously in your troubleshooting process).

The information you've submitted thus far doesn't explicitly point to any sort of obvious problem. This may be because it's a Roku-only problem (rather than your computer's problem).

This is a scenario where the timeline graphs from PingPlotter Standard (or Pro) really shine. The erratic / occasional nature of your problem makes the timeline graph a necessity for continued review of this problem. It's not a valuable use of our time (yours or mine), to attempt to troubleshoot without them.

Our "Common Network Problems" article demonstrates just how important the timeline graphs are in diagnosing and troubleshooting network issues. Have a look here:

http://www.pingplotter.com/commonnetworkproblems

The Roadmap to Network Nirvana also may prove beneficial at this stage in your troubleshooting process:

http://www.pingplotter.com/netnirvana

The information you've provided so far has been enough to make me curious about your problem, so I've asked for more information to clarify. I've also offered some advice based on my experience (via looking at thousands of PingPlotter graphs and looking at thousands of network problems). That's all I'm doing, though - exploring the problem with you - so if you don't want to follow this advice, that's fine too. Sometimes the best way to isolate problems like this is to get advice and then apply it to your situation, which is why I've been giving you ideas on how to isolate the possible problems.

Hopefully this helps get you pointed in the right direction!

-Gary

I'm very grateful for your help. This problem has been going on for about a year, but it's getting worse.