So I’ve been missing the last couple of weeks. Allow me to defend myself!
But where stream tho
The whole entire situation can honestly be explained with one simple image:
Joking aside though, let me delve in a little more as to why its their fault.
As most of you already know, my ISP is Spectrum, which is as awful as Comcast is when it comes to everything. A couple weeks ago I started noticing massive dropped frames on the stream. Naturally you rule out the obvious causes; the router (which I restarted and also bypassed to rule it out), the computer itself (I tested on multiple devices), other servers (I tested against Twitch servers, other alternate livestream servers and ran speedtests), restarted everything; yet the problem continued. The biggest clue is that this isn’t the first time this has happened.
The problem basically boils down to massive network instability (the root of which we still don’t know the cause). This was a huge pain in the ass to explain to tech support since, word verbatim: “No one usually asks about upload.”
Here’s a basic speedtest result, and one they would try (for reference, my max upload is 20 Mbps):
Everything seems fine? That is exactly the same thing Spectrum said. However remember that the core of the entire problem is the stability of the connection, not necessarily its speed (although this is also a problem). See below the results of 1000 tests ran over the course of the entire month. Make note of the minimum, average, and maximum speeds on this graph.
As you can see, this graph is all over the damn place; my speed has even dropped to 70 kbps at one point (dial up would probably be faster at this speed!). This explains why the stream drops massive frames every so often; my connection literally drops out for those moments.
Now as far as internet connections go, some variance in the speed is to be expected; you are never going to always get exactly the maximum speed you are paying for since that’s unrealistic. For the most part you should always be getting about 70% of your speed at any given time. Any variance bigger than that and you have a problem. The effect will also seem to be bigger the faster your connection is; my download speed is supposed to be 400 Mbps, yet its pretty frequent to see it drop all the way down to 280 at times, which is still within range. Applying this same logic to my upload speed though, the most it should ever drop is 14 Mbps which is clearly not the case here. Unfortunately explaining this problem to Spectrum was… a challenge, since no one ever questions these things. On top of that, Spectrum tends to use Ookla’s Speedtest.net which unfortunately gives skewed results since ISPs can connect directly to it. For reference, the service I am using above is testmy.net which tends to give much more realistic results, since it sends sustained, randomized packets that the ISPs can’t track and prioritize. Simply put, its a realistic test (which you can also set to run automatically for troubleshooting purposes like mine).
Here’s the results testing my connection stability to Twitch servers.
As you can see I’m reaching my upload speeds, but the connection quality is garbage! This is essentially the equivalent to driving on an unpaved road full of potholes; all the potholes represent the speed drops I am getting and the packets I keep losing, even though I am able to occasionally reach top speeds (paved sections).
Long story short though, Spectrum has replaced the modem, every single wire down to the DEMARC point, every signal level, to no avail. The last I’ve heard from the supervisors themselves is that the problem is a network issue on their end (yeah no shit) which may last weeks and even months to repair. As of today, I am still waiting.
So now what?
Unfortunately since Spectrum is the only ISP in my building, I am entirely at their mercy. The connection lately has stabilized enough where I am able to run some streams again; unfortunately you will still see occasional frame drops every couple of minutes until the problem is fixed. Dropped and crappy streams annoy me as much as it annoys you; that’s why if the stream ever exceeds 5% total dropped frames at any point I will most likely simply end the stream. I wouldn’t want to subject you to crappy quality that annoys even me as a fellow viewer, and that’s the level at which I am willing to tolerate it myself.
Mega Man Star Force DX
In other news, thanks to the hard work of the fan community we now have a wonderful new mod for Mega Man Star Force 1! You can read the full post here on their site, but essentially this mod completely modernizes the game in line to the improvements made in MMSF2 and MMSF3. Visit the link above if you want to get your hands on it yourself, but you bet your ass I’m also going to play it myself.