Steam Link streaming bitrate/network problem?

[magnificent moose]

I noticed that I start experiencing extreme network problems with Steam Link unless I limit the streaming bandwidth to 10 MBit/s or less. The information overlay reports frame loss of almost 100%, the screen freezes often and video quality is generally very poor.

I'm using a wired connection through a gigabit Ethernet switch, which should be more than capable of handling much higher bitrates. At least I would imagine so. In-home streaming technically works if I limit the bandwidth to 10 MBit/s in the advanced client options but shouldn't I be able to stream at a higher quality?

[Xjph]

On a wired connection at both the Link and the host PC, certainly.

The streaming log file might have information as to the cause if you check it after a badly performing session. You can find it in steam\logs\streaming_log.txt

[magnificent moose]

I have an 8-port wired Ethernet switch where basically everything in the local network is connected to. I noticed that if I remove all the other cables besides my PC and the Steam Link it starts working. But if I plug in the cable which connects the switch to the internet, it starts failing again -- consistently. Do I have the wrong kind of setup here? I'm not a networking expert as you might notice.

(I also tried a random wifi-router which happened to have a few wired Ethernet ports and that does work even while connected to the internet.)

[_I_]

the link only has a 10/100mb/s lan port
only 30-50mb/s is needed for streaming

is the host pc wired or using wifi?

[<)NN(> Misi333k ®™ 유유유]

so there can be an ip colision if your ethernet switch is manageable check it, if it is not coliding with router, as you mentioned everything is nice untill you connect router to that switch, so you have a winner here, you just have to find what is the problem

[magnificent moose]

The upload limit of my internet connection is 10 MBit/s. Steam Link streaming chokes if I plug in the cable which connects the LAN to the internet, unless I limit the bitrate under 10 MBit/s. Is this a coincidence? Or is it possible that the traffic gets somehow routed through the internet instead of staying inside the LAN?

The Ethernet switch I have is a non-managed one, the Zyxel GS-108Bv3.

I meant that everything started to work when I *replaced* the aforementioned Zyxel with a wifi router temporarily. Its not possible to keep the wifi router in that place permanently, so I need to configure the Zyxel so that it works somehow. Or (less preferably) replace that with something else that actually works.

[_I_]

Originally posted by <)NN(> Misi333k ®™ 유유유:

so there can be an ip colision if your ethernet switch is manageable check it, if it is not coliding with router, as you mentioned everything is nice untill you connect router to that switch, so you have a winner here, you just have to find what is the problem

switches do not collide, only hubs
switch only sends data to the destionation port using its mac table
hub sends incoming data to all ports

pingbomb the link and router to see where the lag is coming from

start -> run/search -> cmd
ping -t 192.168.x.x (router and link ip)
hit ctrl+c to stop and shot min/max/avg/loss

[magnificent moose]

The Steam Link IP address is what is shown in the network setup page, right?

I tried pinging that and the result looks alright: 1ms response time on average, 2ms at worst.

However, the problem is not that the network is particularly laggy, the problem is that it is bandwidth limited to 10MBit/second, which it shouldn't be.

So behold, I made a picture to illustrate: here's the situation currently[oi64.tinypic.com].

If I remove the blue cord (i.e. disconnect the internet), the stream works without bandwidth limitations. If I plug myself back in to the internet, it only works at the 10 MBit/s maximum speed.

Which makes me wonder if the reason for this is that the streaming network traffic gets incorrectly routed via the internet for some bizarre reason. So, like, instead of taking the green route in this picture[oi66.tinypic.com], it goes through the red route instead? Because if it did, it would then indeed be bottlenecked by my internet upload speed. Does this make any sense?

[Xjph]

Routing to the internet first is possible. If you turn on the diagnostic overlay does to report the ping as "direct" or "relay"? If it's relay then you're definitely going out to the internet and back for some reason.

When you paired the Link did you use the auto-detect list, or the "other computer" PIN pairing?

[magnificent moose]

Originally posted by Xjph:

If you turn on the diagnostic overlay does to report the ping as "direct" or "relay"?

Hmm the information overlay on Steam Link doesn't mention either of those words. It just says ping<1ms when it works and when it freezes it can be any integer. The overlay also flashes a yellow "Slow Network" warning frequently and there's plenty of packet loss.

When you paired the Link did you use the auto-detect list, or the "other computer" PIN pairing?

I think it just detected the PC running Steam and I accepted the choice. Now there's just the button to connect to that PC. By pressing "Y" on the controller you can perform a network test with the PC, which runs fine if the bandwidth is limited, and if not, interestingly, the progress bar moves nowhere and the result can be anything. Typically the network test concludes that the network might not be good enough for Steam Link.

I also ran a TRACERT from my PC to the Steam Link's IP address, which only reports two hops. The IP address of the intermediate step looks believably like the Ethernet switch. This kind of disproves my own theory. But if its not that then what could it be..?

[Xjph]

Originally posted by magnificent moose:

I also ran a TRACERT from my PC to the Steam Link's IP address, which only reports two hops. The IP address of the intermediate step looks believably like the Ethernet switch. This kind of disproves my own theory. But if its not that then what could it be..?

A non-managed switch should not have its own IP address and should not count as an extra "hop". Something funky is going on there.

These are my results tracing from one wired host to another on my LAN:

xjph@virtue:~$ traceroute 192.168.0.10
traceroute to 192.168.0.10 (192.168.0.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.0.10 (192.168.0.10) 0.450 ms * *
xjph@virtue:~$

No extra hops, even though they are physically connected through my ISP provided router, not directly to each other.

[magnificent moose]

If you go to Settings > Network starting from the unconnected home screen of your Steam Link, do you see a local IP address like that? Because now that I think of it, my Steam Link's IP address doesn't look local: its in the form of "88.xxx.xxx.125". Also I checked the middle step returned by tracert using whois_com and that IP address seems to belong to my ISP.

So maybe the problem is that Steam Link's automatic network setting uses DHCP for obtaining the IP address, and that IP address is not in my local network? If so, how would one go about fixing this?

[Xjph]

Originally posted by magnificent moose:

If you go to Settings > Network starting from the unconnected home screen of your Steam Link, do you see a local IP address like that? Because now that I think of it, my Steam Link's IP address doesn't look local: its in the form of "88.xxx.xxx.125". Also I checked the middle step returned by tracert using whois_com and that IP address seems to belong to my ISP.

So maybe the problem is that Steam Link's automatic network setting uses DHCP for obtaining the IP address, and that IP address is not in my local network? If so, how would one go about fixing this?

Yes, my Link gets a local IP address.

Sounds like you've got some strange network segmentation issues happening, possibly caused by more than one DHCP server on your network at a time, or an unusual setup where you have multiple external IP addresses from your ISP and your DHCP is doling those out instead of local addresses.

Manually setting a local address in the same range as your PC might sort you out.

[_I_]

Originally posted by Xjph:

Originally posted by magnificent moose:

I also ran a TRACERT from my PC to the Steam Link's IP address, which only reports two hops. The IP address of the intermediate step looks believably like the Ethernet switch. This kind of disproves my own theory. But if its not that then what could it be..?

A non-managed switch should not have its own IP address and should not count as an extra "hop". Something funky is going on there.

These are my results tracing from one wired host to another on my LAN:

xjph@virtue:~$ traceroute 192.168.0.10
traceroute to 192.168.0.10 (192.168.0.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.0.10 (192.168.0.10) 0.450 ms * *
xjph@virtue:~$

No extra hops, even though they are physically connected through my ISP provided router, not directly to each other.

the isp modem/router is a router, lan traffic does not go thru the isp, only the switch side of the router

[magnificent moose]

My PC's IP address doesn't look local either...

[Xjph]

Originally posted by _I_:

Originally posted by Xjph:

A non-managed switch should not have its own IP address and should not count as an extra "hop". Something funky is going on there.

These are my results tracing from one wired host to another on my LAN:

xjph@virtue:~$ traceroute 192.168.0.10
traceroute to 192.168.0.10 (192.168.0.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.0.10 (192.168.0.10) 0.450 ms * *
xjph@virtue:~$

No extra hops, even though they are physically connected through my ISP provided router, not directly to each other.

the isp modem/router is a router, lan traffic does not go thru the isp, only the switch side of the router

Literally my point. You should try actually understanding the context of a post sometime.