Network - Wireless & Wired Connections

[vmps]

C1 is closest to a good answer, but is over complicated: all the roku box needs to do to get the closest server is perform an ordinary DNS query directly, instead of using an intermediate DNS server. If it doesn't get an answer (e.g., if DNS is blocked by a firewall) it could fall back to the configured DNS server. limelight already is doing all the work to try to find the closest POP--based on the source IP of the DNS request that enters their network. Why do they do it based on the incoming DNS IP? Because it needs to be done before the client initiates the connection. Could they create a protocol to negotiate this? Sure--but they can't even get clients to do a lousy DNS request, why do you think they could get clients to implement a much more complicated negotiation protocol?

The talk of having the CDN magically fix things via routing is a non-starter; they can't control the routes with a fine enough granularity to make incoming packets route to a nearby POP. (It is theoretically possible to have a single IP go to multiple places, and this is done especially for DNS, but it can have nasty side effects, especially on a stateful protocol with a session that needs to stay up for hours at a time. Doing that for DNS is a heck of a lot easier than doing it for streaming media.)

[tombonneau]

"bosljeff" wrote:
Okay, I have tried, to my knowledge, everything...I even found old printouts I made for every setting my router was at when roku and entire household network was working flawlessly...nothing is different...

Odd, new development: 36 movies on instant queue have 3 dots (many of which were previously 4 and/or HD) and 1, that's right 1 out of 37 has 4 quality dots(it could be HD, but isn't), and this is only on one episode of the series; all other episodes drop down to 3 dots!

What does this indicate? Please let me know...I assume this helps narrow it down, I just don't know what just got narrowed down...

Sounds like you and I are in the same boat. Got the Roku in Feb, and I was consistently at 4/HD with the occasional 3 dots, but for the past few days, I've been stuck at 3 dots. Did a reboot and I was back up to 4/HD briefly (as in minutes) but now stuck at 3 again.

Did you figure out any way to fix it?

I'm gonna try different wireless channels when I get home tonight, but based on what you experienced, I'm not expecting much.

What is weird is that I have a TiVo, and I can get full bars and HD no problem when I watch Netflix on that, so it can't be my wireless signal strength. (Which the Roku always says is "Excellent" anyway.)

[devrdander]

Let me explain a common load balancing practice for content providers.

More than likely it works like this:

You query cdn.netflix.com, netflix delegates this subdomain to Limelight's Nameservers. Now what limelight would probably do is called IP Anycast, where they advertise the same IP out from all their datacenters, and rely on the backbone routing to send you to the closest nameserver Now the nameserver is ignorant of where your request originated from, it doesn't care. It assumes, thanks to IP Anycast, that you are coming to it since its the closest server to you, and it replies back to you the IP's that are local to it like any normal name server would. The nameservers in this instance are just simple old NS's...

This approach is actually simplistic, reliable, and for 99% of users functional. For people that like to hard code their name servers, or use service enhanced servers like OpenDNS, well, "Them's the breaks."

Being a network engineer and managing content based websites this is a very good solution. The overhead required is cost prohibitive to do it any other way honestly. When you have a solution that is basically free since its supported in most high end gear (ip anycast) vs one that would require extensive engineering, support, and hardware (other load balancing options) it doesn't make sense.

An alternative would be for someone to code into the client(the Roku player) a script to try and pick the optimal CDN Datacenter, possibly by downloading a small 512k file from each location and making a priority list of its own. It could be a run once, and then on demand, tool that is done during initial setup and then can be tucked away into a troubleshooting/diagnostics page.

I don't know, since I don't really use, of any home/soho type of router that will let you do DNS re-writes so you can override dns results. I know how to do it at work on our firewalls :roll:

[eri3k]

Limelight uses different IP addresses for each of their data centers. If your DNS server returns the IP addresses for Limelight's Japan location, your stream originates in Japan. You can see the different IP addresses by entering cdn.netflix.com on OpenDNS's CacheCheck:
http://www.opendns.com/support/cache/

I don't understand why the Limelight edge servers can't return a HTTP 303 status code pointing to a local resource for requests to other Limelight locations. BGP usually gets people to the nearest edge server in an efficient manner. It is when your Netflix stream originates across the country - or even in Japan - and is carried over the Limelight network back to the nearest Limelight location that performance suffers. This sort of problem is very difficult for a non-technical person to troubleshoot, since each part of the system is functioning properly and the symptom cannot be attributed to any particular link in the chain: the internet connection is sufficient, the DNS server is up, there's no Limelight outage.

[devrdander]

problem is the the servers would need a way to determine which datacenter is best for you. Seems simple to do on one request, but to scale it to be able to check and redirect millions and millions of hits becomes very technically challenging. This check would be best achieved by distributing it to be done by the client.

[EPGPX]

So am I able to connect via linksys router with a PPPoE connection or do I have to use DHCP to connect with the roku?

[eri3k]

As long as the router acts as the DHCP server for the Roku, there should not be any problem using the Roku over a PPPoE internet connection.

[mkiker2089]

Newbie here so be kind

I can't do a nslookup for some reason but a tracert shows that I'm getting the DC server. I'm in mid North Carolina so I'm not sure if that closer than Atlanta. Doesn't the last line in the tracert say where it's located? Both are about the same anyway.


On my laptop (to test wireless speed) I ran the speed test. It came up

Extensive Bandwidth Testing

This test may take a minute or two. Please minimize network usage during the test
Start Test

Running test 4 of 4

Tests complete. Please cut and paste these results into an email

Test 1 Results

135k - 623ms - 1734 kBps (fb: 302ms)

270k - 1160ms - 1862 kBps (fb: 272ms)

540k - 2171ms - 1990 kBps (fb: 317ms)

675k - 1900ms - 2842 kBps (fb: 263ms)

810k - 2738ms - 2367 kBps (fb: 262ms)

945k - 2988ms - 2530 kBps (fb: 266ms)

1080k - 3118ms - 2771 kBps (fb: 263ms)

2025k - 3694ms - 4385 kBps (fb: 260ms)

Test 2 Results

135k - 660ms - 1636 kBps (fb: 272ms)

270k - 1369ms - 1578 kBps (fb: 264ms)

540k - 2149ms - 2010 kBps (fb: 268ms)

675k - 2370ms - 2278 kBps (fb: 270ms)

810k - 2622ms - 2471 kBps (fb: 266ms)

945k - 2621ms - 2884 kBps (fb: 274ms)

1080k - 2816ms - 3068 kBps (fb: 268ms)

2025k - 4613ms - 3512 kBps (fb: 272ms)

Test 3 Results

135k - 813ms - 1328 kBps (fb: 264ms)

270k - 1363ms - 1585 kBps (fb: 284ms)

540k - 2086ms - 2071 kBps (fb: 261ms)

675k - 2439ms - 2214 kBps (fb: 262ms)

810k - 2681ms - 2417 kBps (fb: 263ms)

945k - 2501ms - 3023 kBps (fb: 259ms)

1080k - 2752ms - 3140 kBps (fb: 264ms)

2025k - 4576ms - 3540 kBps (fb: 277ms)

Test 4 Results

135k - 712ms - 1517 kBps (fb: 271ms)

270k - 1376ms - 1570 kBps (fb: 268ms)

540k - 1845ms - 2341 kBps (fb: 261ms)

675k - 2118ms - 2550 kBps (fb: 337ms)

810k - 2856ms - 2269 kBps (fb: 267ms)

945k - 2878ms - 2627 kBps (fb: 264ms)

1080k - 3175ms - 2721 kBps (fb: 271ms)

2025k - 3943ms - 4109 kBps (fb: 265ms)

cdn/false

[mkiker2089]

Here it is from the wired desktop. My internet speed varies from around 7 to 10 mbps. I'm on Road Runner and expecting the Roku monday. How do the numbers look?

Extensive Bandwidth Testing

This test may take a minute or two. Please minimize network usage during the test
Start Test

Running test 4 of 4

Tests complete. Please cut and paste these results into an email

Test 1 Results

135k - 690ms - 1565 kBps (fb: 283ms)

270k - 1367ms - 1580 kBps (fb: 287ms)

540k - 1750ms - 2469 kBps (fb: 278ms)

675k - 2365ms - 2283 kBps (fb: 260ms)

810k - 2615ms - 2478 kBps (fb: 273ms)

945k - 2923ms - 2586 kBps (fb: 260ms)

1080k - 3177ms - 2720 kBps (fb: 311ms)

2025k - 5456ms - 2969 kBps (fb: 288ms)

Test 2 Results

135k - 808ms - 1337 kBps (fb: 263ms)

270k - 1123ms - 1923 kBps (fb: 254ms)

540k - 2065ms - 2092 kBps (fb: 262ms)

675k - 2244ms - 2406 kBps (fb: 259ms)

810k - 2589ms - 2503 kBps (fb: 262ms)

945k - 2781ms - 2718 kBps (fb: 260ms)

1080k - 3839ms - 2251 kBps (fb: 263ms)

2025k - 3885ms - 4170 kBps (fb: 258ms)

Test 3 Results

135k - 782ms - 1381 kBps (fb: 260ms)

270k - 1122ms - 1925 kBps (fb: 267ms)

540k - 2103ms - 2054 kBps (fb: 262ms)

675k - 2364ms - 2284 kBps (fb: 268ms)

810k - 2614ms - 2479 kBps (fb: 258ms)

945k - 2474ms - 3056 kBps (fb: 262ms)

1080k - 2627ms - 3289 kBps (fb: 264ms)

2025k - 4439ms - 3649 kBps (fb: 258ms)

Test 4 Results

135k - 810ms - 1333 kBps (fb: 262ms)

270k - 1060ms - 2038 kBps (fb: 265ms)

540k - 2157ms - 2003 kBps (fb: 267ms)

675k - 1985ms - 2720 kBps (fb: 330ms)

810k - 2609ms - 2484 kBps (fb: 259ms)

945k - 2475ms - 3055 kBps (fb: 267ms)

1080k - 2683ms - 3220 kBps (fb: 275ms)

2025k - 4329ms - 3742 kBps (fb: 268ms)

cdn/false

[edvalson]

I have a linksys WRT400N which created two SSIDs. One is linksys, which is configured to use the 2.4GHz band, and linksys_media which is supposed to use the 5GHz band.

My connection speeds are totally fine, but nonetheless I would like to specifically assign my soundbridge and my roku video player to the 5GHz SSID. At this point I don't know if it's being used at all.

linksys_media has its own config on the router, and I have a password set for it. But it doesn't appear to broadcast itself, and if I try to attach to it by name it fails.

I realize this is a question for linksys but I've found almost nothing on this topic and was wondering if any roku users were using this feature or had any suggestions.