O Canada! > Canadian > Canadian Broadband > Distributel - Problems Streaming

Distributel - Problems Streaming

Yodums,

I have the exact same problem in Mississauga.

I too stream Starcraft 2 from twitch.tv and can not watch anything higher then 480p, sometimes even that gets bad.

I even had streaming problems from youtube.com with a 720p video, and from watch.thecomedynetwork.ca, Colbert and Stewart just aren't as funny when you have to buffer every 2 minutes.

If you are in Gloucester it would show that Distributel is having more core network and peering issues then local node issues.

I hope to call Distributel soon about this issue as well and I will cite your post to show that this isn't an isolated incident.

reply to Yodums
same here in mississauga i am on their adsl line, i cannot even watch imdb trailors without buffering, Netflix however works great

reply to Yodums
I believe (after all i have tested FOR MONTHS) this to be a Tinet Routing problem. I've told Acanac / Distributel about it..... I dont really know what to say except I feel your pain

reply to Malvane
re:: same problem

reply to Yodums
I contacted the customer service admin about the issue, and he has forwarded the issue to the network engineer. I'll keep you guys posted on what he has to say.

reply to priyen

I think this because when I geolocate the following three hops when routing to most areas, this is what I get:
(these appear in most trace routes outside local areas)
7 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms xe-7-1-0-705.tor10.ip4.tinet.net [173.241.130.249]
8 29 ms 29 ms 30 ms xe-11-3-0.nyc30.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.184.109]
9 30 ms 29 ms 29 ms as2828.ip4.tinet.net [213.200.84.146]

Distributel -> TiNet (IF DESTINATION IP IS NOT LOCAL) Toronto -> New York -> Somewhere in Europe, Germany or a nearby country, I forgot, -> another provider
With this.. I get 300Kbps on single thread speeds.. which include streaming.

I fix this by using Acanac's SSH tunnel, effectively turning the route to: Distributel -> Acanac (Local so TiNet does not take over) -> Cogent CO -> atlas... etc
nearly 10 times the speed on the same thread.

When i geolocate the hops Cogent CO uses, they dont go into europe.. / , they stay in North America

I think its TiNet because thats the only missing link in this
I also think this is not throttling since other Indie ISP's dont seem to have as much single thread problems as do with Distributel / Acanac

Im no tech-savvy person but i know the internet's designed in a way Longer routes lower throroughput and Toronto->New York->Europe-> Back to USA is not efficent

Hmm.. that's quite strange. AS2828 (hop #9) you referenced is XO communications based in the US. Without seeing a full sample traceroute it's quite hard to tell the issue. Peering between XO and TiNet is up within the USA though which would make me assume there's another factor sending you into Europe.

XO's looking glass is at »xostats.xo.com/cgi-bin/xostats/diagtool-pub if that helps see it from their network perspective.

OK but where are you trying to go? Those links don't tell us anything related to your problem.

Also, 213.200.84.146 is a peering point (one of many) between TiNet and XO Communications in New York City itself - not in Europe as your traceroute in the first response proves. The geolocation information is wrong on that particular IP address (as is quite common for point to point IP addresses used to link providers together).

Not anywhere in specific.. but MANY destinations outside local areas have single thread speed issues. This is why (I logically assume) ME and others have issues like streaming..basically anything that wont utilize more then 1 thread, speed will be very slow

Hmmm.. that's quite strange. I can follow some of your logic for sure. Definately something to ask them (Distributel) more about for sure if you can get through to the right folks. I can verify though that this isn't a TiNet issue in particular though...

Good luck!

Well I actually have told Distributel... they said the engineers have been aware of it and are trying to fix it..

(been a few weeks i told distributel)
and a few months i posted on Acanac forum

Good luck.

This was an issue for me about two years ago back when I had 3Web. Torrents/Usenet speeds were fine, but when it came to streaming, it always buffered like crazy which became really annoying for me.

reply to priyen
Have you heard any updates to this?
I'm having the same issues with distributel in waterloo...full speeds for most things, but streaming is brutal with constant buffering.

I'm not sure if using a Docsis 2 could be an issue on the 28Mbit connection, but that's what I'm using presently...I'm about ready to switch ISPs over this.

I haven't, however I will share some information that wasn't posted in the OP, because I was waiting for some information. I contacted Distributel's CSR Admin, Daniel Brisson, after writing the OP, and they put me through directly to one of their network engineers. He replicated the issue by streaming from the sites I was using with various ISPs, and Distributel was unable to stream, whereas the other ISPs had no issues. The network engineer had informed his director and told me this issue required core changes and I'd see them implemented late June. The wait was because the changes would impact everyone and had to be thoroughly tested -- understandable. Well, we're heading into July now and I haven't heard from him since June 11th.

Unfortunately, I decided to cancel my service with Distributel. Being able to stream is important to me and not hearing any sort of an update for such a long period of time was a deal breaker to me. Perhaps some of you guys that are affected by it can contact Daniel again, and ask an update. I'm sure if you link them to this thread, it would ring a bell.

reply to Yodums
I had Distributel installed on Friday and have the exact same issue - speedtest shows 20-30MB download, but I am unable to stream any video at all.

I had Acanac DSL before and streaming was pretty much rock solid.

I'll give them a week and then I'm cancelling

same.. (canceling if not fixed)

reply to Yodums
I have Distributel, and I haven't noticed any streaming problems since I switched from DSL with another provider. Most of these complaints seem pretty vague, are there some examples of sites you're having trouble with? (direct links to the video would be best, I'm not going to spend a lot of time hunting around)